The Pledge by Karen

At the end of this post is a poem I wrote a few weeks ago--it's also a song to a jazzy big band melody I haven't put down on paper yet. It's about my love/hate relationship with the Pledge of Allegiance. As a child and youth, I loved standing to say the pledge, especially with large groups of people. I love the idea of people standing together, speaking as one about a cause they believe in. The pledge both directly verbalizes and indirectly represents some ideas that I, personally, believe in: loyalty, love of country, gratitude for God, community, democracy, liberty and justice.

But the pledge also tends to represent some ideas that I don't believe in. I don't believe that the country is indivisible--I mean, why shouldn't a state or two break off if they want to, what's the big deal? I don't believe that the U.S. is God's favorite country. I don't believe that belief in God is a prerequisite to patriotism. I don't believe that the pledge is worded in a manner inclusive enough to sufficiently unite the modern American population.

And I don't really believe that elementary school students should be expected to stand and repeat it all together. This tradition was started in the 1940s, when war permeated Americans' minds; when militant habits seeped into our language, our hairstyles, and our classrooms. In the 1950s, under the reign of McCarthyism, the pledge was a reminder that any person accused of criticizing the government could be fatally blacklisted.

At any rate, my general reaction to the pledge is not dramatic. I'm just tired of taking the whole thing so seriously. The pledge is not a test that reveals which individuals in a room love democracy--and it certainly isn't a real oath (Thank heavens, we are not coerced into making oaths of obeisance to our government!) It's also not the best way to teach the values it attempts to teach. I mean, let's get real. Teaching kids to express their personal feelings about their country is more meaningful than asking them to memorize and daily repeat something that someone else came up with.

On the other hand I don't think the Pledge should be banned, either. It's a quaint tradition that many regard with fondness. Say the pledge if you feel like it, but don't expect everyone to chime in. Or, reject the pledge if you want, but don't expect the government to formally amend or renounce it. Eventually, I believe it will fizzle out on it's own.

So, here it is, below, my poem. Again, it's mostly about my feeling that the ideas in the pledge are important, but that the pledge, itself, shouldn't be taken too seriously.


The Pledge

The pledge--some patrage allegiance,
a sledge that can Christmas
the wedge that's betwixt us?

The blood of our founding,
foregrounding resoundings:
Rockefeller and Old Yeller.
Blitzkrieg lips, read this:

Applaud, appalled. Uphold the old glory phrase.

I told you, gist
raise a fist, Texas twister.
Emancipate a race, suffragistic sister.

Encrypted snacks in Liberty's lap,
Justice for Albequerque and even Mr. Turkey Lurkey,
Madame Allegiance, go free lance!

Applaud, appalled. Uphold, the old glory frays. 

Treasonable supricion,
seasonable remission in the sale of
apple pie fillin' cans--what's the brand?
And to the corn for which it stands!

In God we fussed a crust,
in gold we thrust a must,
in time we trust a dusty gust,
or bust,
it's just--

Applaud, appalled. Uphold the old glory phrase.

I tend to write my poetry at concerts. by Karen

Last night I attended Justin's Orchestra at Temple Square Concert. They played Mozart, Beethoven and Dvorak. I was inspired by the evening's printed program, and wrote this poem:

Biography

Successfully spans, and multi-faceted,
one of those.
He made his and holds the post.

A frequent guest,
has collaborated with by some of the most
of his generation.
He was invited by,
regularly appears with,
was honored as,
and returned for.

Received glowing with great success;
have met with enthusiastic reception
by the international press.

Which marks the first--the long awaited,
generously provided.
Co-founded the, around the world,
using the latest.


if this poetry style is unfamiliar to you, it's the poetry-as-a-collage-of-phrases kind, highly influenced by the work of e.e. cummings.

Art Deco--Modified Picasso by Karen

Justin and I put together a little creative project a couple weeks ago. We went to D.I. to find a frame for the Picasso painting I received for Christmas (Guernica). We knew the poster was pretty big, so we took our time, looking for a few weeks to find just the right frame.

Finally, we found a white-and-gold art frame with a painting in it. It was an old style desert landscape. An art print of an oil painting--very much like the oil painting landscapes that grandma and grandpa have at their house--lots of green and yellow. We imagined that we'd just slide the Picasso in over the existing painting in the frame and put it up on the wall. When we got home, we realized a couple of problems. One, the Picasso (black and white) looked silly and washed out in the white and gold frame. Two, the frame was actually much too big for the poster--we'd have to put in additional matting around the poster, which we really didn't want to do, matting is so expensive, and the poster was really special, not the kind of thing a person could matte with sheets of construction paper.

Meanwhile, we'd had a good laugh at the back of the desert landscape painting--a thin particle board with a very amateur half-done painting on it. Cheap paint was used probably by a high school art student, or any non-professional just having fun. At the top, a dramatic, fantastical sunset in orange and blue and yellow, with black ominous clouds; to the left a great and spacious building of stacked-up, pueblo-style architure, brown stucco walls, red, rounded doorways. Poor attempts at a 3-effect. At the bottom, a fluffy, green blob, possibly meant to represent a bush. To the right, streaks of random color, maybe someone had been testing the paint, unsure of what colors would come out. Justin and I, as a joke, placed the Picasso poster on this underbelly of the desert landscape painting. Then we looked down at it. And looked up at each other. We laughed. And both knew that this was the answer, the true destiny for our Picasso.

I carefully cut the Picasso painting out of its white poster background and centered and pasted it to the amateur painting. I spray-painted the frame black, to bring out the dramatic contrasts in the Picasso. On the undone spaces of the amateur painting, the parts where no paint had ever touched the flat, particle board surface, I scrawled depressing, war poetry in pencil (to add to the effect of despair). Some e.e. cummings, some Charles Boudelaire, some T.S. Eliot, some Walt Whitman, a paragraph from a novel about Hiroshima, and a poem of my own. and Voila! A beautifully dramatic abstract modernist commentary on war and violence as the new focal point for our room. After we put it up, we stared at it for several minutes in awed reverence. "This is really beautiful, honey," Justin said, "a real piece of art."

For your reading pleasure, here are the poems/excerpt from the painting:

T.S. Eliot (From The Waste Land, a tedious, modernist poem about the depressing face of post-WWI America):

April is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.

Walt Whitman (From Pioneers! O Pioneers! Expressing the violence and vigor of Manifest Destiny--he thought his encouragement of Western Expansion was quite noble, I use it in this collection, because I find it sick, and ironic considering the fact that it was not just trees, but Native Americans who were the victims of several pioneer movements):

Come my tan-faced children,
Follow well in order, get your weapons ready,
Have you your pistols? Have you your sharp-edged axes?
Pioneers! O Pioneers!

Charles Baudelaire (The most highly acclaimed depressing French Poet of the canon of literature. This is the English translation):

O, Death: old captain, it is time!
Let us raise anchor!
This country bores us, O Death!
Let us set sail!
Though the sky and the sea are black as ink,
our hearts are filled with rays!
Pour us your poison, so that it comforts us!

e.e. cummings (The postmodernist who always finds contentment in his exploratory writings about despair):

Faithfully tinying at twilight voice
of death earth's innumerable doom
againing (yes by microscopic yes)
acceptance of irrevocable time

particular pure truth of experience heard
above the everywhereing facts of fear;
and under any silence of each bird
who dares to not forsake a failing year

--now, quite before your whisper's whisper is
subtracted from my hope's own hope, receive
(undaunted guest of dark most downwardness
and marvellously self diminuitive

whose universe a single leaf maybe,
the more than thanks of always merest me

Quote from Hiroshima:

The day before the bomb, I went for a swim. In the morning, I was eating peanuts. I saw a light. I was knocked to a little sister's sleeping place. When we were saved, I could only see as far as the tram. My mother and I started to pack our things. The neighbors were walking around burned and bleeding.

Me (This is a poem about many things. Mostly about how my disgust for war and violence is making me want to be vegetarian. Also, about my annoyance at President Obama for accepting the Nobel Peace prize, when we knew that sending a few thousand more troops into Iraq just before accepting the prize was dishonorable.):

She,

of whom it is said would,
in a million sentences about years,
never take an axe in hand against,
much more than a cherry tree, an
innocent, running sans head chicken,
or any chicken for that matter,

is no more innocent of bar-B-que finger-licking
than the man who accepted the Nobel Peace Prize
for ordering only a few thousand more friends, Romans, Countrymen
into the
out of the frying pan and
into the
hands of Macbeth, his wife, and other red-fingered Fates.



I hope rather than getting sad by these literary excursions, you think of them as important social commentary--just one more effort to inspire the community with feelings of anti-violence and other optimistic Ghandi-isms.

All Roads Lead to Wal-mart by Karen

All Roads Lead to Wal-mart

How generous of the Superstore to let local brands rent space on the shelves!
The Roman Empire allowed its peoples to govern themselves.
No Nazis, no Redcoats.

"Convenience, convenience, convenience!"
We chant this, and render coins before pagan altars.

"What are we going to do tonight, Sam?"
"The same thing we do every night, Caesar, try to take over the world!"

NYC Poetry, May 2009, by Karen and Justin

I. Hot Dog Poem

I think hotdogs must be standardized
'cause that's all you get
ketchup and maybe mustard
for 99 cents,
2 dollars,
3 dollars--do I hear 4?
the price increases at the same rate
subway standers change color,
from black and brown to yellow and white


II. Everything (In NYC) is Poetry

Sticky garbage is art,
but only if you put it in a frame,
or if you can sell it to tourists


III. Subway Map

But why no sushi?
connect the dots! la la la la!
Stringy strings stringing through
and where is my Italian fantasy?!
Fabuous fabled fettuccine forthwith
no North--only Bronx--
Bedford Park Blvd--
Brighton Beach--
Two stops late to proper payment make
are we at the end of the line?


IV. Sunscreen

Screens screened tourists between filters
High culture, green culture, criss-cross
Strained Shakespearean sunlight.
Quoth the illuminious poet,
Smirks like the sunset twinkling on the twilight ocean water
Admit more wry depth than an organic net of streets.


V. Shell

This shell is like my sea-coated ears
there's something alive inside,
a gooey monster.

And Coney Island is like the humid bletch
that spotches the boardwalk and clings to my skin.
Once the fair fare of fairy tale 20th century fairs is long melted,
just a discarded, dry, sugar puddle.


VI. Ode on a Choking Victimé

Choking victim, choking victim,
Wherefore doest thou obstreprous?
Whereforest dost thou nottest clamp thyne palate?

Rats spoiled again didst thou masticate?
Manging mangey morsels porcelain caught
after omniverous laugh.


VII. Gratuitous Gratuity

This is kind of ridiculous.
Golden paneled golden panels
reinventing today's forecast.
Technology makes us unaccountable;
we reverse our consequences.
O Catharsis! Feed thy fantastical
fictions to us--May they taste
in us some flavor of truth.
The curtain, ostensibly decadent.