Thursday, July 7, 2016
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
This Hatred We Call Tolerance read at Cafe Ballou for W4tB 4-16-12
This Hatred We Call Tolerance
Two kinds of tolerance:
1) the ability
or willingness
to tolerate something, such as
the existence of opinions or behavior
that one does not necessarily agree with;
2) the capacity to endure
continued subjection
to something
without adverse reaction.
Love your neighbor
as he tries to destroy you
by gathering the troops,
circling the legislative wagons.
Why? Really, why are we obligated
to tolerate those who hate us
and are trying to destroy us?
Why can't we assert radically
different worldviews,
different vocabularies,
metaphysics? Why are we
obligated to tolerate stupidity?
Why can't we just say,
"You are wrong,
and you are stupid"?
There's no excuse for stupidity and ignorance.
It doesn't matter how you were brought up
or what your parents thought.
Pick up a fucking book. Google it.
Consider a different perspective.
Hate the right people.
Hate Anita Bryant, George Bush, Sarah Palin,
Hitler, Rick Santorum, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter,
and everyone who makes you want to puke.
It's a free country, right? You should be able
to hate people who make you want to puke.
Because they will hate you, too. Without remorse.
But they won't call it hate.
They'll call it God's commandments
or some other nonsense, appealing
to imaginary authority because
they can't think for themselves.
Or they'll call it tolerance
in self-congratulatory tones,
meaning they find you repulsive,
but aren't they nice to tolerate you.
And we're supposed to tolerate this,
to have respect for their religious beliefs,
when they have absolutely no respect for us.
To deprive someone of their hatred is
to deny their humanity, to deny their right
to be angry at their oppressors.
Hate is strength. Hate is nobility and
pride and standing up for yourself.
This hatred we call tolerance.
Accept everyone, love everyone,
let everyone have their own belief system.
But what if their beliefs are destructive
to your very existence? Or just obviously false?
What if the laws, religious or secular,
deny the legitimacy of your very existence?
Are we supposed to be tolerant?
Tolerance is refusal to think.
Tolerance is a covert putdown.
Tolerance is an euphemism for hatred.
Elizabeth Harper
This is what I think about abortion debates and laws:
It's My Baby (to the tune of "It's My Party")
No one knows where I can go
I'm running out of time
Family and friends are a no-show
Why is my body the site of a crime?
It's my baby, and I'll kill it if I want to
Kill it if I want to, kill it if I want to
You would kill it too if pregnancy was forced on you
Weighing my options, keep thinking all night
Leave me alone for now
Unless you know who can help,
Who's got the wherewithal and know-how
It's my baby, and I'll kill it if I want to
Kill it if I want to, kill it if I want to
You would kill it too if pregnancy was forced on you
Police and social workers busting through the doors
Fascists with guns and expertise
Ignore plaintive cries
Treat me like a social disease
It's my baby, and I'll kill it if I want to
Kill it if I want to, kill it if I want to
You would kill it too if pregnancy was forced on you
Elizabeth Harper
Monday, February 28, 2011
poem read for Overman at The Horseshoe 2-26-11
Overman
She took too much heroin
Don't think that's a bad thing, she said.
I hear voices singing me lullabies.
I feel the history of the world,
evolution of ideas and memes and genes,
coursing through my veins at lightning speed.
I am kings and queens and princesses
and madmen and beggars and scientists.
I am free. I know the world is grander
than those that play by the rules say.
I don't need to be anything I can't be.
I don't need to kill all the flowers
blooming and taking flight inside of me.
Things in the past I can forget, leave behind
as they fade away and disintegrate,
shot through with fireworks and confetti
and silly string and collapsing mitochondria
and smashed tv sets, a trillion pixels shooting
through space, making their escape, living free.
I've found a road to take free of my mistakes
Elizabeth Harper
The first and last lines in italics are quotes from Overman songs, "Princess" and "Sweet Escape," respectively.
She took too much heroin
Don't think that's a bad thing, she said.
I hear voices singing me lullabies.
I feel the history of the world,
evolution of ideas and memes and genes,
coursing through my veins at lightning speed.
I am kings and queens and princesses
and madmen and beggars and scientists.
I am free. I know the world is grander
than those that play by the rules say.
I don't need to be anything I can't be.
I don't need to kill all the flowers
blooming and taking flight inside of me.
Things in the past I can forget, leave behind
as they fade away and disintegrate,
shot through with fireworks and confetti
and silly string and collapsing mitochondria
and smashed tv sets, a trillion pixels shooting
through space, making their escape, living free.
I've found a road to take free of my mistakes
Elizabeth Harper
The first and last lines in italics are quotes from Overman songs, "Princess" and "Sweet Escape," respectively.
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Poem read at Heartland Cafe July 8
In My Dreams
In my dreams. Get down to the truth. What are you waiting for. Hurt is the only way to get there. Where you’re trying to go. Where you’ll never get. Is she prettier than me? What makes the world so? It keeps going and going. I lose pieces of me in the scenery. Slacker wish list: an ice cream rainbow radiating out of a cornucopia of lost loves, forgotten dreams, abandoned jobs. Churning endlessly trying to get utopia to rise to the top. Writing a new poem every day only to lose oneself digging through dumpsters for scraps of old love letters trying to explain the meaning of …anything. Does he look like prince charming or just another alcoholic, spendthrift slob? Hey, even prince charming, when you find him, most likely has a day job and a substance abuse problem. The mind wanders and comes back to itself. What, did you forget milk and bread again? Why don’t you make a list? Oh, a lot of good it does folded up in that back jean pocket you use as a filing cabinet. Where are those obsessive-compulsive tendencies when you need them? Obliviousness will get you only so far, and once you get there, you won’t know where you are. To stave off anxiety, you do all sorts of things your mother and public service adds warn you against. Stocking up on band-aids and anti-aging creams. What will they think of next to fill wrinkles up with. Some stuff called “spackle.” Your face is your house. Paint it up so it will appeal to prospective buyers. Designed to sell. The Home and Garden channel. Cosmetic infomercials. We’re all about building equity here, ladies. And gender politics are so boring. Why don’t we just cut off all the penises, preserve them as dildos, and be done with it? It’s emotional neediness that keeps us hooked, keeps us hoping, keeps us trying. So maybe it’s good to long for an unrealizable ideal, a perfect object deserving of perfect love and unending devotion, while we’re munching down on a bowl of popcorn in front of the TV, eyes glued to the Lifetime channel. The jury’s still out. Maybe I’ll switch to Law and Order. Of course, it’s fascist, and yet strangely comforting. There’s always some kind of resolution even though there were false leads and dead ends along the way.
In my dreams. Get down to the truth. What are you waiting for. Hurt is the only way to get there. Where you’re trying to go. Where you’ll never get. Is she prettier than me? What makes the world so? It keeps going and going. I lose pieces of me in the scenery. Slacker wish list: an ice cream rainbow radiating out of a cornucopia of lost loves, forgotten dreams, abandoned jobs. Churning endlessly trying to get utopia to rise to the top. Writing a new poem every day only to lose oneself digging through dumpsters for scraps of old love letters trying to explain the meaning of …anything. Does he look like prince charming or just another alcoholic, spendthrift slob? Hey, even prince charming, when you find him, most likely has a day job and a substance abuse problem. The mind wanders and comes back to itself. What, did you forget milk and bread again? Why don’t you make a list? Oh, a lot of good it does folded up in that back jean pocket you use as a filing cabinet. Where are those obsessive-compulsive tendencies when you need them? Obliviousness will get you only so far, and once you get there, you won’t know where you are. To stave off anxiety, you do all sorts of things your mother and public service adds warn you against. Stocking up on band-aids and anti-aging creams. What will they think of next to fill wrinkles up with. Some stuff called “spackle.” Your face is your house. Paint it up so it will appeal to prospective buyers. Designed to sell. The Home and Garden channel. Cosmetic infomercials. We’re all about building equity here, ladies. And gender politics are so boring. Why don’t we just cut off all the penises, preserve them as dildos, and be done with it? It’s emotional neediness that keeps us hooked, keeps us hoping, keeps us trying. So maybe it’s good to long for an unrealizable ideal, a perfect object deserving of perfect love and unending devotion, while we’re munching down on a bowl of popcorn in front of the TV, eyes glued to the Lifetime channel. The jury’s still out. Maybe I’ll switch to Law and Order. Of course, it’s fascist, and yet strangely comforting. There’s always some kind of resolution even though there were false leads and dead ends along the way.
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
"I Didn't Like Being in Love Anyway" read at Jaks 5-4-09
I Didn't Like Being in Love Anyway
It's alright. I didn't like being in love anyway.
The way I'd look at you with total devotion and admiration.
Getting excited and happy by every phone call, email,
conversation, kiss, touch. Telling you everything on my mind,
reading your poems, showing you mine. Who needs that kind of closeness,
intimacy, involvement with another person. It's bound to get messy. Hell,
it was scaring the shit out of me.
It's alright. I didn't want a baby anyway.
I'd have to find a place to put it. They cry and drool.
So noisy so messy so needy so happy about the simplest things.
I like being alone. Take-out Chinese and anything I want to watch on TV.
There's always new people to meet, to keep at a cordial distance,
to hide from while smiling.
It's alright. I didn't like being in love anyway.
The way I'd look at you with total devotion and admiration.
Getting excited and happy by every phone call, email,
conversation, kiss, touch. Telling you everything on my mind,
reading your poems, showing you mine. Who needs that kind of closeness,
intimacy, involvement with another person. It's bound to get messy. Hell,
it was scaring the shit out of me.
It's alright. I didn't want a baby anyway.
I'd have to find a place to put it. They cry and drool.
So noisy so messy so needy so happy about the simplest things.
I like being alone. Take-out Chinese and anything I want to watch on TV.
There's always new people to meet, to keep at a cordial distance,
to hide from while smiling.
Monday, April 27, 2009
"She's Not What She Appears to Be" because I had a request and also I just read "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde"
She’s Not What She Appears to Be
Jasmine knew that evil lurked in every pore of her being. She knew that everyone would be truly horrified if they knew how she felt, what she thought. The way she’d fantasize about torturing and killing the most helpless creatures—little white kittens and small children. She would do it slowly, savoring each and every moment, every cut of the knife and the patterns on their flesh that she would trace in blood. But Jasmine couldn’t help what she was. After all, one enjoys what one enjoys. One feels the way one feels, and there’s no way to change it. Reason told Jasmine that her deepest and truest desires were impervious to reason. But she knew that she would have to keep herself hidden, always. Some people were shy and introverted, but then they would gradually show themselves, let little parts of their personalities show, let themselves be seen, even, eventually known by someone. For Jasmine, this was not an option. She could never be known or seen. For if she was, she would be destroyed, just like a vampire in an old-fashioned horror movie hunted down by frenzied villagers. She knew she would never be loved for who she was.
So, in order to survive, Jasmine would have to keep herself hidden all the time, even from herself. At first she seemed introverted, not revealing very much of herself. But soon people would become suspicious. They would suspect that she had another life that she hid. They were suspicious of someone that would not reveal themselves even a little. So Jasmine had to reveal little bits of a personality, share little facts about her likes and dislikes, her habits and hobbies. But she had to be very careful that what she revealed in no way indicated what she truly was. She realized that she would have to construct an entirely new persona for herself, somebody totally unlike herself, somebody that she would always have to appear to be.
Jasmine was selfish and cruel, so she would have to act as if she was the exact opposite. She practiced showing consideration for others, putting their needs and preferences before hers. She took up volunteer work: serving at soup kitchens, tutoring underprivileged children, visiting burn victims in hospitals. But of course, though she pretended to be motivated by sympathy and altruism, she secretly enjoyed witnessing the poverty, witless stupidity, and deformity of others—though she never let on to others or herself. She gave money to charities, but of course not all that she could have, because she had her secret selfish desires to feed, and that took money.
She dated, because she had insatiable sexual desires and a need to dominate and hurt people. But she didn’t let her dates know that. She pretended that she wanted marriage and a family and to be taken care of by a big, strong, capable man who would keep her in her place. In truth she had only contempt for all of that, but she went through the motions, asking to be fixed up by friends and placing wholesome, conventional personal ads in the local paper. The trick was to get rid of the hapless dupes whom she ruthlessly used for sex and the pleasure of humiliating them without letting them know what had really happened. She managed to do this in various ways: by giving elaborate versions of the “It’s not you, it’s me speech,” being busy with altruistic pursuits, causes, charities, pretend friends and invented family responsibilities, or seeming fucked-up in an irredeemable but adorable way, such as being emotionally wounded, or ambitious and driven, but for a noble goal.
Eventually she married. She manipulated her husband in order to have free reign with the credit cards for her extravagant shopping sprees, while keeping him convinced that she was the most wonderful, virtuous person in the world so that he would continue to worship her and she could continue to keep him at an emotional distance. She did this by continuing with her charities and being a generous gift giver, and also spending an inordinate amount of time on her appearance so he would always be in awe of her pulchritude. Eventually they had children, and she was a perfect mother and a model citizen. In actuality she hated her children and imagined torturing them in various ways including tearing them limb from limb while they screamed in pain and suffocating them under piles of writhing and venomous snakes. Her children knew nothing of this and adored her and believed that she adored them. They grew up into successful adults with a healthy amount of self-esteem and a sense of ethical responsibility. When she was on her death bed she was surrounded by her loving family. And as they held her hand and wept over her, she hated them as she always had. She died without anyone ever knowing who she truly was. In a way, she had succeeded in the use of her life strategy. In another way, maybe not.
Jasmine knew that evil lurked in every pore of her being. She knew that everyone would be truly horrified if they knew how she felt, what she thought. The way she’d fantasize about torturing and killing the most helpless creatures—little white kittens and small children. She would do it slowly, savoring each and every moment, every cut of the knife and the patterns on their flesh that she would trace in blood. But Jasmine couldn’t help what she was. After all, one enjoys what one enjoys. One feels the way one feels, and there’s no way to change it. Reason told Jasmine that her deepest and truest desires were impervious to reason. But she knew that she would have to keep herself hidden, always. Some people were shy and introverted, but then they would gradually show themselves, let little parts of their personalities show, let themselves be seen, even, eventually known by someone. For Jasmine, this was not an option. She could never be known or seen. For if she was, she would be destroyed, just like a vampire in an old-fashioned horror movie hunted down by frenzied villagers. She knew she would never be loved for who she was.
So, in order to survive, Jasmine would have to keep herself hidden all the time, even from herself. At first she seemed introverted, not revealing very much of herself. But soon people would become suspicious. They would suspect that she had another life that she hid. They were suspicious of someone that would not reveal themselves even a little. So Jasmine had to reveal little bits of a personality, share little facts about her likes and dislikes, her habits and hobbies. But she had to be very careful that what she revealed in no way indicated what she truly was. She realized that she would have to construct an entirely new persona for herself, somebody totally unlike herself, somebody that she would always have to appear to be.
Jasmine was selfish and cruel, so she would have to act as if she was the exact opposite. She practiced showing consideration for others, putting their needs and preferences before hers. She took up volunteer work: serving at soup kitchens, tutoring underprivileged children, visiting burn victims in hospitals. But of course, though she pretended to be motivated by sympathy and altruism, she secretly enjoyed witnessing the poverty, witless stupidity, and deformity of others—though she never let on to others or herself. She gave money to charities, but of course not all that she could have, because she had her secret selfish desires to feed, and that took money.
She dated, because she had insatiable sexual desires and a need to dominate and hurt people. But she didn’t let her dates know that. She pretended that she wanted marriage and a family and to be taken care of by a big, strong, capable man who would keep her in her place. In truth she had only contempt for all of that, but she went through the motions, asking to be fixed up by friends and placing wholesome, conventional personal ads in the local paper. The trick was to get rid of the hapless dupes whom she ruthlessly used for sex and the pleasure of humiliating them without letting them know what had really happened. She managed to do this in various ways: by giving elaborate versions of the “It’s not you, it’s me speech,” being busy with altruistic pursuits, causes, charities, pretend friends and invented family responsibilities, or seeming fucked-up in an irredeemable but adorable way, such as being emotionally wounded, or ambitious and driven, but for a noble goal.
Eventually she married. She manipulated her husband in order to have free reign with the credit cards for her extravagant shopping sprees, while keeping him convinced that she was the most wonderful, virtuous person in the world so that he would continue to worship her and she could continue to keep him at an emotional distance. She did this by continuing with her charities and being a generous gift giver, and also spending an inordinate amount of time on her appearance so he would always be in awe of her pulchritude. Eventually they had children, and she was a perfect mother and a model citizen. In actuality she hated her children and imagined torturing them in various ways including tearing them limb from limb while they screamed in pain and suffocating them under piles of writhing and venomous snakes. Her children knew nothing of this and adored her and believed that she adored them. They grew up into successful adults with a healthy amount of self-esteem and a sense of ethical responsibility. When she was on her death bed she was surrounded by her loving family. And as they held her hand and wept over her, she hated them as she always had. She died without anyone ever knowing who she truly was. In a way, she had succeeded in the use of her life strategy. In another way, maybe not.
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