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Carlos Andrés Gómez ~ “Genocide” and “Man-up: Reimagining Modern Manhood”

quote-the-single-most-revolutionary-thing-you-can-do-is-recognize-that-you-are-enough-carlos-andres-gomez-80-67-82Mark Twain (a.k.a. Samuel Clemens) famously – or perhaps infamously – was a believer in and adept master of profanity, not as vulgarity, he said, but as release.

“Under certain circumstances, urgent circumstances, desperate circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer.” Mark Twain, a Biography

Twain wrote of swearing as “ornamental” when practiced by American miners considered by him to be “gifted among the sons of man.”

I admit I haven’t the gift to turn profanity into art and I have no taste for vulgarity.  You won’t catch a swear word on my tongue or even on my mind but I do recognize that there’s a time and place and manner. I don’t know what Twain would think of award-winning American spoken-word poet, Carlos Andrés Gómez, but I like his work. Carlos moves profanity from emotional release or “ornament” to moral high ground. He applies it with searing honesty to the human condition.

Here’s Carlos telling it like it is:

If you are reading this post FROM in email, you will have to click through to view the video.

“Carlos is amazing. Pretty much everything he says, whether a ‘poem’ or not, is pure poetry. His grace and power and humor demand not only that people listen, but also that they act for change — in themselves and the world around them. And especially when it comes to the narrow norms that constrain men, hurt women, and limit us all, he can help deliver exactly the change we need. Carlos makes me laugh, cry, and hope.”

Mallika Dutt, President & CEO of Breakthrough [the global human rights organization dedicated to making violence against women unacceptable] (India)

61Qvg4B4epL._SX330_BO1,204,203,200_Carlos Andrés Gómez was born in New York City (1983) but he seems very much a citizen of the world.  He’s a poet, writer, actor, activist . . . and  some say, a prophet.  He was a social worker and a public school teacher. He is the son of a United Nation’s diplomat and an indigenous rights’ activist.

His book, Man-up: Reimagining Modern Manhood (Gotham, 2012) is a coming of age memoir that suggests an enlightened masculinity with an open self-embracing emotional life, ready to foster nonviolence and able to see women not as objects but as whole human beings, as equal partners in life and work. The book was written in part to help address some of the crises we are all so concerned about, including school drop-out rates and youth suicide. A worthy read that challenges us to exchange traditional male stereotypes of macho conformity for something more genuine and soul-satifying. Recommended for women as well as men and I’d say for anyone raising and/or educating young men.

© Jamie Dedes

♥

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HEADS-UP NORTH CENTRAL SAN MATEO, CALIFORNIA ~ Celebrating “Beloved Community” for Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Birthday

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1928)
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1928)

In the Spirit of “Beloved Community”

by

Rev. Ben Meyers

Consistent with long tradition (this is our 28th year), the Unitarian Universalists of San Mateo (UUSM) will host a celebration in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and his dream. We do so in concert with our neighbors in North Central San Mateo and invite you to visit us on Saturday, January 14 from 3 pm – 5pm after the annual essay, poetry and art contest awards at the King Community Center, 330 W. 20th Avenue. We are located at 300 E. Santa Inez Avenue, San Mateo, CA 650 342-5946 Join us for a buffet, music and activities for all ages. Together the community of North Central San Mateo will play his dream forward.

“I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.” Martin Luther King, Jr.

Dr. King’s dream, shared with the world in one of its most widely known and revered speeches, gives meaning to our celebrations and our efforts to honor Dr. King and keep his memory and ideals alive. The human community still struggles for equity and respect for everyone. We still struggle for peace in the rough and crooked places. We still struggle to heal and to make his dream – one that so many of us share – a reality.

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) was a Baptist minister and social activist whose role was pivotal in the American civil rights movement from the mid-1950s through his death in 1968. Through nonviolent civil disobedience, Dr. King promoted equity for African-Americans and for all who were marginalized and victimized.

The photograph of Dr. King is in the public domain.

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blue echo, a poem

California Scrub Jay
California Scrub Jay

Silent, but for cunning Corvidae, they
of song, sub-song, caw, click and rattle
On ghostly air currents they levitate
high above the quiet fragrant turf
And all the while the heart spins
on the rose garden’s pulsing colors,
kindling fancy into inspiration

A fabled coalition of migrant birds
arrives to sit a spell, to catch a breath of
white jasmine on a breeze that speaks
the tongue of Aleppo, while under the ginkgo
words are braided into narrative thread,
yarns pulled from earthy green waves
and that blue echo of peace called sky

© 2016, poem, Jamie Dedes, All rights reserved; Photo credit ~ California Scrub Jay by Samsara under the CC A-SA 2.0 generic;

♥

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“LET US”, a poem by citizen poet, Alan Kaufman … and your Wednesday Writing Prompt

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LET US
For the Poets of January 15th and the Women of January 21st

Let us
take ourselves aboard a bus
and travel to the dispossessed
And let us praise their dreamless eyes and hardened smiles
with rogue words of truth
to the killing fields of their hopes
The slum wards and ragged towns and stolen farms
Let us take to them the carnival of our mad and scattered lives
Let us bring them the mountain, let us give them the vision
of an open window, an unlocked door, a bed to sleep in, a plate of food
Let us give them the keys to the house of our love
Let us bare our throats tattooed with roses, our breasts sequenced with diamonds
our loins hot with dragons, our hands and feet pierced with beauty
Let us come to their dusty squares and drinking holes with canticles of magnificent defeat
Let us deliver to their mangers
of pollution and penitentiaries, shopping malls and tenements
the hard beautiful birth of the heart
Let us bring renewal, let us declare the death of despondency and tyrants
For I have seen our campfires beside the roads, like fallen still-burning miraculous stars
I have seen our bus voyaging to innocence
I have seen us tossed this century like a bone
after decades of science and war reason and corporation
art and Auschwitz
I have seen my vocation descend like a pen to a page
that can never be filled with enough truth
I have crossed a continent of despair and I swear to you, Poets,
I live for greater than myself
You, street-Latin Elizabethan hustlers, I tell you time has come to deal
death’s passionate kiss to kings
Time has come to bare our asses in Paradise
Time has come to write the Constitution with poetry and flesh
Time has come to costume up and ride
with words like steel-tipped whips
into the soul of American
and rage there and sing
till the mouth of every hungry child
is fed.

– Alan Kaufman

Thanks to Alan (Alan Kaufman – writer,poet, artist, teacher) for his willingness to share his poem here.

WRITING PROMPT

Alan Kaufman’s poem is published here with his permission and in anticipation of the event featured in the poster above and initiated by Alan along with Michael Rothenberg.  In coordination with their event, the theme for the January 15 issue of The BeZine is “Resist.”

We invite submissions for the January issue.  This is the second writing prompt to help you toward participation – online and/or off – in  this important event designed to push back against vulgarity, bigotry, xenophobia and misogyny. For The BeZine we invite world-wide participation – not against any one person – but against the renewed growth of these trends all over the Western world and the continued entrenchment – business as usual – for the rest of the world.

For the Zine, you don’t have to write a poem. You can do an essay, feature article, creative nonfiction, art or photography, or music video, which we hope will not only frame the issues but have constructive suggestions toward resolution.  No hateful language please. When you have written something on “resist” and if you feel comfortable submitting it to be considered for publication, email it to bardogroup@gmail.com

Save the date for both live and virtual events and prepare to submit your work or works to the Zine by January 10th, end of day. Let your work be both truthful and artistic . . .

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant —
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth’s superb surprise

As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind — Emily Dickinson

The Zine submission guidelines HERE. The Zine mission statement HERE.

♥

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