Memoir Chapter I

It's a fine day to begin something by going back in time. There isn't any certain order and I apologize for that...I am not a memoirist or novelist with intent but by nature I tell stories.

We stood outside the Arco Iris in Naco Sonora with our cameras in position, apertures right and focused on the three prostitutes outside the bar's front door. I took the best photo at the fine young age of seventeen. The two other photogs present were seasoned experts. One of them (Byrd) had studied a bit with Ansel Adams and the other(Fresina) spent years working for the Syracuse Herald Tribune and had a Master's Degree in Fine Arts. Fresina had also served as a photographer in Viet Nam and Byrd had travelled with the Beatles. My experience with cameras started with a Brownie Box that my mother dug out of our neighbor's trash and my father repaired. We sent off for the Kodak 616 film which was no longer produced by the company but still available on demand.

My first photos were of the usuall things kids take pictures of...their friends, pets and flowers in the yard. Because the old Brownie had no advanced mechanical features, those photos were blurry and naive but beautiful all the same. My next camera was a Polaroid Land Camera which produced instant pictures without negatives. One of a kinds. I'm not sure what the Arco Iris was shot with but I remember the moment it was taken as if it happened just yesterday.

I comment on it because between photo exhibit A and photo exhibit B, my innocence was lost, taken or otherwise destroyed. Such dramatic recognaissance but true all the same. The episode used to occupy my thoughts much more than it does now. This is my story and it is aimed at those who do not know that they are muslims and that Islam was meant for everyone on the planet, not just the Arabs.

Darla has been doing some thinking lately...about the state of the world as it is. All these loose ends just begging to be caught up into a bundle and wrapped and labeled. The word for that is "our time" or "these times" but what it really is is just some loose ends bundled up again and again...and still unresolved.

Resolution is really what peace is made out of and you just cannot expect it without resolving the original conflict(s). Darla sees this pretty clearly as being the collision of the material world with the immaterial one...call it what you like but it is found throughout the discussions from Buddhism to Economics, athiesm to belief, soul to lack of soul.

And no poet would ever cop to not having one of those! Or would they?

Darla has come to the inevitable conclusion that Allah works in mysterious ways. When Darla (and her good friend Lilac) were children they both attended the same Catholic school up on old Higgins Hill. Back then there was no home for crack addicted women across the street like there is now and the county jail which is just across from St. Pats had roughly twenty cells total in a Mayberry type of affair. The CC jail now holds upwards of two hundred and fifty prisoners at any given time and has been moved down into the toxic waste region where the garbage dump used to be (where the garbage man used to stow his money in Clabber Girl cans). You have to really look at things in order to see them for what they are...you have to pay attention.

Darla and Lilac used to sing in the pews...how they loved that part of the service i.e. which included the Liturgy according to so and so or so and so....they sang Kumbaya and it brings tears to the eyes after a lifetime of seeing the facts of the matter played out in the material world:

Kumbaya my lord, Kumbaya
well Kumbaya my lord, Kumbaya
Kumbaya my lord, Kumbaya
oh lord, Kumbaya

I am humble now lord, Kumbaya
I am waiting lord, Kumbaya
I am searching lord, Kumbaya
oh lord, Kumbaya

please Kumbaya my lord, I'm waiting, Kumbaya
Kumbaya my lord, Kumbaya
Kumbaya my lord, Kumbaya
oh lord, Kumbaya

I'm full of love now lord,
Oh i feel full of love now lord, please Kumbaya
yes i feel full of love now lord, oh Kumbaya
oh lord, Kumbaya

They sang the song of St. Francis:

Make me a channel of your peace.
Where there is hatred let me bring your
love.
Where there is injury, your pardon, Lord
And where there's doubt, true faith in
you.

Chorus:
Oh, Master grant that I may never seek
So much to be consoled as to console
To be understood as to understand
To be loved as to love with all my soul.

Make me a channel of your peace
Where there's despair in life, let me bring
hope
Where there is darkness, only light
And where there's sadness, ever joy.

Chorus:

Make me a channel of your peace
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned
In giving to all men that we receive
And in dying that we're born to eternal
life.

Neither one of them knew just how profound the words were that they were singing. Neither of them could have predicted the hypocrisy that would ensue in the years to come from their very own Church let alone their country, banking industry, media and even neighbors. Who could have imagined really!

They really believed in those songs. Obviously or the Lord wouldn't have blessed either one of them in such astounding ways. One of them could have ended up a Jehovah's Witness you know....running around town and harping about how people needed to join their Christian Cult/Sect instead of any other one or maybe even one of them could have ended up a Mormon and believed herself to be of the Godly Class on some tight-knit Xenophobic planet getting ready to go to heaven and spawn God Babies.

Alot could have gone wrong you know...but it didn't. Out of the thousands of people in their local environment....both were chosen to be muslims. It never ceases to amaze either one of them you know....how extraordinary it all was! How extraordinary yet how very painful it actually is...to know that you have been blessed in a way so outside of the norm that you end up being nearly all alone in a land that is just beginning to realize some terribly drastic truths about their mistakes. Just waking up. It's so incredibly bad that Lilac has to invent a Darla and vice versa because there's no one left to talk to about the truth.

There is a reason for this you know....a reason a person is chosen to be a witness and a reason a person isn't. Its a difficult case to explain really...it defies the normative logic of "our times"..this loose-ended morass into which most people are so desperate that some of them even lose their job and come home to murder their five children in short order. That the man did so after faxing his executioner and saying that he told him to do it....well....Lilac has to gasp aloud at that lethal last blow at "the system". The same system that turned off the heat (more or less) in the home of a confused 93 year old WAR VETERAN'S home (the man had not been late for paying his bills for fifty years) and the "company" didn't bother to tell anyone (including the old man) about it. He died a freezing and lonely death...who knows if he even knew he was dying? Oh....it's not pretty anymore....not pretty at all.

It is so hard to watch when a person knows the cause and as well, the cure.

So many words come to mind,
causa belli is always one of them.

Eulogy for the Artist's Child

I raised my head up from him
and said, I bet Phyllis Schaffly
wouldn't do that for you
such a surprise it was
because there wasn't a thing
to tell him about this
soul essay of mine.
I've tried to shield them
from this aperture
for so long but without
success because it leaks
out of the pores sometimes.
She is dead they say,
she is in a photograph
in another time, she was
the best thing that ever happened
or was ever lost.
This whole memoir
written on the head
of a pin, scattered
in the cupboards,
established a reality
even though no one
thought to look at such
a thing. Her own soul essay.

This is the day no one wants
to be that guy.
As Gaza is surrounded
and buries the dead
and waits for more,
this is the day no one wants
to be that guy.

Incantations for the dead
and the living, incantations
cannot hold the shovels
or level the dirt upon the graves.
Secret messages go out
between the bird squabbles,
the air here contains
some of the smoke,
some of the incredible
heartbreak of others.

Here is the wisdom
of the soul essay
as it counts up and remembers
each unlucky one.
We've been very lucky so far.

Our Babies Are Good Enough

Would Phyllis Schafly shoot fish
in a barrell like they do in Gaza,
shoot babies in the cradle like
they do in Gaza, the Jews,
yes the Jews who are not
funny anymore, pathetic
How to say Hi! to the Jew
anymore after the fish
in the barrell come floating
to the top, boycott the looking
yes, Jew. You. How to shoot
fish in the AusDachauBlederling?
You the quiet Jew minding
his own business, you being
Jewish controllingtheworld
like you do, quiet minding
the business of the heartbreak
AusDachauBlederling.
All our babies line up
for your photo albums
don't they? Lay real
still for your photo albums
don't they you Martha
blueberry muffins. The Fenshui
of AusDachauBlederling
is one on top of the other
in good rubble, hard rubble.
Phyllis Schafly loves me,
she loves me not.

Feminism as a Commodity

Or, what would Phillys Schlafly do?

Obviously, she would arm wrestle Alice Notley. Alice of course would win because Alice could convince everyone that she had.

In a nutshell.

This relates to things having to do with evolution and the Scopes Trial and many a detail in the Piltdown Man syndrome of society. Evolution, feminism, global warming...all have something in common. They are commodities. Some parts of those doctrines are traded on the stock exchanges of the world. They can be manipulated using a variety of techniques that some might refer to as brain-washing. The Piltdown Man is a great example of how human beings took a few bone parts, painted them alot of weird colors and the discovery dominated science for nearly two generations before being discovered for what it really was and that was, a creation created by guilty, self loving men and women who were just threatened enough by certain other doctrines, to literally falsify the evidence.

William Jennings Bryan died because of such astounding mis-construed histories composed of the collision between religious ignorance and religious intolerance (of both types, pro and con). I think he died of a broken heart and spirit. He died of mockery and public shame. To me, there is no better analogy than that to illustrate the way in which we in the West view our past and integrate it into our present in order to use it for the future. The dangerous notion with that is, we have the power to oppress those who disagree with our policies and with our intentions i.e. for the good of all mankind (somehow or another). That our (and I use that term loosely) basis for contention is wholly misguided creates a threat to world peace and if a person didn't know that yet, they should know that now on this horizon of war and conclusion of war. Could go either way you know, nothing is ever for certain.

The commodity of feminism cannot be denied. It is a collection of solicitations from both sides that pulls at women every day. It is the notion of being "with us or against us". Or, as is the case with an increasingly castrated society of men, we'll just kill and maim women instead of taking sides. We'll get rid of the problem and that problem is women in general. Talk back women and sage women like Alice Notley (whether she is or isn't), pretty women and women for hire, High Toned Old Christian Women:

"This will make widows wince. But fictive things
Wink as they will. Wink most when widows wince."

Thank you Wallace, I adore you but all the same, it isn't nice to say such things about us. It isn't like you i.e. evolved and important men who break language barriers through which darlings like Alice and I can wander.

I wonder, am I an high toned old muslim woman? What must that sound like to those accustomed to such established poets and men of greatness like the honorable Wallace Stevens?

It sounds a bit like a roar but in a whisper. It is a highly intelligent view and not many around this place (the West) can comprehend it just yet because they have been rendered deaf by the high toned Christian-ness and Anti-Christian-ness of folks from Stevens to Schlafly.

How Important Are Poets Afterall

My husband doesn't think so but all the same, he has trended over the twenty-seven years I have known him towards supporting what I am called to do. It wasn't always so and in fact, he woke me up to a startling conclusion about art in general very early on. He dismissed the idea that I was somehow special or knew special things that set me apart and literally, above, others.
It was clear and simple to him and now that I understand him, I have to agree. I didn't agree then and it put a wedge between us for many years. My kidnapper was an artist and a pretty good one albeit, a lazy one. Therefore, my husband's assumption about it, made when he was merely a boy (who originated from peasants in another country, the fellahin) wasn't based on his knowledge about art or artists, but it was a type of jealousy that I didn't understand then. My self esteem was so low that it never even occurred to me that someone might be jealous on my behalf. I was the jealous one I thought.

He was jealous of a ghost that simply wouldn't go live in his netherworld. He was jealous of a crime and a sin that masqueraded as a love affair. Most of all, he knew he had hold of a person who was beautiful and naive, wise beyond all possibility and flukishly so and he knew our marriage was completely out of his ordinary. Not mine of course because I was trending towards being a gypsy anyway. My particular wisdom always was a wisdom. It was bred of the communication of my mother's way of thinking, the Catholic church and my chubby, impoverished childhood. I understood people. I loved people and animals and had a tremendous ability to tolerate defficiency of means and looks, and very little ability to tolerate arrogance and cruelty. I was always the consummate underdog. Still am. Perhaps the reader will at once recognize what I recognized much later on in the story and that is, I was born a Shia. I just didn't know it but luckily, I recognized it just in time. Just in time to hope to make some sense of it to the world which is still in a drowsy and disillusioned state. Still ignorant of the inherent laws of the Creator and how that matters whether one knows it or not or agrees to it.

What would Alice do?

She would have left the situation because it seems to me that whatever Alice doesn't agree with, she leaves aside or behind. I don't know her perhaps, not well enough to say that, but the way she communicates her core beliefs leads me to believe that she would be smarter than to let some dumb guy hold her back. It is a feminist rationale in my opinion. Free the whales, global warming and the inherent laws of feminism that make it essential that a poet have a gender from which to speak.

What does that mean? I'll tell you.

When I began writing poetry in earnest...I say in earnest because I've written poems for more than a quarter century but not like I've written them in the past ten or so years....I knew right away that in order to succeed, a woman could choose a variety of paths. Competing with the menfolk, agreeing with the menfolk, abusing the menfolk, appealing in a sexual way to the menfolk, write only for women or simply close one's eyes to the fact that being a woman stipulates that they are using one of those tactics. In short, I resisted being a feminist and lo! my first actual published poem was published in one of the most feminist of all the ezines during that era. Hurly Gurly of Lunatic Park and the professor soandso poem in which I cite a fake speech given by a fake professor who comments on feminism. I couldn't help but supress my disappointment that the best I could do was a feminist journal. I also harbored a secret criticism of the editor who had selected the poem, that she missed the fact that the word "itch" could mean (to an unfriendly reader) a state of being infected with yeast organisms below in the girl parts of the body. Hurly Gurly though, isn't as self conscious as me apparently.

What is feminism exactly? I have my theories you know, as a muslima. In my estimation and because of my marital history and mostly my in depth study of the Quran, feminism is the unavoidable state of society in which women take control because men are failing in their role as designated leaders. I know this from my own experience as well as having been a witness to society for a certain period of time and in various cultural mileaus. Men are designated by Allah to execute and lead anyone in their care towards pious, knowledgable submission to inherent laws that we cannot change and ought not to ignore. One could say that in the field of poetry, poets like Alice Notley not only deserve praise but would be hard pressed to avoid it because their male counterparts are failing to produce work that makes a difference either historically or currently. Ignoring these laws (and feminism would arch her eyebrows and smack me in the face parts to hear this) doesn't give success to either side, male or female. It simply turns into a never-ending power struggle i.e. the gender gap and gender war we are all so accustomed to dealing with in political speeches (Sarah Palin to Hilary Clinton) and in our daily lives. It is an unresolved tug o'war that has turned not only nasty, but violent (especially in the West).