Motley Moose – Archive

I’m republishing this diary from 18 months ago on the wonderful news that the mother of Stephen Lawrence, victim of a racist killing that continues to have repercussions among the police and press even now, has been elevated to the House of Lords.

I’m no fan of the honours system or our unelected second chamber, but before it’s abolished, the thought that Doreen Lawrence, who has campaigned tirelessly for twenty years to bring her son’s murderers to justice (and expose the collusion and institutional racism of the police) is to become a Labour peer is the best news I’ve heard in ages.

HT to Denise for the following video which shows Doreen meeting with the Trayvon Martin family in London last year at the Stephen Lawrence foundation

Below is a tribute to her, written by our poet laureate.

“Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere. ”

Carl Sagan

Welcome to Sunday All Day Brunch. This is an open topic thread so help yourself to the goodies and sit a spell and let us know what is going on in your life. I’ve been thinking about my Dad today. Dad always said that he was a dreamer. My Mom was very practical and she told me more then once I was a dreamer like my Dad.

I like to write poems at times. I mostly do free verse, sometimes rhyming, and haiku.

I wrote this one the other day, for one of the First Nations groups that are part of my Facebook experience.

Small things at night

Beauty from the elders

Run and play, children. Your world is just beginning.

Remember these mysteries as you play and grow strong, children.

They are your heart.

Some of you may know that I am an avid poetry reader. It is a passion my mother instilled in me at an early age by reading me her favorites, like Blake and Shakespeare and Keats, when I was a kid. But the poetry collections to be found in my childhood home were not nearly extensive enough, and much of my library time as a kid was spent digging through old poetry volumes looking for new and interesting things. Beyond the esteemed Langston Hughes, African American poets were not very well showcased in the sricki household when I was younger. My mom was a British literature addict, so you were much more likely to find D. H. Lawrence on our shelves than Maya Angelou. While it was unfortunate in many ways that there was a general paucity of poetry authored by African Americans in my home growing up… at the same time it enabled me to make many an exciting discovery as I sought out new poetic frontiers.

I could ramble about poets all week, but for now I thought I’d just showcase three of my favorite African American poets. The three you’ll find below are certainly very widely known, but I steered clear of Angelou and Hughes specifically because they are so well known by evvvvvverybody. Maybe not everyone is as intimately familiar with Paul Laurence Dunbar, Phillis Wheatley, and Countee Cullen. All three are of tremendous historical importance, authors of stirring poetry, and were taken from this world far too soon (all before the age of 45).

Evenin’, Moose.

I will admit that I’m not much of a poet, though I love poetry deeply. There are a lot of reasons I don’t share poetry here. One is that I haven’t actively written poetry in years. In fact, I burned my “collected writings” in the late spring of 2006. (Perhaps best if I don’t go into why.) The other reason I don’t share poetry here is that I’m a bit embarrassed. Like I said, I’m no true poet. When I do write, I tend to be melodramatic to the point that it makes me shake my head when I go back and read.

Still, the Moose is a bit slow of late, and I’ve shown my ass here plenty of times – so why should I be embarrassed by a bit of bad poetry? And I know we’ve got poets here (I am looking at you in particular, John and Peter). So let’s see it, folks. Good poetry, bad poetry, and everything in between. Sonnets, epics, haikus, whatever. Serious, depressing, cheerful, or cheeky, I wanna see some writing here. Feel free to make up goofy shit on the fly! No one has an excuse not to post at least ONE silly limerick or haiku. 😉

This poem was written during the Fallujah campaign in 2005. It is also listed on the Poets Against the War web site.