Pledge

If it’s another hot dish of fear you are holding in your uninvited hands, don’t bring it here

We need something else to nourish us

 

The door is locked now

We all heard the barrel click when the deadbolt shoved its way in reluctantly

And that was it for us

after Change slipped in and planted herself on the couch

and ate all the chocolates

drank all the liquor

 

Change

a fist through the wall

a broken chair

and that was it

we embraced her for lack of a solution

and pledged to keep it together

 

We stayed put

We started a book and read a chapter a day

We read aloud

We read

We made muffins with what was available

We gave up expectations

and dumped all the ingredients in one big bowl and stirred

We made peace

We cleaned bathrooms

We learned

We worked

We juggled literally

figuratively

 

We found stuff we lost

We did laundry until it was all done

We found a movie we could all watch

We made breakfast, lunch and dinner

We talked to our mothers

We put on a brave face

We listen to music coordinated to our moods

We danced

fast

slow

 

We talked

We listened

We took a seat

We started walking for miles into the interior

We stared down the many, ugly demons hiding there

And so we suffered

We accepted this suffering as a necessary path toward compassion

We understood our suffering as being human

 

We sacrificed for people we will never meet

We were sad

We were lonely

We were humbled

We were truly and utterly afraid

 

and in that gutter of the soul

sensed a possibility for growth

We had to

 

We chose hope

We chose kindness

We chose patience

We chose each other

 

And then we stopped

Stopped checking for updates

Stopped pretending life was a rabid pursuit of happiness

and found contentment

right here

right now

 

Stopping believing our status and stuff could save us

Stopped being in control

and found we never were to begin with

 

Stopped complaining and climbing

Stopped fighting

Stopped winning

Stopped hating

Stopped everything, everywhere

 

We surrendered

at last

to what is and not what we wanted

and did what we had to keep our grandmothers alive

 

Quitting

as an ultimate act of love

 

and suddenly this distance became our connection

to everyone

 

Bad China Day

I feel the real hunger here

despite a table set rich with progress

that old world

a tough and cruel permanent marker

underlines our every move

at the very same moment we claim to have none of it

It’s easy to fill up

holding a mango soft serve at McDonald’s

the laminated menu and kindergarten yellow

offered relief from the ancient angry lions standing guard

the female, with her cub wrapped around and under her giant paw

as if to crush him

suspended in time for 500 years

American temples are light in comparison

even trapped under the golden arches

we make it so enjoyable you don’t even notice the cameras

pointed at all of us, all of the time

the new guns

One night off the 4th Ring Road

a city park

in a dark heat soaking

we danced with the neighborhood ladies under trees wailing with cicadas

we improvised the steps to cross an ocean

while a man with his whip beat a rock

with everything he had

each blow to the house sized stone

shook the dragons of China past

and the Donalds of China present

releasing their terrible grip if only for a moment

a submission to the will of the people

to be left to the business of park diplomacy despite all this

still, we didn’t step off the kept path

keeping hands to ourselves

sunk deep in the pockets of longing

waiting for the old stone to crack

Cross-Cultural Communication

Three flights up in a temporary room

just a slim chance to get it right

corner windows, streaked brown by the air of industry

resist the summer sun’s pursuit of my attention

coming up hot

everyday as it does, again and again

a daily chime from a clock upside down

reminding me reality is relative

 

Below, an atom of a city, vibrating all night where

swarms of scooters mimic starlings

 

above, glass towers rise as 21^st century temples

to impress and reflect

another Forbidden City

reminding the people who they were

who they are becoming

the new emperors

 

While these officials flex their politics wearing white gloves to mask the filth

the neighborhood shopkeeper smiles

happy to exchange paper for cheap beer and ice cream bars

 

ours is a street diplomacy with

the people’s peace a loose butterfly net

catching our nationalism unawares and stuffing it in a jar

once contained, we don’t know what to do with it

 

a young woman sees the foreigner caught in another downpour,

wordlessly, she is at her side like a sister

an umbrella pops up sweetly

as if kindness is a currency

 

How do I repay you after such a small act in a world devoted to catastrophe?

Maybe we could continue this conversation in gestures since words have failed us

 

somewhere in the dissonance

there is an on-ramp

but I have to be paying attention to find the right road

this isn’t a job for old maps

 

what I think matters less

it was how you made me feel that I remember the most.

At the End of the March

Angry and determined, we all march for our causes

pounding, ham-fisted through a catalogue of very real crimes

hoisted high, placards swinging like baseball bats

a crush of self-expression,

self-preservation

a justified tantrum toward a latter-day justice

over and over

precious energy expended

individual participants playing their hearts out

individual spectators, critics

sitting on the sidelines in perpetuity

like a franchise that never was outside its own hype

a handful of superstars don’t make a team

 

At the end of the march

beyond this beaten path of small victories and enormous pain

lies a grove

where the trees all stand their ground, perfectly still and silent

unapolgetically united in their belonging

utterly unmoved by your shouting,

legal contracts, celebrity sound bites

 

trees of dazzling diversity, yet harmonious

a wooded community making quiet shelter

a noiseless communion you might hear if you knew how to be humble

we can’t win the game without the delicate birch, the weeping willow, the impossible sequoia

each one has their place,

a right to be there as they are and not how fear imagined it

the maple tree with its crooked trunk moved over to make room for the shaggy pine who merely had the hutzpah to exist

exactly there, along side you

taking up the same space and sunlight

that was there before everything existed and will remain there when everything is gone

all trees leaf and flower

sharing the same water table as they make a forest,

some even bare fruit

without punishment or abuse

 

let me know when you are ready

to use your power and express your love

by marching toward responsibility

give up that inch of ground

that was never yours in the first place.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Natural Disasters

Hate is a natural disaster

an organic outgas of human ego and greed

 

America, indivisible with liberty and justice

now vulnerable

as a wagon train in a snow globe blizzard.

Alone and lost in its own mythology

creeping over the Donner Pass of wild west social policies and

official or not

leaving the least with the least

it’s a white out.

 

“Justice comes only when we legislate the hell of it,” I said.

but she didn’t want to hear it.

 

Jaw now tense, with head slightly cocked and propped up by privileged naiveté,

“I would hope things were based on merit, character,” she quipped.

“Yeah,” I thought.

 

When the cars stopped too soon before the intersection it was clear something was up

Center street, steeped in the reek of fear while pedestrians hesitated,

wisely hedged their bets before crossing into the unknown.

 

There in our midst was God or perhaps nothing

when the driver’s door swung open and a lean, tense soul leaped out like a pale fish struggling upstream

behind, three doors flew open in sync with anger

bodies fell out looking like clowns ringside

as if carefully choreographed

 

I thought of Martha Graham and her elegant cowboys of Oklahoma

left for ruined on the streets of Milwaukee

hats and feet and fists in the air like frantic birds

these vultures,

fighting for whatever was left of the carcass

3 on 1

 

sitting in my car with the radio on

making my way to work and trying to

hang on

to the last of civilization,

listening to NPR for evidence of the lost artifacts I remembered

or maybe only imagined,

I gaped at the scene unfolding.

 

A beating at 8:30 in the morning in the street in the most segregated city in the country

black and white men rolling in the road

while bystanders froze like winter

anesthetized and dazed,

sipping their coffee with their front row seats and locked doors

doing nothing.

 

In an absence of love, humanity itself is a natural disaster.

 

The moment when you realize someone is dying on your watch

you lay on the horn over and over

if you are awake enough to even notice

 

and as you call attention to the disaster, you call out your own blindness

to the invisible hands of history as they shape a wall higher and higher, Berlin style

right here at home

and the commentator on the radio drones on and on about an upcoming French election and you remember you are supposed to be American but you aren’t entirely sure any longer what that means.

Voting American-Style: What Living in Central Europe Taught Me About the Right to Vote

In 1996, I was a Peace Corps volunteer living in Jelenia Gora, Poland, near the border of both Germany and the Czech Republic or Czechia, as it’s now known. It was an election year, and I had only been in the country for only a few months, struggling with the language and my role as an American volunteer in a county I really knew little about. I had majored in history and concentrated on World War II Europe, which helped a little. I had thumbed through James Michener’s Poland and was acquainted with the poetry of Czeslaw Milosz. The newly free Central Europe was where I wanted to be. I thought I was prepared. But as the universe continues to laugh at my plans and make a beginner out of me at every turn, Poland proved no exception to the deep and heavy learning curve life offers, particularly when one steps out of one’s comfort.

Considering the headspace of my newly minted and very green volunteer self, I can reflect now on my relationship with Poland as if we were new friends in middle school going through similar, personal transitions. Both of us were redefining ourselves, trying to fit in and changing before one another’s eyes.   I was teaching high school English in a town with a Pizza Hut in a building that was 600 years old.  Coming to grips with a new landscape both dotted with moss-covered castle ruins and pockmarked with concentration camps, the horror of which isn’t fully translatable into words. I lived in an old communist block high-rise apartment and listened to the BBC World Service on a transistor radio that kept me connected to something familiar, even when the lights would go out.

Teaching volunteers were the norm then, as part of Poland’s democracy plan was to have their youth fluent in the lingua franca of global business while they reached for a seat at the EU table.   In this role, I was able to talk to students who remembered standing in lines all afternoon with their mothers to get a roll of toilet paper the consistency of birthday streamers. Teenagers who now had opportunities their parents only dreamed of and no real playbook, other than failure wasn’t an option this time. Oppressive, authoritarian rule hurts people and limits lives, in case you need a reminder when you go to the polls next week.

Those years of living among a people who survived some of the most heinous acts in human history was an education. My generation of Americans knows nothing of that brand of suffering. Poland was a great teacher. A country whose spirit would not be snuffed out. It’s mere existence a triumph that embodied the most joyful hope for the future of humanity. At no time was this more apparent than the day I cast my vote in the 1996 US presidential election.

I got to Warsaw after another 5 hour, one-way train ride, which became just part of a normal weekend excursion. It was a Friday, and I believe I was at the Peace Corps headquarters for a routine, health check-up.  I had been thinking about getting an absentee ballot but waited too long, and by the time I got the ballot I realized I would never get it back to the US in time to count. My only option was to go to the embassy and that Friday was the last opportunity to get it into the diplomatic pouch. Considering the state of transportation at the time in Poland (“toilets” on trains where you were looking down at the tracks rushing by) plus the lack of cell phones or even email, you turned up at your destination when you did. So by the time I actually made it to headquarters and had my appointment, it was late afternoon. The US embassy closed at 5 pm. It was 4:30 pm when I made it to the country director’s office and knocked on his door.  Bob McClendon was a savvy guy and very much in control.  I was holding my ballot and he immediately knew what I needed. He jumped up from his desk and called out “Adam!” who was Bob’s driver among other things. Adam was a young Polish man, always dressed smartly in a suit and tie.

“I have an American who needs to vote!” Bob said loudly and with emphasis, grinning broadly and gesturing in Adam’s direction to indicate the fate of my vote was now in his hands. Adam sprung into action with Spiderman agility. Words in Polish were exchanged which I didn’t catch other than samochod (car in Polish) and before I knew it; we were rushing toward a back exit. Adam quickly opened the door to the back seat. I got in and was barely settled when Adam fired up the engine and threw the car into reverse and then finally shifting into drive, as we flew forward into the pale, November sunlight of Warsaw.

As we sped down Nowy Swiat through the heart of Warsaw, a city that at the end of the second world war was reduced not just to rubble, but ashes, we closed in on the US Embassy with a velocity reserved for movie sets.  Driving hard, at what I am sure was close to 70 miles per hour, I remember the expression on Adam’s face in the rearview mirror. His was a look of determination, seriousness, and fun, all at the same time. I remember lowering my gaze down toward the backseat upholstery, turning away from my own emotions. It was apparent, for Adam, there was no more important task in the world in that moment. Voting in a democratic election, which I took for granted, was to Adam a sacred act, something worth speeding for, something of such great value-something so American and heroic, an almost unimaginable privilege until so recently.   I knew as it was happening I would never forget those precious few moments of reckless driving and what they symbolized. It was thrilling and wonderful, like a scene out of Willy Wonka, odd and disarming to have the very best of your culture reflected back at you through the hopes and dreams of another land. We sped into the driveway and I ran up the steps into the embassy. There was a window reserved for American citizen services and I was able to walk right up with my ballot and American passport, the pass keys to all things possible. The consular officer smiled and assured me it wasn’t too late, and with that, it was done. Thanks to Adam, and the collision of our national and personal fates, we had made it in time.  We made the effort together, and my friendship with Poland and her complicated history and growing pains turned toward love.

So on Tuesday, I will think about Poland, as I always do, and how it rearranged me then and in a million other different ways. About how I learned that at its very best, what America might continue to represent to the world if we get it together. Part of that process is voting for representatives (and presidents) we feel can at least attempt to engage all people and the whole world, because you see everywhere there is an Adam waiting and willing with car keys in hand. Our votes count, and in the name of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Adam and all the great teachers of hard-won freedom, I wish you a good, long wait at the polls to reflect on the grave beauty of the right to vote, the right to choose who will represent this American thing, not just for you or me, but for the whole world.

 

 

The Brave Space

 

We are done with being safe.

 

Clinging to the fragile nest we’ve built of imperfect questions

laughter

some genuine trying

 

It wasn’t an easy weave

eclectic and complicated

 

Wet with history

heavy fabric

making comfort elusive

 

This delicate circle of trust

formed in one furious year

classmates

friends

 

Huddled around the warm comfort of shared fire

ideas, ground rules, teamwork, mutual respect, relationship

 

opportunity among equals

 

we tend it carefully in here

but not out there

 

and then it got real

 

as my privilege hung over your oppression like a hammer to the nail.

 

Truth is blunt and the pain is real in the brave space.

 

The nest shakes

we are moved

uncomfortable again

the storms of generations wake us

 

I don’t know what to do next

that’s why we call it brave.

 

for my study team-4 Gals and Sometimes Todd (Summer Institute 2016)

UWM

A handful showed up
True believers
I talked to Robin and thanked her for fighting
I commiserated with Joel who shared my spirit fatigue

On a Friday morning at 8:15 am, a nearly empty ballroom

we set up our browse tables

Like jilted lovers we sat
nobody asked us to dance

While 23 guests ate their Union catering
I packed up my stuff and left

What will convince you that I am worth your time?

They tell me a football team always helps.

What will happen to our piece of System
this fragile campus
abandoned by our own

If only Wisconsin knew
or cared
about Milwaukee
with its crushing poverty and beautiful sadness
diversity and creativity

unlimited potential

It’s so easy to look away clutching the wheel of your own life
because you work so hard
because its all so hard

Like a family

relentless demands and sacrifice

Yes, that is what I’m asking of you.

The Appointment

The student arrived late

in a wrinkled concert t-shirt

a faint coffee stain

highlighting a band’s name I had never heard of

 

and with a worn backpack

slipping down his still thin adolescent spine

zippers open

the contents more outside than inside

 

It was a 2.0 semester

mostly Cs, one with a minus

and a B+ thrown in

 

“How are things going? “ I ask.

“Okay,” he says, with a slight shrug

eyes grazing the oriental rug

 

“You are off academic probation, that’s great.” I say.

“Yeah.” he replies.

 

“I see you’ve registered for 15 credits for next semester.   Do you feel that you can manage this many credits well?”

“I think so.”

“Are you working?”

I pry.

 

“Yup. 30 hours a week at Jimmy John’s. Sometimes more.”

“That’s a lot of Jimmy John’s.”

 

“Yeah, we have some bills to pay since Mom left.   The lights, you know.”

“Umm. “

“Yeah.”

 

Silence.

 

“Dad left a while ago and Mom, well, it’s just me and Paul my younger brother.”

Listen.

Leadership manifests in surprising ways

 

“You amaze me.” I say quietly. “Look at all you’ve accomplished. I am proud of you.”

“Thank you,” he smiles ever so briefly and looks up at me

 

this abandoned child

this courageous leader

teaching me from across a desk in an ordinary university office

what extraordinary leadership can look like.