Personal Abuse and Recognizing it in Society

Recently, I dealt with a person in my community organization who, willfully or not, engaged in very abusive behaviors which included taking complete control of a project and not asking for help when needed. This might not sound like an abusive tactic until I realized that this person was doing this in order to then have justification for treating other people poorly including yelling at them, making them feel unwanted/undeserving, and squarely placing the blame on other people. It took me a long while to be able to come to terms with the idea that this person was using abusive tactics on the people around them. It also got me thinking: Why don't we teach about these kinds of things to people more broadly? One conclusion I came to got me thinking about society as a whole.

Along with blaming others, the person in question often said that anything the organization was doing would absolutely fall apart without that person helping to lead it. I realized, after some reflection, this is the same argument that people will fall back on when we think about asking the wealthy to pay for things like taxes. The argument goes: If we do that, then the wealthy will just leave. This person said much the similar thing: If I don't get things done the way I want them, I will leave and this will all fall apart. The trouble is, for the longest time, I believed them. And in so doing, I stopped justice short; I helped to put other people in the path of emotional and mental abuses. The point I'm making here is that people will use fear and superiority in order to justify the abuses they are committing and, rather than being held accountable for their actions, they will insist that the entire thing will fall apart without their being present. This has been proven completely false on the micro level of my organization. I started wondering, next, why did it take me so long to see these actions as that of abuse and to stand up to them?

I think the answer to that is partly to do with the narrative we have received here in America as citizens. While there is certainly a trend of anti-intellectualism in America, there is also an idea that we must be more than we are in order to truly deal with a problem. The underlying idea behind many of our problems and why they still persist is that of: I don't know enough to deal with this properly. I don't have the experience. I don't have the time. I don't have the skills. I'm convinced that fire was either an accident or needed so desperately that we found a way to do it. I bring this up to highlight the idea that humans are incredibly resourceful. We always have been. The difference between making a change and staying the way we are often times falls to the choice of either doing something or doing nothing. It may not be the smoothest transition in the world, but if I were to liken societal change to art, then I would say that it is a matter of experimentation and observation in terms of trying to get something just how we want it. Recently, even, I learned that the myth of Icarus was changed to exclude the following line: Don't fly too low, for then you will surely perish. Instead, Icarus becomes a reminder not to challenge the sun; not to fly too high; but the real peril lies in assuming we must fly low in order to survive. There is too much sky to be swallowed by the waves. Beyond our narratives (super hero movies, I think, have a small part to play here too as "normal" people are often relegated to watching in awe as the hero saves the day), we also have a lack of education with regard to abusive behaviors.

Our society is built on them. The only way to survive is to stay quiet, to not speak up when we know something is wrong because that change will wake the sleeping dragon; it will cause all of our demise (or the wealthy will leave). We cannot educate people on abusive techniques used like the slippery slope (if you ask people to do X, they will eventually leave which will crash the whole system and then everyone will die), gaslighting (the deaths in Puerto Rico didn't happen; that's all fake news), and several other ones because, to do that, is to make people aware of how the system maintains control or would at least expose one of the levers of control that is used so often by abusers and authoritarians alike. If we don't have words for something, can we really see it? If we aren't educated about something, how do we learn about it? In order for this to be amended, I think we need a lot of change to happen.

Similar to what was done about the person being abusive in my organization, action needs to be taken. We need to demand justice and equality. If you're thinking, with that last line, it sounds as if this is an arm of the civil rights movement, I would absolutely agree with you. I would also say that America's racist past along with its insistence towards individualism makes it difficult to see the fight toward racial equality as one which also is about economic equality.

Many of the fights we are scared or at least apprehensive to engage in are absolutely necessary for a thriving middle class and for economic justice to be procured, but they are also mired in abusive tactics along with our general inability to call or see something for what it is. The good news is that we've had many, many people rise to organize people to vote and to take on the system for what it is: one that peddles false narratives and blames everyone else for the problems that it has caused. If we get enough people to vote, we can hold our powerful accountable and force changes to happen without having to rely on weapons or war. With elections coming soon, this is my greatest hope and, on the other side, one of my biggest fears.

I'm getting really tired of the healthcare poems I write staying relevant...

According to former Republican congressman Mike Huckabee in 2010,

People with preexisting conditions are burned down houses

He said this

In response

As a talking point

As casually as a cough in polite conversation

As serious as a diagnosis

But all I could hear was that crackling sound wood makes as fire consumes it

All I could smell was smoke

And bullshit

Bullshit because he worked his words into a spell

Or a curse

And let millions of people be recast as objects

I smelled smoke

Because

In 1996, I became a burned down house

With a diabetes diagnosis

In my memories of that night,

I am crying

My family is crying.

According to Mr. Huckabee,

My mom must have been crying

Because it was too painful to watch her son

Turn from person

Into property

Mr. Huckabee,

I don’t know how to tell you that your words have consequences.

I don’t know how to tell you that you should care about your constituents

So I am attempting to tell you that I am human

I am not object

I am not house;

I am not floorboard

I should not be used as one of the planks to create your platform

I am telling you that your words

Would have left me with nothing but ash

I am saying that if I had thought of myself as nothing but a burned down house,

I would have remained a cremation

And never would have been able to return as a Phoenix

This poem wouldn’t be necessary

And I wouldn’t be so angry

If Republican representative Pat Toomey hadn’t said the exact same thing as Mr. Huckabee

But in 2017

Dear Republicans

I don’t know how to tell you that your policies have consequences

I don’t know how to tell you that your words keep having this habit of becoming epitaphs

According to Raul Labrador,

A republican representative from Idaho,

“No one has ever died because they don’t have access to health care”

In 2009, there were 45,000 reasons a year that this statement is a lie

In 2017, there are still 18,000 reasons a year that this is a lie

Before any healthcare reform was passed.

I remember being terrified of day to day living

Diabetes is a disease that turns food into poison and insulin into antidote

So there was no such thing as comfort food

When I wasn’t sure if I’d have enough insulin to cover my meals

I can feel that same terror creep into the back of my head

Whenever I hear, read, or see about the current health care debates

And it is exhausting to always be terrified

Dear congress,

I don’t know how to tell you that your policies make you terrorists for the chronically ill and disabled

I don’t know how to tell you that you cannot be both pro life and anti universal healthcare

If people die due to your writing the laws of the land,

Then their blood is on your hands

I don’t know how to tell you

That I am sick of needing to prove myself human

I don’t know how to stop you

From seeing me as a house

But I know that being on fire for the past 21 years has made me an expert at rebuilding

So I am telling you to help us rebuild this system

Or get left behind

In the ash.

Based on a Prompt: Object and Location

You know, it's ironic
that you brought me up here.
This is the Great Wall of China
I am your phone.
You brought me up to something
that was designed to create a disconnect
between people
and
here I am
building a great wall between your face
and books --
Life is a funny thing
especially when you're just phoning it in.

You have hundreds of contacts
but barely remember the context
for acquiring their names.

You know,
just having someone's name attached to their photo and number
doesn't mean you know them.
I know your touch better than your last lover --
I know your likes better than your mother.

There might be an app for just about everything,
but I bet if we looked at your history,
we'd find more than the sites you've visited.
the comments you've posted --
I'm not saying you're more than you think;
I'm saying you're than a medium
for social media --
and you need more than face time or
Facebook.
The number of people who like you
doesn't make you more likable.

Saving the world
does not involve
posting selfies from famous places
or inspirational quotes on instagram.

Money is more a flushing toilet
than it is the settling of a sick stomach.

I'm sorry
that you're looking for moments to preserve
so that your followers will know you did something
over
finding stories worth preserving
or
dreams
worth following.

4/30 Based on a 10 minute free write

This is why gargoyles hate the cooing of pigeons

Shit
is so often preceded by cooing.
Birds
have no excuse to perch
because they
have wings.

But even
Pheidippides
is said to have died
after running 26.2 miles.
Sometimes
it's not the fact that we can fly
but that we're too tired to try
that seems so depressing.

Taking a break
is not an act of treason
against the light you've been given.

Asking for help
is not punishable by hemlock,
so stop acting like
you're going to die
if someone notices how tired you are.

Sometimes
the best way to get back on your feet
is to admit that you've fallen.

Sometimes, birds
get scared too.

A Surprise Treat Awaits You

I have been a little behind on the blog/poem posts... So today is a catch up day!
This piece is based off of a wonderful workshop where we wrote based on a Snapple Cap fact, a fortune cookie's fortune, and a tea packet's wisdom. This one came from a fortune cookie.
Note: This does deal with issues I have faced, and sometimes, yes, I do still feel sad/angry/depressed about it, but I believe it's better to write out your frustrations in order to help get rid of them. Catharsis is a wonderful thing.

A surprise treat awaits you --

I am a comfort zone zombie.
I am a specter of everything I currently understand.
I am a tombstone afraid to know its own inscription.

When your clinically depressed students tell you
that you need to stop looking so ghost
that your scarecrow stance is
making them weary of becoming an adult,
then you know
it might be time to listen
and stop telling yourself
that you're not worth your own wrist watch anymore.

I want to believe the fortune cookie's message;
I want to listen, but I've been scared to break bread
ever since diabetes claimed a piece of my identity at 10 --
dinner is a death row final meal;
breakfast is Socrates' punishment;
lunch is a poison,
and a savior.

Maybe I haven't been comfortable with Christianity
ever since I understood
that every diabetic blood test
is less sacrament
and more sacrilege to Jesus' promise --
my fingertips are lamb sacrifice --
I bleed to know how healthy I am;
my disease is a daily flirt with suicide
because knives that cut steak
are far too similar
to the knives that cut wrists;

weight that no one can see you carry
is the heaviest.

I'm trying --
I'm trying --
I'm trying to feel normal
to trying to touch tomorrow;
to let go of yesterday;
to move past
but moments can feel lead
and sometimes I don't feel strong enough
to lift this tombstone inscription
of everything I haven't become.

Snapple Fact Lolly Pop

"The lollipop was named after one of the
most famous Racehorses in the early 1900's, Lolly Pop..."

Type II diabetes has become an epidemic in America.
Maybe we've been betting
on the wrong horse
to win this graveyard race.
The body craves sugar because
in the early morning of humanity's childhood
before we domesticated animals,
before we plowsheered hunting into recreation,
before we buried gathering to reap crops from soil,
sugar was a lottery ticket.
And now we can find it on every street cornerstore --
we put the gross in grocery.
Our bodies
have not kept pace with our abundance.
Lollipops are winning this race
because we're such suckers
for everything that's easy.
Every birthday comes with cake,
but we have to be careful
with having our cake and eating it too
because if we're not careful,
birthday cake could become necrotic tissue,
could become retinopathy,
could become hear disease, nerve damage, stroke,
and these are only some of the side effects of diabetes.
Killing ourselves
has never been so sweet.

_________________________________________________________________________________

This poem is not finished yet. It was based on a wonderful workshop that came from kind of a joke: Buy a snapple... read the fact... That fact becomes your first line... And write.

I'll write SOMETHING happy... sometime... I promise. Today was just heavy. And I needed to expel some of the lead through my pencil scratches.

Thanks for reading!

Elegy in E Harmonic Minor

In 1880, Tchaikovsky composed the Overture of 1812.
It is a composition made famous
by the fact that it uses canon fire to act as instrumentation.
It's played every July 4th here in America,
but if you listen closely
you can hear canon fire covers
in distant deserts;
you can hear sons turn their bodies into crescendos;
cast their xylophone bones into a chorus of shattered silence.
The Middle East may not know western music,
but that's only because they only hear its dissonance
never its resolution
because an accord reached at the end of World War II
diminished holy land held by Palestine
and augmented land exiled from
into a land returned to.

If bodies are temples,
then every suicide bomb bent
on spreading holy organ chords
is just another form of graffiti
that tags blood over open doorways
to tell those around:
Pass over this place.

The trouble with holy land
is that it's only holy
because so many martyrs have buried their beat underneath it.

And somewhere a Palestine father prays
that his son will never elegy himself into an explosion.
Somewhere, a Palestine mother prays
that he child will grow instrument limbs,
that her child will have A sharp lungs and B flat feet
so that hate can't conscript him into its sepulcher.

And somewhere in America, a politician prays that the public
won't listen long enough to remember
that it was we who swung these scales in the first place;
it was we who thought democracy
would sing the right key.

We are not the correct composers
because we still think that the Overture of 1812
with its explosive instrumentation
commemorates us.

It doesn't.

That overture found its voice in 1880
to celebrate a Russian victory,
and that's ironic because the CIA taught a battle hymn of hatred
to Afghanistan when Russia invaded 100 years later.
That hymn still echoes with IEDs rather than canons.

The trouble with never having war on home soil
is we don't have a reason to cease
because we've never had to reap
crops sewn by the flesh of the dead.

We haven't had to hear dissonance's dirge,
and the only coverage our soldiers get
is flags covering their coffins.

I don't know
when our anthem became
the sound of a nation collectively covering its ears,
but there are still measures left.

This song isn't over.

And I don't want anyone
to fear their son becoming
an explosion.


This piece is based off a quote I heard on NPR spoken by a Palestinian man:
"I don't want my son to become a suicide bomber.
I want my son to live.
I want my son to become a musician."