Saturday, February 23, 2008

Mission Accomplished/Nuns with Guns/Sad Kids


(P1) Political













Comment Here on any of the above
or below and read the comments of
others too. Log in
under
"Name" or "Anonymous" if you like,
but please be sure to sign
some facsimile
of your name. Actual name
is best, but use what you
like.
If you have difficulty,email me
at edcoletti@sbcglobal.net.



(P2) Philosophical

Oops!










Comment Here on any of the above or below and read the comments of others too. Log in under "Name" or "Anonymous" if you like, but please be sure to sign some facsimile of your name. Actual name is best, but use what you like. Or email me at edcoletti@sbcglobal.net if you have difficulty.
at edcolett

(P3) Poetical

When Your Mother Is Only 15 & Your Grandmother 32

Once is awhile I take a break from "serious" reading and relax with an Elmore Leonard or Robert B. Parker crime novel. This time, reading in Parker's Small Vices, I came across the following insightful passages which, more than many, seem to capsulize the trap of the ghetto. Here, private detective Spenser is speaking with a grizzled and wise black cop.

"Ellis got the same story most of the kids you can see got," Jackson said. He made a graceful inclusive gesture with his right hand.

"His mother's about fifteen years older than he is. She and him live with her mother, his grandmother. Nobody's working. Don't know who the father is. Mother does some dope 'cause she got nothing else that she knows how to do. Grandmother does what she can. Which ain't much. She's got no education. She's got no money. She don't know who fathered her daughter. When Ellis was born., his grandmother was about thirty-two. Ellis don't go to school much. Nobody at his house seems able to get up early enough in the morning to get him there. He's a gang banger soon as they'll have him. Ran for a while with The Hobarts. By the time he's a grown-up he got his career mapped out. He does strong arm, dope dealing, small-time theft. For recreation he molests women. Anybody he seen in his whole life, that he actually knows, who's a success, that's what they do. Michael Jordan may as well be from Mars."......

I watched the kids walking past us on the sidewalk. They looked pretty much like any other kids. They were dressed for each other. Oversized clothes, sneakers, hats on backwards, or sideways. Most of them tried to look confident. Most of them were full of pretense. All of them were a little over matched by the speed at which the world came at them. But these kids weren't like other kids, and I knew it. These kids were doomed. And they knew it.......

......"So I say, you people have simply got to stop talking 'bout fucking 'inner city' when you mean black. And you really got to stop taking about fucking 'parents'. Kids in the 'inner city' got the usual biological folks. But mostly they ain't got no fucking 'parents'. Mostly the only family they got is the gang, and the only thing that they can insist on is respect. And the only things they got to insist on it with is balls and a gun."

Comment Here

on any of the above or below and read
the comments of others too. Log in
under
"Name" or "Anonymous" if you like, but please
be sure to sign
some facsimile of your name. Actual name
is best, but use what you
like. If you have difficulty,
email me at edcoletti@sbcglobal.net.

Thursday, February 14, 2008

Valentine/Race&Gender,etc/Moe's


(P1) Philosophical

Love...A Mystery That
Transcends Reason

William Edelen

February 03, 2008

"The heart has reasons that reason cannot know..." Blaise Pascal

Thousands and thousands of years before the bible was written, or Jesus was born, love filled human hearts and dreamed of immortality. Resting gently on my mind is a vision of the dawn of humanity, perhaps on an African savannah. A scene opens before my eyes. Staring; into space over a grave, filled with flowers, a first tear flooded two eyes.

Whence came that first tear flowing out of a heart having experienced love? Whence came that first sob in the throat but from the source of love...? And today, still, the mystery of life and death, two mysteries which are yet one, remain. Life and death are equal Kings. Presidents and babes lie side by side. Kings and Peasants share the same soil. Every birth asks: "Whence came thou?" Every grave asks..."Whither goest thou?" The most unlettered person weeping over a loved one can answer the questions of this mystery equally as well as the most learned scholar in his study. For we are all equal as we stand with tears in our eyes before a loved ones grave.

The mystery of love remains. Humans have intuitively sensed, from religious mystic to philosopher...poet and musician, that it is through something we call "love" that the ultimate significance of our existence is most deeply experienced on this planet we call "Earth."

For the very inspiring full essay, press here.

Comment Here on any of the above or below and read the comments of others too. Log in under "Nickname" or "Anonymous" if you like, but please be sure to sign some facsimile of your name. Actual name is best, but use what you like. Or email me at edcoletti@sbcglobal.net.

(P2) Political




















Comment Here on any of the above or below and read the comments of others too. Log in under "Nickname" or "Anonymous" if you like, but please be sure to sign some facsimile of your name. Actual name is best, but use what you like. Or email me at edcoletti@sbcglobal.net.

(P3) Poetical


Tuesday, March 25: Ed Coletti and Lynne Knight



Lynne Knight taught in Upstate New York for many years and moved to Berkeley in 1990. She teaches writing at two Bay Area community colleges. Knight's first collection, Dissolving Borders, won a Quarterly Review of Literature prize in 1996 and appeared in its Contemporary Poetry Series. Night in the Shape of a Mirror, Knight's third full-length collection, a sequence of poems on her mother's descent into dementia, appeared from David Robert Books in 2006. In addition to her full-length collections, Knight has published three prize-winning chapbooks. Her poems have appeared in a number of journals, including Poetry Northwest (where she won the Theodore Roethke Award) and Beloit Poetry Journal (which nominated two of her poems for Pushcart Prizes).


Poet and Essayist Ed Coletti is founder of the Bay Area–wide SoCoCo Poetry Series in Santa Rosa as well as Round Barn Press and the popular "Ed Coletti's P3," online. Google it! His most recent book publications have been Bringing Home the Bones and Quiet Now through dPress and Kapala Press respectively.

Comment Here on any of the above or below and read the comments of others too. Log in under "Nickname" or "Anonymous" if you like, but please be sure to sign some facsimile of your name. Actual name is best, but use what you like. Or email me at edcoletti@sbcglobal.net.