Monday, June 18, 2018

I Don't Know What We've Become


Last night when I went to close the hen house up after the usual head count, this is what I found and I swear- I almost died with the love. Remember when Mick used to put his wing over Trixie at night? I haven't seen him do that cuddling since she died but last night, he had Darla cuddled up next to his side and it was not for warmth. In fact, the thought of sleeping in that hen house with a feathered wing flung over me sort of makes me want to die but then again...the sweetness. 

Let's talk about my new header photo. Someone posted it on Facebook along with this poem:

Home

no one leaves home unless
home is the mouth of a shark.

you only run for the border
when you see the whole city
running as well.

your neighbours running faster
than you, the boy you went to school with
who kissed you dizzy behind
the old tin factory is
holding a gun bigger than his body,
you only leave home
when home won't let you stay.

no one would leave home unless home
chased you, fire under feet,
hot blood in your belly.

it's not something you ever thought about
doing, and so when you did -
you carried the anthem under your breath,
waiting until the airport toilet
to tear up the passport and swallow,
each mouthful of paper making it clear that
you would not be going back.

you have to understand,
no one puts their children in a boat
unless the water is safer than the land.

who would choose to spend days
and nights in the stomach of a truck
unless the miles travelled
meant something more than journey.

no one would choose to crawl under fences,
be beaten until your shadow leaves you,
raped, then drowned, forced to the bottom of
the boat because you are darker, be sold,
starved, shot at the border like a sick animal,
be pitied, lose your name, lose your family,
make a refugee camp a home for a year or two or ten,
stripped and searched, find prison everywhere
and if you survive and you are greeted on the other side
with go home blacks, refugees
dirty immigrants, asylum seekers
sucking our country dry of milk,
dark, with their hands out
smell strange, savage -
look what they've done to their own countries,
what will they do to ours?

the dirty looks in the street
softer than a limb torn off,
the indignity of everyday life
more tender than fourteen men who
look like your father, between
your legs, insults easier to swallow
than rubble, than your child's body
in pieces - for now, forget about pride
your survival is more important.

i want to go home, but home is the mouth of a shark
home is the barrel of the gun
and no one would leave home
unless home chased you to the shore
unless home tells you to
leave what you could not behind,
even if it was human.

no one leaves home until home
is a damp voice in your ear saying
leave, run now, i don't know what
i've become.

~ Warsan Shire

I had never heard of Warsan Shire but it turns out that she is a British poet who was born to Somali parents in Kenya. 
It was in an issue from 2015 so the odds are good that I did indeed read it but of course, have forgotten. But I wish that every ignorant, racist asshole who claims that "illegal immigrants" who try to enter our country to suck the tit of the Big American Eagle Good Life Without Earning It deserve whatever happens to them up to and including having their babies snatched from them (that'll teach 'em!) could be forced to read this poem over and over until they get a molecule of understanding and empathy. 
If that's even possible which I doubt. 

And the picture? That stunning picture which says everything? It was painted by Kelly Latimore, an iconographer. 

I do not have the words within me to express how I feel about children and parents being separated. I just don't. The people who came down with this decision and the people enforcing it and the people who defend it are simply evil. There is no other word which comes close. There is absolutely no justification to this. None. The inborn necessity of a parent to take care of and protect their young is so strong that we humans cannot even claim unique possession of it. Creatures throughout the entire animal kingdom will fight to the very death to prevent their offspring from being taken from them. And to randomly and with malice do what is being done on our borders is the very definition of cruelty.
And evil. 
I can't even bring myself to talk about what this must be doing to the children. I feel like if I did, my soul would rip apart. 

So. That's the story of my new header. 
I have done a terrible job of trying to say what I wanted to say here tonight but look- see that rooster, holding one of his wives close? She is part of his family. And he almost died protecting her and the other hens. 
Chickens. Chickens. Domesticated birds which we rationalize eating by thinking that they have brains the size of a pea and no feelings or emotions. 
I've seen a mother hen and the way she reacted after a hawk took her baby and I will never forget that. 

This is truly how Hitler acted but we do not have the excuse that "no one knew" because yes. We do know. 

The whole world is watching. 

May we not die in shame before this situation ends. 

Call your representatives. Repeatedly. And refuse to let anyone tell you that there is one thing defensible about this. Because there just isn't. 

Love...Ms. Moon





22 comments:

  1. Your new header leaves me at a loss for words. This horrible shitshow we are in does too.

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  2. Not one single republican senator would join in rebuke of this. Not one. And all the Democrats can do nothing because they’ve been castrated by last election. It comes down to Congress and the midterms elections. Democrats have the numbers—Clinton did win popular vote but the Democrats have no good strategy and too many of those who support them simply do not come out to vote. Midterms are low turnout so it won’t take much to change the tide if enough people in key places got out and vote.

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  3. If these people are not voted out at the mid-terms, we're done as nation, just flat out done.

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    1. Doesn’t look good. House maybe but the Senste is more importantly and it will take a huge uptick in voting

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  4. Amen, Mary Moon.

    If hundreds of thousands of women could march on Washington in 2017, why couldn't there be a march for this, too? I live in Canada and can't change anything by voting. All I have are words.

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  5. I couldn't help thinking, though I didn't want to: are we SURE there are no ovens? Because I wouldn't put anything past the people who are doing this to children. In Germany, too, the concentration camp arrivals were told they were just going to bath, just like these children and their parents are being told when the kids are led away. It's too awful. It CAN'T happen here. Right? Too awful a thought to take seriously. But ... we've had shock after shock after unbelievable shock since fall 2016, and it just keeps on and on and on.

    I don't know about chickens, but I have seen cows mourn when their calf dies. They'll stand off alone for days and hang their heads and look sad, sad, sad. Just breaks your heart.

    -Kate

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  6. Your header is incredible. I feel incredibly sad about what is happening now.

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  7. Magnificent post. I'm going to post the poem on my own blog and quote from you as well.

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  8. You can still write and so clearly, thank you...I can not get the lump out of my throat to speak nor am I capable of putting a sentence together, the horror , the trauma which will last lifetimes - for WHAT!! for the GOP agenda- me- sputtering and weeping and utterly useless- so thank you again , Mary , you address so well what most of us are incapable of expressing. Even chickens are better at life/love - it is clear.

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  9. Mary, thank you for the raging humanity in this post. And for sharing that poem. What Kate said above has been haunting me too.

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  10. Oh Mary, you are so very right and that Poem, I have Shared it with all of my Friends.

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  11. Thank you for this, too, Mary, from a previous post, which could be applied to nations of abuse:

    "This is a common theme in the families of abuse. Some children are able to block things from their memories. Some adults are too. And then they accuse the one who does remember of making things up. Of remembering a dream, not a reality. Of...being crazy."

    Sending love to you, Mary. While thanking you for this post that Elizabeth linked to today, I noticed "childhood sexual abuse (22)" in your labels list in my peripheral vision and began reading what you shared about your experiences. Your story is moving and powerful. Your writing has helped me profoundly on two levels today. Speaking the truth about national dysfunction and family dysfunction must continue. No action too small. No voice too small to be heard.

    When I stood up for my nephew because he was being emotionally and sexually damaged in a covertly sexual way by my sister and her husband, my sisters and her husband insisted that I had a "dirty mind" and was trying to destroy their family. Child Protection Services agreed that an educational intervention was warranted. Nevertheless, my sisters continue to insist that there was no problem and that the only problem is my "dirty mind." It horrifies me that my own sisters are so blind and that our family is so broken in this way. I am certain that this pattern of sexual abuse has come down through countless generations on both sides of my family. The fact that there was an intervention for my nephew and that my sister and her husband stopped their damaging behavior, despite the fact that they didn't see it as a problem, gives me hope. As it stands now, though, my only nephew has been turned against me. He wants nothing to do with me.

    All I can do is send love to him and his 4-year-old son whom I have never seen and hope that my nephew does not repeat the family pattern of inappropriate sexual boundaries between parents and children. May it be so.

    May all of us be healed. May we continue to speak out.

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  12. I'm with Allison and not very optimistic about the outcome. we have become a cruel and hateful nation.

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  13. After reading the comments in some online local news articles about what's going on at the border, I'm more discouraged and dismayed than I can tell you, Mary. People are hateful and wicked and just...evil. Despicable. I can't think of words bad enough to express how I feel about them. They don't care one little bit about the lives of these children.

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  14. Mary, you know how to eloquently convey every emotion, from sublime joy to devastating sorrow and pain. Thank you for sharing this gift and expressing the despair so many of us are feeling and unable to put into words.

    That poem should be required reading for republicans.

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  15. I'm going to borrow Angella's perfect description of raging humanity. We need to be sanctioned for human rights abuses.
    Xoxo
    Barbara

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  16. Thank you for this, all this. You’ve managed to express much of what I’m feeling but am too enraged and upset to say coherently. I’ve never before been seriously worried about our nation’s future, but I sure am now.

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  17. Thank you for this, all this. You’ve managed to express much of what I’m feeling but am too enraged and upset to say coherently. I’ve never before been seriously worried about our nation’s future, but I sure am now.

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  18. Thanks for explaining the origin of the header and including that incredible poem. I do remember that article about Warsan Shire, I think...? I hope this disgraceful situation comes to an end soon. It is intolerable.

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  19. Someone said in the media that we mustn't compare this border event with what was happening in the German concentration camps, which was so much more horrendous. And that's true. I'd like to add, though, that many years ago I asked my grandfather, a Saskatchewan farmer, how much he and other people knew, at the time, about what was happening in Germany. He said "We heard stories, but we didn't believe it. It seemed too far-fetched."
    Just sayin.
    -Kate

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  20. Very nice post really ! I apperciate your blog Thanks for sharing,keep sharing more blogs.

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