A man stepped out of fantasy, where you
called him Master and he called you Bad Slut;
ending always in your own waterloo:
sucking the cock of a man you hate. What
tedious repetition, exactly
unlike sunlight that streams with grace. I love
kink, too, but Doms seem to be creepily
similar. Drop the whip and the kid glove.
I will mark you, there will be pain. Your streaked
gaping cheeks across the vacuum of space,
into a tale where my shadow assumes
its face. I have no needs, save that you piqued
my interest in your need for pain. With grace,
love, I will dominate you from the tomb.
notes:
The French emperor, Napoleon Bonaparte, was finally defeated at the town of Waterloo. To say that someone has “met their Waterloo,” means that they have had an unexpected defeat. As in that ABBA song of the same name, “Waterloo/ knowing my fate is to be with you”
The implied answer is, it seems, no. And yet Fred Rogers (of Mister Roger’s Neighborhood fame) was able to do something with a 157-word long poem that changed the course of not just PBS but all American children, forever.
The year was 1969. Rogers appeared before the US Senate to justify why the then current president (Nixon) shouldn’t cut the funding to PBS in half, a move that would have canceled shows like Sesame Street and the Electric Company. Senator Pastore had a reputation for slash and burning social welfare programs. Even before the hearings started the heads of PBS had assumed that their network would not survive after Pastore had his say.
][][
Senator Pastore: Alright Rogers, you’ve got the floor.
Mr. Rogers: Senator Pastore, this is a philosophical statement and would take about ten minutes to read, so I’ll not do that. One of the first things that a child learns in a healthy family is trust … My first children’s program was on WQED fifteen years ago, and its budget was $30. Now, with the help of the Sears-Roebuck Foundation and National Educational Television, as well as all of the affiliated stations … each station pays to show our program. It’s a unique kind of funding in educational television. With this help, now our program has a budget of $6000. It may sound like quite a difference, but $6000 pays for less than two minutes of cartoons. Two minutes of animated, what I sometimes say, bombardment. I’m very much concerned, as I know you are, about what’s being delivered to our children in this country. And I’ve worked in the field of child development for six years now, trying to understand the inner needs of children. We deal with such things as … as the inner drama of childhood. We don’t have to bop somebody over the head to … make drama on the screen. We deal with such things as getting a haircut, or the feelings about brothers and sisters, and the kind of anger that arises in simple family situations. And we speak to it constructively.
Senator Pastore: Could we get a copy of this so that we can see it? Maybe not today, but I’d like to see the program.
Mr. Rogers: I’d like very much for you to see it.
Senator Pastore: I’d like to see the program itself, or any one of them.
Mr. Rogers: We made a hundred programs for EEN, the Eastern Educational Network, and then when the money ran out, people in Boston and Pittsburgh and Chicago all came to the fore and said we’ve got to have more of this neighborhood expression of care. And this is what — This is what I give. I give an expression of care every day to each child, to help him realize that he is unique. I end the program by saying, “You’ve made this day a special day, by just your being you. There’s no person in the whole world like you, and I like you, just the way you are.” And I feel that if we in public television can only make it clear that feelings are mentionable and manageable, we will have done a great service for mental health. I think that it’s much more dramatic that two men could be working out their feelings of anger — much more dramatic than showing something of gunfire. I’m constantly concerned about what our children are seeing, and for 15 years I have tried in this country and Canada, to present what I feel is a meaningful expression of care.
Senator Pastore: Do you narrate it?
Mr. Rogers: I’m the host, yes. And I do all the puppets and I write all the music, and I write all the scripts —
Senator Pastore: Well, I’m supposed to be a pretty tough guy, and this is the first time I’ve had goose bumps for the last two days.
Mr. Rogers: Well, I’m grateful, not only for your goose bumps, but for your interest in — in our kind of communication. Could I tell you the words of one of the songs, which I feel is very important?
Senator Pastore: Yes.
Mr. Rogers: This has to do with that good feeling of control which I feel that children need to know is there. And it starts out, “What do you do with the mad that you feel?” And that first line came straight from a child. I work with children doing puppets in — in very personal communication with small groups:
What do you do with the mad that you feel? When you feel so mad you could bite. When the whole wide world seems oh so wrong, and nothing you do seems very right. What do you do? Do you punch a bag? Do you pound some clay or some dough? Do you round up friends for a game of tag or see how fast you go? It’s great to be able to stop when you’ve planned the thing that’s wrong. And be able to do something else instead — and think this song —
‘I can stop when I want to. Can stop when I wish. Can stop, stop, stop anytime….And what a good feeling to feel like this! And know that the feeling is really mine. Know that there’s something deep inside that helps us become what we can. For a girl can be someday a lady, and a boy can be someday a man.’
Senator Pastore: I think it’s wonderful. I think it’s wonderful. Looks like you just earned the 20 million dollars.
Frozen Lake Michigan, a flat ocean
of ice; a sight that I don’t want but will
come and find me, like the night to the sun,
or two headlights to a deer. We say “chill,”
we say “cold,” but what barefooted pilgrim
could walk these beaches and still be happy?
What warm sympathy could the winter’s grim
love have? hidden in our houses the glee
of the wind is both orderly and daft.
Singing but what does that mean? Storm shamans
might know, but there are none left to answer.
Winter! I would defeat you if my craft
would do so; but such magic and options
aren’t mine. So I must live with your burdens.
What was it like on your first starry night?
the one thing we all have at least one of.
If you’re old enough to understand light,
to be able to raise your head above
your chin then you’ve seen stars. You were not born
back then, for me. And all the love and hate
and small words we use to describe well-worn
emotions meant nothing while all the great
weight of the heavens hung over my head.
How is it that just then the child is sure
that we are part of something far larger
than just ourselves, but later call faith dread?
Before faith was a faith is faith. Before
we had words for enemy or lover.
I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.
When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire a-flame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And someone called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.
Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done,
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.
all the ancient classic fairy tales have always been scary and dark.
—- Helena Bonham Carter
How much cold can you abide? If you kissed
me now you’d hear how the wind mews and talks
to you. Across the tundra of this tryst
you called me, like the warmth of a snow fox
in the endless night. I come from the west,
dreaming about blackberry juice; roughly
watching it trickle down your chin. Tongues pressed
tip to tip, although warm flesh on icy
metal never forgives. Little candle,
moppet, June spark, I would lick the hoarfrost
from your breasts, if I could; I think you’d just
sputter, though, warmth being such a fragile
play thing. How far will you go, my star-crossed
flame? The winter dark is my name for lust.
The ghosts of my hard aunts all called themselves
butch and worked the graveyard shift making jeeps.
I am a fey thing, in love with bookshelves
more than pool and Patsy Cline, one who keeps
family close in this wild new age. Type
in “aunt,” “jeep,” “butch,” and, “Squirting on my truck’s gearshift,” appears. Aunties, my waiting past,
where does Stonewall fall when these finger fucks
cock sucker blues can be found anywhere?
The dead give little reply. I’ve built worlds
on their broad shoulders. Love is a small price.
Just know your daughters and sons are a prayer
unasked for but here all the same. Your girls
and boys love you, I hope that will suffice.
Slowly, summer waking, you rise, lovesick
beastie, cacophonous, the way all fucks
before dawn make noise. We’re not awake, slick
in dream, wet under the sheets. Your stomach’s
end, the last stopping point of pubic bone
before the drop off and the hard column
rising before me. Wheeling in a blown
sky we are only voices. Come, we cum,
sea fire berries so ripe we cast shadows
on the waves like a Berber tale. Slowly,
with North Africa’s heat, rise. Are you sin?
Yes, sin. You pull away, crying like crows
denied their due. I’ll sail to Barbary,
aboard a tramp steamer, The Jianzhen.
“Know thyself and all will be revealed.”
― Pamela Theresa Loertscher
Find what they would do but cannot. Find what
sleeps there, the other nature, disjointed
but still distinct. Words that we use — hag, slut,
bitch, dyke — all have their sacred counterpoints.
The witch, the lover, the queen, Brynhildr’s
shield maid who’ll stand by her side at World’s End.
There are other dreams, of course, ones that stir
sleeping souls. Rose and amber. The girlfriend
who dreamed of a necklace — white, frothy, thick
— hiding each breast — then along came a tongue
and left them slick. The soft ball coach who aches
for war like a field marshal. Be you sapphic
or straight, pink or brown, rich, poor, old or young,
tell us whats inside, what rises, what wakes.
notes:
Brynhildr : Old Norse legend name from the Nibelungenlied, queen of the Valkyries. Her name is composed of brynja, meaning “armor, coat of mail,” and hildr meaning, “battle,” from which we get: armored warrior woman.
memories of my ghost sista 