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They came! :-D
I've got "Peace" on the cd-player right now, and will probably throw "We Too Are One" on shortly. :-) "Consensual Genocide" (Leah Samharasinha) is, so far (five or six pages in) proving to be excellent. :-)
I have come up with this:
Sierra Leone
My heart is a mine field,
smooth as any road that gets you
from here to there.
My heart is mine field,
Scabbed over,
waiting.
Years from now, maybe, there'll be flowers blowing,
Red,
In the churned-up earth,
But for now
You gotta watch your step.
Anywhere you put your foot will
trigger
an explosion.
My heart is a mine field,
And you are Fred Astaire.
I didn't know I was marrying a dancer.
You didn't know you were marrying
Sierra Leone.
Hopefully "Longing, At Least, Is Constant" will come in a few days or less. :-D
Poetry reading tomorrow night @ Cube Gallery in Hintonburg (on Armstrong st., one block west of Parkdale, I think). 7:30pm. :-)
Have been reading No Way to Live, which is about women and poverty (generally cyclical and abject), specifically in BC, but in Canada in general. :-) It is heartbreaking and enraging at the same time. It's got me thinking about stuff (which is always good).
Also: In my marvelously kismetic meet-up with Commodorified, Raynedaze and Torrain (and Seanchaidh, but that bit was intentional), the subject of how "bad/dangerous neighbourhood" often translates into "noticeably non-white population + working class/lower-income-bracket + women working the sex-trade after dark".
Commodorified mentioned the the John Retraining Program (or something to that effect) which involves squirting the johns with a water-pistol full of really smelly, cheap perfume in order to get them to go away.
And I find myself wondering: How does one, as a john, qualify for this retraining?
Is it merely by virtue (or lack-there-of?) of being a john? Or do they have to be the sort of clients that no business woman would ever want?
As in: The kind who assumes any woman walking the streets of that neighbourhood after dark must be in the market for clients, and who doesn't believe you when you say that, no, actually, he's mistaken on this?
Because as much as I dislike the mind-set/cultural-assumption that says All Unattached (or Apparently Unattached) Women are Sexually Available to All Men (provided that those men name the right price OR put enough social/emotional pressure on the woman in question OR whatever), I also know that if you're paying your bills by street-walking, I wouldn't, personally, want to make things more difficult for you by harassing all of your business away.
So, while I suspect (given the people implementing it) that the John Retraining Program is somewhat more discriminant in who it targets for Retraining than, say, the Lowertown Sex-Worker Harassment Program, I figured I'd throw my two cents up here and see. :-)
Gotta go make dinner. :-)
- TTFN,
- Amazon. :-)
I've got "Peace" on the cd-player right now, and will probably throw "We Too Are One" on shortly. :-) "Consensual Genocide" (Leah Samharasinha) is, so far (five or six pages in) proving to be excellent. :-)
I have come up with this:
Sierra Leone
My heart is a mine field,
smooth as any road that gets you
from here to there.
My heart is mine field,
Scabbed over,
waiting.
Years from now, maybe, there'll be flowers blowing,
Red,
In the churned-up earth,
But for now
You gotta watch your step.
Anywhere you put your foot will
trigger
an explosion.
My heart is a mine field,
And you are Fred Astaire.
I didn't know I was marrying a dancer.
You didn't know you were marrying
Sierra Leone.
Hopefully "Longing, At Least, Is Constant" will come in a few days or less. :-D
Poetry reading tomorrow night @ Cube Gallery in Hintonburg (on Armstrong st., one block west of Parkdale, I think). 7:30pm. :-)
Have been reading No Way to Live, which is about women and poverty (generally cyclical and abject), specifically in BC, but in Canada in general. :-) It is heartbreaking and enraging at the same time. It's got me thinking about stuff (which is always good).
Also: In my marvelously kismetic meet-up with Commodorified, Raynedaze and Torrain (and Seanchaidh, but that bit was intentional), the subject of how "bad/dangerous neighbourhood" often translates into "noticeably non-white population + working class/lower-income-bracket + women working the sex-trade after dark".
Commodorified mentioned the the John Retraining Program (or something to that effect) which involves squirting the johns with a water-pistol full of really smelly, cheap perfume in order to get them to go away.
And I find myself wondering: How does one, as a john, qualify for this retraining?
Is it merely by virtue (or lack-there-of?) of being a john? Or do they have to be the sort of clients that no business woman would ever want?
As in: The kind who assumes any woman walking the streets of that neighbourhood after dark must be in the market for clients, and who doesn't believe you when you say that, no, actually, he's mistaken on this?
Because as much as I dislike the mind-set/cultural-assumption that says All Unattached (or Apparently Unattached) Women are Sexually Available to All Men (provided that those men name the right price OR put enough social/emotional pressure on the woman in question OR whatever), I also know that if you're paying your bills by street-walking, I wouldn't, personally, want to make things more difficult for you by harassing all of your business away.
So, while I suspect (given the people implementing it) that the John Retraining Program is somewhat more discriminant in who it targets for Retraining than, say, the Lowertown Sex-Worker Harassment Program, I figured I'd throw my two cents up here and see. :-)
Gotta go make dinner. :-)
- TTFN,
- Amazon. :-)
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