National Poetry Day, 2018

It's National Poetry Day in the U.K. today, so here this Irish-Finnish American poet goes with some older, travel-based poems:

From Whatever Devil

I’m not paying
parking meters—I’m owed
time—not to mention his
furtive little flirty
message, spelled d-r-u-n-k—and
I’m pretty sure meter
maids descend
directly
from whatever devil
created neighbors.


On the Road

Being
on the road
gives me
a sense
of control.


Innkeeper's Blues

Doesn't anyone remember?
They all flee and forget,
checking their luggage at my door
Inhospitable houseguests feeding off
their newly appointed host.

Not even a postcard sent.


More poetry here: http://lisahaviland.com/poetry.html

Birthday News/Factoids

a) August 25, 2018 is the 237th anniversary of the founding of the city of Los Angeles.

b) And on August 25, 1718, New Orleans was founded by French settlers and named after the Duke of Orleans.

As someone who's had epic times in these two cities, I'm happy to share a birthday with both of them.

Another One Where I Interrupt Your Regular (And Irregular) Scheduled Programming

While I've refrained from asking until this last year of underemployment, if you've enjoyed reading my blog these past 12 years (with a few off for good behavior) and are able to donate, even just enough for a cawfee, I'd appreciate it.

And thanks for reading...

Families Belong Together March, Los Angeles

Perfect Accessory

Guess I went a little too hard at a tender spot earlier and

20 minutes before I needed to leave for the interview,

my front-bottom gums began to ooze blood

in a slow but steady dark-blood trickle,

the first time in years that’s happened and so I watched,

feeling my body had morphed, some

manifestation of all that news

horror I’d just been reading, wiping away, watching

the blood mar my credibility

in my vanity mirror, the blood

against my well-done makeup, the blood the

chaos the polish the chaos the

polish, the blood the

perfect accessory

for this darkest timeline.

Mortuary Beat

After Katrina and the levee failure, many black and poor residents of New Orleans, my neighbors at the time, were flown all over the country without being told in advance where they were going. Utah?! Some were separated.

You know, you remember my neighbors, they were the black U.S. citizens the TV people referred to as: "refugees." In my own evacuation corner, AKA my forced-quit three-month stay of who knows what to the East Coast, one kind sensitive person I remember as a blurred face said, "How's that whole refugee thing going?" I think about white people like that a lot these days. A lot more than I'd like.

We'll need to find a sane, effective enough group of representatives, and I'm of the opinion we have them in the Democrats, who now have no legislative power, natch, to deploy the National Guard again for the mass administrative and organizational effort required to reunite these children with their parents.

Babies.

On one level, it seems unreal to me that this Trump regime, this

Jeff Sessions induced nightmare

believed the rest of us would just let this slide.

On another level, though, I'm not surprised they thought so at all.

This weekend, after the institution of child detention centers, AKA child jails, for asylum seekers who are--woohoo, welcome to America, land of the mean--denied everything from hugs to proper hygiene or rest to basic human decency, all I want to do is go to an amusement park and scream my head off.

The bizarre, the carnivale, the horror can't hurt the way this does and I can scream without penalty.

Meanwhile, how can I type or even think about my own stress when we are a country that inflicts hurt on children as a matter of policy? With that as the context, how can I or anyone worry about personal burnout? And at the same time, how can we not?

Strange, sad days, and where is the cutthroat spirit? I'm now finding myself laser-focused on doing some real reporting, on going back to journalism, the way I did after Katrina. Hope to have some news on that front soon. In the meantime, speaking of policy:

None of these child abusers should ever know peace in public again,

just like the kids they're caging all over this country

right now, right this second

will never know peace the same way again.

Families Belong Together

So now you know,
who gets mystified