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James Ryan Apr 2014
the racist lesbian
who once called me
an uppity ******
who forgot where I came from

just had a baby
in West Virginia
who will grow up
without a father

or any mother
to support his escape
from a hick-*** town
if he even wanted

so I can't laugh too hard
and I say God Bless
'cause that's what they say
where I was raised

and if I walk around college
calling that white trash
it would only mean
that she was right
Lawrence Hall Nov 2020
Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                             The Geometry of Intersectionality

1. Crossroads

Intersections aren’t crossroads, you know
Where you can choose to stop a while and talk
With a man walking some other way in life
And learn something over a borrowed cigarette

2. Intersections

At intersections you never meet anyone
It’s all about obedience to lights and signs
And painted arrows in the road that seem
To point everywhere except where you want to go

3. Stop-for-awhile signs

There are stop signs in life. You have to stop
But then you go – a stop sign isn’t forever
A poem is itself. "Intersectional" is a cliche'.
Lawrence Hall Jul 2018
On the Packing of Intersectionality: A Cross-Cultural Study

By M. Poncy Hector-Tworbst, B.A., M.Ed., Ph.D. Candidate

Unpack that intersectionality
And privilege transphile autonomy
Unite the paradigm’s hegemony
In the diaspora of agency

Cross-gender all peripherality
In post-colonial diversity
Dialogue augmented reality
And deconstruct avatar identity

All for the cause of authenticity
(But mostly I’m all about me, me, me)
Your ‘umble scrivener’s site is:
Reactionarydrivel.blogspot.com.
It’s not at all reactionary, tho’ it might be drivel.
The Jolteon Jul 2015
A nation that bleeds
Unwilling to confront the past
The last thing we need
Is celebration and blasts
The unequal treatment
Race gender and class
Shines so clearly
With Donald Trump laughs
In this time reflection
Will shine a better path
Reconstruction Redistribution
Instead of indifference and death
Nat Lipstadt Mar 2019
letter to elana

for the poet elana bell

~

in a different cafe,
on a Manhattan streetscape where once, years earlier,
violence was the purview of West Side Story gangs,
ruling their internecine non-intersectionality territorial blood lines supremely

nowadays, violence replaced by the frenetic
noises of Lincoln Center theater goers,
student dancers, actors, musicians and poets joining the throng
of those who sup and run,
all hearing their own frantic
curtain calling, saying, announcing,
music dance voices words require your obeisance,
needy for a mutual worshipping reassurance fiat that:

life can be made transcendent
if even for just 90 minutes or 120 pages,
or a 3 minute poem reading


this city of millions requires billions of poems that spoon stirred  
and yet, almost always fail, to squeeze, all of the human essence that is in its ultimate source, clarifying nyc tap water,
containing the storied remnants of a hackable continuous,
single human stanza cell osmosis - a blockchain like no other

two poets sit side by side each in their own lapsed dreams,
she, a published poet of prize and rank, ^
he, a rank amateur whose only prize is his unpublished anonymity,
poetry, is his just a nightly soul cleansing,
an imported remnant of his Marrano piyyutim ancestry

one turns to the other,
in the inexplicable daily crazy miracle
of city fashionistas

in a city where stealing a parking spot, or the
forced squeezing creation of a subway seat space
where physics proves none exists,
are oft the roots of slashing and stabbings faithfully reported
on the 11 o’clock news,  
and trust and/or other encouraging words
are seldom heard and even less demonstrated,
the make-no-eye-contact of Camus’s L’Etranger anomie is the
normative, paranormal, paralysis cloak of we city separatists

“Can you watch over my electronics and stuff?”

Sure says the grayed and grizzled,
an all life long veteran of nyc,
judged to be trustworthy
based on a few seconds of being upsized and downsized,
a car wash (exterior only) perusal
despite a
“no direction home, like a compete unknown, a rolling stone,”  
this signage, yellow star permanently chest-affixed,
conveniently ignored, as it seems impossible
thieves don’t look like me,
don’t likely in their possess,
a distinguished head of gray hair (yeah, sure)

a thank you reward of (or did I imagine it) a lean-in,
a momentary head on a shoulder,
the chit chat now grows earned and earnest,
she confesses her cardinal poetry profession,
eliciting an ‘Oh Boy’ utterance from the poet
of a thousand names
and a thousand textual emendations

a fastidious nyc boundary is brief crossed for one short meal,
till the end when time sensitized IMRL intrudes and
the showtime calls out,
if not now, when? if not me, then who?

I read her poetry later in the praying supine first position of
three AM, and laugh with delight, at the contrast and no compare,
the styles clash and tho the stories told
are both writ in the aleph bet script,
there ends the Ven diagram overlap and
into the night’s coming of a Elvisian blue suede coverlet,
we both disappear, and if not for this recording,
history says, you old man confused, never happened,
just an imaginary poetry ink blot dream breaching...

~

postface:
another poetry book is no longer homeless,
comes to shelter upon my shelf, close to Angelou, far from Whitman,
now all the book’s nooks eyes collectively
reassessing the new old-owner, parsing his syntax,
undecided if his readership is worthy of them,
concluding that all these books are the
man’s owned roughened stones,
to be placed by human hands on the
serpentine curvature of his literary tombstone,
and until all stones fully read,
they all agree,
will they and he
be fully freed,
smoothing his legacy’s edges
Feb. 21 -March 5, 2019
NYC
another true story

^ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elana_Bell
Scarlet McCall Jun 2017
An abstract of an academic paper written by a doctoral student: "In this semimanifesto, I approach how understandings of quantum physics and cyborgian bodies can (or always already do) ally with feminist anti-oppression practices long in use. The idea of the body (whether biological, social, or of work) is not stagnant, and new materialist feminisms help to recognize how multiple phenomena work together to behave in what can become legible at any given moment as a body. By utilizing the materiality of conceptions about connectivity often thought to be merely theoretical, by taking a critical look at the noncentralized and multiple movements of quantum physics, and by dehierarchizing the necessity of linear bodies through time, it becomes possible to reconfigure structures of value, longevity, and subjectivity in ways explicitly aligned with anti-oppression practices and identity politics. Combining intersectionality and quantum physics can provide for differing perspectives on organizing practices long used by marginalized people, for enabling apparatuses that allow for new possibilities of safer spaces, and for practices of accountability."--an abstract of a paper by doctoral student Whitney Stark

Atomic particles, how can it be so
that your purpose is not just to flow
in and out of existence, building reality--
the stars, cosmic gas and galaxies--
but to “ally” with groups of humans fighting “hierarchies”
and demanding “safe spaces”
(even though their entire race is
at the top of their planet’s food chain).

In this mysterious universe there is no safety,
accountability or identity,
only elements, and energy.
Brief combinations make life
legible for a nanosecond in cosmic time, and doomed to strife.
Biology does not know oppression,
only generation, reproduction,
until our growth chokes us and we fall
like so many of our ancestors, who lived and died
on this blue-green ball.
And one day the sun will explode and blow
even our atoms, which have endured (despite oppression),
and the particles will go far until maybe they sow
new life, in bodies unfamiliar, on planets unknown.
In fairness to Whitney Stark, right-wing groups mislabeled her paper as an attack on Isaac Newton. She was ridiculed as anti-science and a dogmatic feminist.  In fact Stark is referencing quantum physics, which may contradict Newtonian physics to some extent. I really wanted to read what she wrote as a playful attempt to draw a parallel between quantum physics and non-hierarchical organizing, but her jarring repetition of politically correct catchphrases and slogans shows this is only an attempt to submit to the current academic authoritarianism that has taken over women's studies and many other fields--perhaps even universities as a whole--so that professors merely recite a dogma of oppression rather than questioning and exploring.
Because i'd rather avoid you, delete you, ignore you
because the last thing I wanted to was to find myself in the middle of the night before a full day of MEChA activities and workshops writing you a ******* tragic melancholic pathetic love poem
which makes me angry and sad at the same time
talk about intersectionality

because it's hard to survive
and I want to live
and feel loved
and I feel you take me for granted
and in order to honor the love I have for you
I need to let you go
until I can love you as a friend

you taught me to love you without limits
and that's so hard to unlearn

because I learned to wait, to listen, to save, to not expect, to serve, to accept

because I refuse to go on and pretend this love doesn't exist
because I can't be your best friend
comadre, sister or whatever the ******* call it

because you make me feel little, ugly, betrayed, silenced, guilty, unwanted, dependent, anxious,

and because you always expect a reason from me
mientras como de tu plato hondo de soledad y silencio

because I want you to cry like I cried
feel what I felt
believe what I believed
know what I once thought I knew

because I need me whole
and you taught me to love me in fragments.

Because I love you, and love like that is so hard to unlearn. Any theories for that?
ahmo Dec 2016
horns, hollow-
ly followed by a public service announcement

you do not exist in simultaneous intersectionality

YOU GIVE US CARBON DIOXIDE,
AND THUS,
you are DEEPLY ENTANGLED

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

a web, spun by an anxious,
poison-cursed arachnid
holds us all by the finger-tips,
pressing each of our infinite, six-second *******
together.

gravity ensures that when the silk can no longer bear the weight of the world,
the rose-tinted lenses will shatter-------------
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxx­xxxxxxx
xxxxxxxx
****
x

violently,
our brain stems will rot
alone.
Lawrence Hall Mar 2017
Winston Churchill Defies the Nazis

#Intersectionality come together
#As one we are cliché strong privileged
#Patriarchy ethically sourced all options
#Are on the table chilling effect quagmire

#Teutons behaving badly doomsday clock
#Transgressive sustainable Guccifer
#Renewable change the gender binary
#Wiretapped microinequity

#Unity in diversity is strength
#Build bridges not borders no fascists here

                          And let The People say “#Meme”
Heavy Hearted Apr 2021
a small group of individuals
bound by the intersectionality
of their detriments
meet;

and although alone we stand
in head and heart and hand
together the mind and the heart gave birth
to something each of us forgot were worth:

when we are together, a real person is born
not through the perceptivity of gore and of ****-
but of virtue and strength being visible not
to anyone other than us 3 who forgot.
for Irving and Morgan
I'd like to live within you, the objective world working in tandem with the human imagination, the intersectionality is humor, sparking lust and color and ******, violent and ****, salty and stimulating.  

you're excessive bounty of lies, that which when worked into a fabric create an obscure fact, manipulate the memory and all the sudden the image is juxtaposed with the perception, then they lay on top of one another, creating a illusion so powerful that fact flies out the window, to claim evidence is foolish, for the scenarios flip within themselves as actors change disguises, as acrobats practice their summersaults, as discs spin in the video game set

to wish for a reality so vast, that an open field connecting the ocean to the city is but a comparison grounded by gravity, whereas your portals know no bounds, you give the people a voice and yet the voice is anonymous, therefore the individual becomes collective, therefore the money blends as the ideas blend as kisses blend at a masquerade, fueled by the promise of donation and champagne

Terror, hate, giving way to curiosity
ConnectHook May 2018
OCCUPY  INTERSECTIONALITY!

OCCUPY  SAFE SPACES!

OCCUPY  ANTICHRIST!

SUBVERT OCCUPATION!

          (Kiss your own ***)
Highbrow religion:
the New York Times Book Review
you progressive, you.
Derrick Jones Oct 2018
This will be the winter of my contentment
I will shed regret and resentment
I will finally get it
I will not forget it
I will shred this narrow point of view
This prism of individuality
It’s a prison in reality
The world is a superorganism in totality
I see intersectionality and finally find sanity
My mind is now a GoPro
I can view my life in slow-mo
This is not the Truman Show
This is real, I can feel it
As this film reel flies by
I steal a glimpse with these two eyes
Before I meet my demise I will run with these two thighs
I will squat 5 plate, I will lose some weight
I will choose my fate
Lighter than a feather because I have come untethered
I float high among the weather, never weathered
Renewed by cleansing rains
You may call them hurricanes
But that is a matter of perspective
Positivity is infective
So I will spread a vibrant virus
From the Pope to Miley Cyrus
I say nope to the winter blues
This is the winter that I choose
To sway to and fro with the flow
To gratefully frolic in the snow
For more poetry and essays, follow my blog on Medium at https://medium.com/words-ideas-thoughts
Thanks for reading!
Giuseppe Stokes Feb 2018
Polly

Polly she was a psych major,
But minds she couldn't read. Page
her instead
with words in your stead.
And her beauty you'll get engage(r).


Courtney

Courtney and whiskey and game of thrones,
Tyrion's wisdom satsifies jones,
The dragon so epic,
But White Walker get it,
While visually feasting on bones.


Georgia

Georgia a mess,
White hair from the stress
Her beauty sublime
Pausing time no contest.


Rachel

Rachel abate chu,
you know that I couldn't
For weirdness is awesomeness; serene.
Now who wouldn't appreciate
deviate from our normality
Plus gin is for winning
a truth known unanimously.


Wilhelmine

Wilhelmine sublime in her majesty,
At the helm for intersectionality
Butler'd be proud
Preferred pronouns abound,
(And **** what kind of band are you rad in b?)


Selene

Selene full of sugar,
What music dya cover?
(I mean if it ain't free form jazz,
It can't lack razzmatazz)


Nassem

Nassem with beret and flowers,
Entrancing, enchanting for hours,
The men did all swoon
For no finer a tune,
Their blakcouts a sign of her powers.


Tanya

Tanya does shine,
and **** ya so fine,
Entwine our being
in blissful combine?


Denise

Denise pretty sweet ****** her thumb
the saliva like juices of plum
She'd still **** it now
If she'd stuck with the how
Instead all her coolness undone.


Kate

Kate so great,
And gin drink elate,
Dya wonder bowt cool stuff?
Or leave it to fate...


Felicia

Felicia appresh ur adventure (I do)
A coolness some people should start to accrue
It feels your speal will carry enjoyment
What spoils you foiled like Gandalf's endorsement?


Rachel

Rachel is boring?
A fact left adorning,
Conversations a **** up
For ****** who are stuck,
I'm sure you're a truth worth adoring


Ilydia

Ilydia sublime in all of her glory
But without a bio, she's lacking a story


Caoimhe

Caoimhe relieve ya with tales of Kirk
But Picard is the ****** she'd rather you ****,
A sailor mouthed hoodlum
beguiling with *****
that'd harbour a vegan inert ;) ;)


Annabel

Annabel, man her well
into her *******?
Sneaking round farmer's fields
down for some... snogging...


Kathrin

Kathrin, laughin with wind in her face,
Riding her gas powerer car every place,
Her lectures a feature of questions renowned,
Or else you can find her with face fraught (not sound!)


Gabby

Gabby her sense of humour is dark,
A chicken who's picking the losers apart,
Some rabbits who slumber by her majesty,
With floppy ears, carrots, and cuddles of glee....
ConnectHook Apr 2020
Patricians have our best interests in mind.
Administration is impartial, kind.
Keeps us laughin’, keeps us singin’—
And I’m Hildegard of Bingen.

She gets it like she gets the working class;
My head is nodding, up my Marxist ***.
White woke wedding bells are ringin’
Happy Hildegard of Bingen.

Government will gladly redistribute.
As our paychecks sing eternal tribute.
Gangsta-leanin, frontin’, blingin:
Chill with Hildegard of Bingen.

Icecaps, like medieval saints, are HOT.
Climate is in crisis when it’s not . . .
Global warning: winter’s springin’
Heating Hildegard of Bingen.

Intersectionality has meaning.
Hormones lie, biology’s demeaning .
Genderfluid queens are kingin’
Checkmate, Hildegard of Bingen.

Transnationals are cleaning up the mess;
Their CEO’s have little to confess.
Silver in the till, ka-chingin’
Profits Hildegard of Bingen.

Hildegard, the Moorish maiden, lauded.
Wokeness smiled. Diversity applauded.
Flames ascend and seraphim are wingin’
To the throne of Hildegard of Bingen.
Prompt #15: write a poem inspired by your favorite kind of music.
That could mean incorporating refrains, neologisms and flights of
whimsy, or repeating/inverting lines or ideas –
whatever your chosen musical form would seem to require!
ConnectHook Feb 2020
It's OK to be WOKE.
It's not right to be WRONG.
Appropriate intersectionality!
Occupy cis-gender privilege!
Believe unbelievers!
Wake the wokeness in women!
Hands OFF my body politic!
Celebrate maximized Matriarchy
by radicalizing pronoun polarization.
Revoke Whiteness by darking the brightness.
Empower the margins for doodling
instead of scribbling.
It's about disembarking
from Patriarchy's leaking ark
It's about politicizing polyandry
It's about re-peeling the orange
to freeze the debt ceiling
NO MORE free Cheetos: Truck Fump !
NO MORE empty sloganeering
NO MORE mindless cheering
Create your own unreality NOW !
Islam is right about women.
Clarion VS. Carrion
Gigi Jul 2020
I closed my eyes today to meditate
And of course the flow began
That endless stream of words
But this time is was of a different kind
It was a strong rush rush of forgotten words that loomed over me
And whilst still breathing
I started sweating
For it was the scent of an old world
Those words
Of rigidity and rust; rules and atrophy
Layers and layers of shame

A world so deeply rooted; tied with a thick rope
To the words that built it

I tried to get the flow of words to halter
So as to not evoke the emotions stitched into those idioms
Flooding into consciousness
I've spent years toiling
To create a universe sprouted from new words
So what could this be but an utter attack on my new reality

But they become an outpour, the words
This sort of multi-sensory experience…

and I'm fixed to them with glue
To the fiery words like
Tznuis, Bas Melech, Shidduchim
That I'd heard all too many times
Because I'm only a women
The rabbis would tell me
And my hands were meant for baking bread
My ******* for giving milk
Never really mine at all

And also the Tume, Trief, Off the Derech, Goyim
Words that rang into my ears constantly  
Maybe because they were always said, or maybe because
These were words I couldn’t close my ears off to hearing
But I hear them again now even louder
Painting a purity and an impurity
An us and a them
A superiority and racism
Endless hierarchies

But then the good words began to flood my mind
The Zmiros, Little Tzadikel, Kinderlech
Words that built the sounds of my family singing
The Love and shelter
Joyous togetherness
The simple Simplicity
The words that know for real
Mashiach will come

Then there were the greetings
The Good Yontifs, Gut Vach's
Because who are we but one large social unit
Bound by the words we share
And the Boruch Hashem's, Kneina Hara's
Secured that the bad things don’t get too bad
And the good things don’t ruin themselves

The flow of words continued
Like a tragic comedy
A bad and a good
And a nothing and a everything
The grief of a lost innocence; the shadow of brick walls

But I remembered that joy of breathing deep into my uncaged lungs
Accessing a fresh new whiff of clean air

For I have built a world of new words
A new vocabulary
of Words like Mind, Body, Spirit
****** freedom
Intersectionality, Sustainability
Kindred Souls
Unity
Compassion
Holding the Space

But what to do when the flow of an old world
Built so powerfully by its words
Strikes at me suddenly
Unexpected
And all the new words I've forged don’t seem to matter
At all
Lawrence Hall Mar 2022
Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com  
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com


                William Wordsworth Receives an Email of Rejection

Dear Pronoun-of-Preference Wordsworth:

We have interrogated your poem about daffodils
And can only regret your lack of filtering
For post-colonial non-binary tropes
And gender-vulnerable intersectionality

The daffodils appear not to have been consulted
With regard for their self-affirmation
Which suggests patriarchal guilt through your
Hetero-normative stratification

We find your daffodils ruthlessly aggressive
And your masculinist constructs, yes, regressive

We wish you success elsewhere. Anywhere
Go away
Lawrence Hall Mar 2022
Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com  
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com


                William Wordsworth Receives an Email of Rejection

Dear Pronoun-of-Preference Wordsworth:

We have interrogated your poem about daffodils
And can only regret your lack of filtering
For post-colonial non-binary tropes
And gender-vulnerable intersectionality

The daffodils appear not to have been consulted
With regard for their self-affirmation
Which suggests patriarchal guilt through your
Hetero-normative stratification

We find your daffodils ruthlessly aggressive
And your masculinist constructs, yes, regressive

We wish you success elsewhere. Anywhere
Go away
Classy J May 2023
Pinky ring slingers,
Watch as my brothers get put in slammers,
Watch as my brother’s get hung from swingers.
Every day, every week I hear cries and gospel singers.
Every day, every week I hear gun shots and tweakers.
Trauma runs deep, our community the titanic,
All we get is static from a government,
That watches along as we sink here.
Treating it like collages cause they hearts cold as winter.
Where our cries go in one ear than out the other ear.
If the Statue of Liberty was a person,
They’d probably evict her.
I guess one may say that,
Equity has become as real as flying reindeer.
It’s cute that some think they understand the pain here,
Just because they watched Naruto.
Now, that’s what I call taking a big leap sir!
But the truth is you’ll never understand kiddo.
You may be lost now, but so too was Nemo!
Just gotta accept it like the fact that,
Han first shot at Greedo.

Dealing with the same **** since existence,
But we refuse to fix the broken toilets.
Flushing away the vulnerable.
**** a safety net.

Dealing with the same **** since existence,
But those in power keep their phones on silent.
Letting people fall through the cracks,
Thinking it’s priceless cause in their minds they’re worthless.

Yet ignorant ******* still can’t seem to fathom why we upset!
In fact the buggers uno reverse the subject.
Like they are the true victims,
Cause intersectionality displaces them.
Must really **** to be viewed as the problem?
Get over it darlin!
Tell me more about how it feels to not be pardoned for your skin!
****.
Straight up, Got ‘em.
Got they hands up but still shot em.
Got barely any food to eat, still robbed em.
May have been hit with a rock bottom.
But they still don’t know what it is to hit rock bottom!
So, shut up and **** on my *******.
***** I’m not playing,
***** I’m not joking!

Dealing with the same **** since existence,
But we refuse to fix the broken toilets.
Flushing away the vulnerable.
**** a safety net.

Dealing with the same **** since existence,
But those in power keep their phones on silent.
Letting people fall through the cracks,
Thinking it’s priceless cause in their minds they’re worthless.

— The End —