International Women-It's our day

 Happy International Women's Day 2012!!!

Here's an excerpt of my a zine I used to write.

"In honour of heroic power, beautiful dykes, and the forceful fury of

words ripe w. pain, I give you American activist, lesbian and poet

Chrystos...This poem, Late Breakfast was one of the many poems I

selected as part of my ode to oppression  a la international women's

day 2000.

Late Breakfast

When they put blue ice in her mind

 when they took her name

burned her brain synapses

when they put her drooling in a chair

her hands like strangers

in her blue cotton pajama lap

when wet through the arms her

mind was lifted out with an electric pitchfork

pierced

when they stole her memory

traded her life for a rubber tongue depressor

when her  tangled hair

wore the mark of their machines

her black eyes erased blank

when I saw what

they did to her

because she was depressed

I practiced smiling (c) Chrystos,1995

Cuz all good (whatever the fuck that means!) "girls" ...are supposed

to be happy, supposed to

 want to be submissive, and feel ashamed for not

wanting to be like other "girls", for wanting to frown, yell, scream

and (gasp!), hate (cuz really, what female wants to be treated like an

equal...or even an adult. Cuz to the good ole boys in that elite

mutherfucking institution, known as The Club of  Patriarchy, or simply

The Patriarchy ---where mandatory   membership is forced on all people

who breathe. If you aren't male and man, white and heterosexual, then,

as a forced lifetime member, of The Club

you get treated to every form of abuse, verbal, physical,

emotional...on a regular, fairly consistent basis!

ˇ

So, i do art and hope that it will always be treated with

respect...maybe respect isn't paying my bills, but if i have it, and

if it is therefore returned to me, I can sleep at night.

For March 8th 2002, we need to stop hating our selves....  write an

email to a multinational, like Shell Oil, for an example...who, in

part w. the Nigerian government were responsible for the death of,

among others, the male poet and outspoken activist, Ken Saro-Wiwa...
He was hanged to death becuz of his refusal to allow the government to continue it's murderous waste of the lives and land of the Ogoni peoples.

We have heard of Ken...becuz he was male...but what of all the

courageous women who are raped,killed, tortured, daily who's names we will never know????

And what of the Female Guerrillas in Mexico, The Zappatistas, fighting the corrupt government, rearing children, soldering---Daily!!! To protect who they are, as a people. They remain nameless, save for the moniker of so-and-so's wife,

Let's re-member: Anita Hill, for daring to raise her voice, Golda

Meir, for being strong as iron,Mary Daly, for being fucking awesome, and last on my list of females we need to always remember...queer sisters who have come out, and love and live as out in countries that kill you for how you choose to live your sexuality!!!

Make Art Not war...

Let's get active and reclaim our names, voices,history and the ground

we walk on.  Let's remember the names of our sisters and change the

rules everyday, all the time in the fucking despotic, putrid Club of

Patriarchy!!!!!!!!!"