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.
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!!!!!!!!!"
