Forward! - Sign of the Month - November 2016

From time to time in America a bodhisattva appears. A man or woman whose honesty gleams. A human who is endowed with brains, compassion, a sense of humor, courage and oratory. 

One great human runs for POTUS and loses several times. That human is the American Socialist Party candidate in the four candidate election of 1916. And last night he was waving to me in my dream.

I am thinking of Eugene Victor Debs today because he said this and we need to remember who we are today, I think. And where we need to go. 

I am not a Labor Leader; I do not want you to follow me or anyone else; if you are looking for a Moses to lead you out of this capitalist wilderness, you will stay right where you are. I would not lead you into the promised land if I could, because if I led you in, some one else would lead you out. You must use your heads as well as your hands, and get yourself out of your present condition; as it is now the capitalists use your heads and your hands.

As quoted in "Life of Eugene V. Debs" by Stephen Marion Reynolds, in Debs : His Life, Writings and Speeches (1908) edited by Bruce Rogers and Stephen Marion Reynolds, p. 71.

This was Debs ultimate goal.

The united vote of those who toil and have not will vanquish those who have and toil not, and solve forever the problems of democracy.

"In other words,"We are stronger together." - Hillary Clinton. I believe that. But I know that we "must use our heads." Debs was under no delusions about the American political parties.

The Republican and Democratic parties, or, to be more exact, the Republican-Democratic party, represent the capitalist class in the class struggle. They are the political wings of the capitalist system and such differences as arise between them relate to spoils and not to principles.

I am going to vote for Hillary. And then I am going to keep on working for my country. I am going to use my head and my hands. Nobody is perfect. We must have a Republic and we must keep it. Hat tip to B. Franklin. Democracy is work. The Bernie Revolution is ongoing. No slacking.

The revolution will not be televised. - Gil Scott-Heron

“Everybody can be great...because anybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.” - Martin Luther King, Jr.

"Change comes from power, and power comes from organization. In order to act, people must get together." - Saul Alinsky, Rules for Radicals, p. 113

Redneck Speaks to My Condition

CLICK ME !

My folks had a chicken farm in rural Robbinsville, NJ in the middle 1940s.

I know what it is like to use a burlap sack as a sunshade or umbrella and pick potatoes out of the ground all morning. The Sun is brutal. After I started crying, my folks put me in the barn where I could harass the kittens. I was four maybe. And they went back to picking.

My parent's grew Tomatoes for Campbell's Soup in Camden and Eggs and Chickens for all comers.

So even though I am an immigrant's Pole/Wop child from New Jersey, I claim honorable redneck status. I know about ridicule because you talk funny. I know about living off the Earth and reading books. Jeffersonian. This man speaks to my condition.

Traditional Art / Paintings / Still Life©2016 ab39z

I Loves Me Some Nasty Women. Been there and done that.

Always Unsuitable

She wore little teeth of pearls around her neck.
They were grinning politely and evenly at me.
Unsuitable they smirked. It is true

I look a stuffed turkey in a suit. Breasts
too big for the silhouette. She knew
at once that we had sex, lots of it

as if I had strolled into her diningroom
in a dirty negligee smelling gamy
smelling fishy and sporting a strawberry

on my neck. I could never charm
the mothers, although the fathers ogled
me. I was exactly what mothers had warned

their sons against. I was quicksand
I was trouble in the afternoon. I was
the alley cat you don't bring home.

I was the dirty book you don't leave out

for your mother to see. I was the center-
fold you masturbate with then discard.

Where I came from, the nights I had wandered
and survived, scared them, and where
I would go they never imagined.

Ah, what you wanted for your sons
were little ladies hatched from the eggs
of pearls like pink and silver lizards

cool, well behaved and impervious
to desire and weather alike. Mostly
that's who they married and left.

Oh, mamas, I would have been your friend.
I would have cooked for you and held you.
I might have rattled the windows

of your sorry marriages, but I would
have loved you better than you know
how to love yourselves, bitter sisters.

Copyright 1999 Early Grrrl: the Early Poems of Marge Piercy Leapfrog Press

MOLON LABE PUSSY GRABBERS - Sign of the Month October 2016

Monsters by Andrea Dietrich

Monsters live in houses, like you and I. 

They eat and sleep and go to work each day. 

They laugh and they feel pain.
Perhaps they cry!

They have different games they like to play.
They need to have control.
Therefore, most seek a victim
who is young or not so strong.

They think they are almighty,
but their mind is weak. 

Depraved, they pay no heed to right or wrong. 

They may seem crude, but some of them are slick. The ones with brains play too well at their game.

All monsters love what normal folks find sick. 

They brutalize and rape, and feel no shame. Beware! One could be living on your street or be that charming guy you’ve chanced to meet!