"Wake me when the American Dream is over" has always been one of my favorite lines from Gibson. I never knew it's full context, wow, what a stunning poem.
"Do you know children in Palestine fly kites to show they're still free, can you imagine how that string must feel between their fingers as they kneel between the cinders of US made missile heads" A subject matter I wish we heard more of in these times
Kite Runner was such an amazing book. Took place in Kabul, follows the racism in the city and the destruction brought upon it by war. Kite flying is actually a sport there, though, in case you're unfamiliar with the book; kite strings are coated in fiber glass and kids try to cut the strings of kites, last one standing wins, and kids go running to pick up the fallen kites. Would've been beautiful to mention this sport in the poem but Andrea Gibson is such an incredible artist I dare not to critic their work, it's perfect how it is :)
Ah. I relate to this. But it's complicated. I mean I was also bullied and not neurotypical, and my Dad had a bipolar diagnosis and my mum very obviously working class but none of it so obviously bad that I felt certain that I deserved to feel oppressed but I was listening to the news, I was reading the guardian, I was aware. But looking back also frequently in a dissociated state. And recently had a big twitter flipout as I occasionally do, where I conflate all these battles and get called crazy and incoherent a lot. As it happens I come from the village where Betty Kenny rocked her children in cots carved in a tree, a few hundred years back. The reputed inspiration for the rock-a-bye baby nursery rhyme. I somehow didn't know about this growing up, and only learnt after I left. I was also schooled in the nearby town whose response to COVID19 has, famously, been to moo at each other at half past 6 every evening. Where, they told us, industrialist Strutt schooled the man who kicked off the industrial revolution in America. Trauma can be two sided and survivor guilt and inherited, but that doesn't exactly make me first in the queue for reparations. It's not the oppression Olympics. Saying I'm priveleged can be both humble and a flex. I like the linguistic creativity of where I grew up and it helps me not to hate the people that made me the target of it. Bleh. But this is a strange time. We'll see what happens. If it's just another empire collapse and change of era, a violent cut of the cards and regathering. Basic structure of the deck remaining the same. Or if things become more horizontal.
Love this so much♥️ Poetry is a great way to express anything and is a very good outlet hence why I started writing a year ago and now I even have my own channel where I post video... Channels like button poetry inspired me❤️
OMG Andrea, yet another poem that hits hard. Would that we had your insights and compassion and the ability to package it within a few dozen succinct lines. This one got to me...
