Poem Born of Empathy for the Bryant Family's Tragedy

I've been meaning to post this poem, which I wrote on the tragic day that Kobe Bryant and his daughter Gianna left Earth together, along with their friends. As a parent, not even a basketball fan, this tragic news evoked my tears of empathy and words of compassion for the grieving families. Here are those words, as usual, in a poem:

Arrivals and Departures

(On the passing of Kobe And Gianna Bryant) 

By Susan L. Lipson

They arrived separately, 

almost three decades apart,

to begin their intersecting journeys,

to celebrate living. 

They became celebrated themselves,

as they toured their destinations,

separately and together,

making memories and sharing dreams.

They departed together, 

when Life rerouted them

into a detour to the Divine,

disrupting flight patterns,

cancelling plans,

and leaving their loved ones waiting at the gates,

forlorn and incredulous.

A New Poem that Clarifies Why I Had Bladder Problems During First Grade

     I know that the title of this blog post sounds strange, but you'll understand it once you've read my newest poem about one of my oldest memories:

The Star’s Shadow

by Susan L. Lipson

I stared upward at the gold, foil star
stuck proudly below my bitten fingernails,
to the right of my one wrinkled thumb,
and now held aloft in my first-grade teacher’s    tight grip.

“Look at this! This is yesterday’s star for spelling!” she announced.
Everyone looked at my treasured sign of specialness.
Except me.
I looked at the teacher’s downturned lips and her wrinkled nose. My skinny arm trembled in her grasp.

She clucked her tongue and asked, for everyone to hear:
“Why did you leave it on your hand? Don’t you wash every day?”
Everyone looked at our teacher’s grimace.
Except me.
I looked down at my desk, where a big teardrop had just plopped
onto the math quiz she had just delivered,
marked with a few red x’s, and no smiley face.

I had washed my hand.
But I had washed around the star.

“Children,” she asked with scary sweetness, still gripping my wrist,
“remember our lesson on the importance of cleanliness?”
Everyone nodded.
Except me.
I was clenching my teeth, trying not to blink,
so that tears wouldn’t spill.

My teacher clucked her tongue again,
dropped my hand, and strutted off to the next desk,
to deliver the next graded math paper.

Hiding my right hand under my desk,
I pinched off the star,
folded it into itself,
hid it in my pocket,
and then tried to rub off
its grayish, adhesive outline.
I wanted to go wash off the star’s shadow in the girls’ bathroom.
But I was too afraid to raise my hand to ask permission.

Have you ever dug into your past as I have in this poem, to examine the profundity of relatively mundane moments that influenced your evolution? Try walking in your smallest shoes again so you can see your little child self with new empathy.

New Poem Birthed at Breakfast

       
          At breakfast with two artistic friends this morning, we discussed the importance of encounters, either unplanned or planned (like ours), in nurturing creativity. Artists create works for the purpose of catharsis or connection, and too much alone time can lead to blocked artistic flow. Our meandering discussion touched the topic of worrying, and the notion stayed with me for the next few hours, finally crystallizing into the new poem below. I don't usually post a first draft, but I am doing so today to convey how connections can catalyze creativity and compel communication (not to mention excessive use of alliteration). So, here's the poem that enables me to justify a fun morning off with extraordinary friends. I hope you'll let me know if it moves you. And if you do connect with my words and wish to read some more polished poems, check out my newest published book, Disillusions of Grandeur--and Other Eye-Openers (click title for more info).

Worry Walls

by Susan L. Lipson

                       

Worrying is a symptom 

of our sick need for control—

control over all that occurs outside of our own actions.

Worrying has no power to change circumstances, events, or others’ decisions; 

no power to heal, show support, or remove pain; 

no power to maintain a dependence upon our input. 

Worrying disempowers us,

erecting walls around our crumbling castles of control,

blocking our view of the reality beyond our courtyards. 

If we summon the strength 

to climb over those Worry Walls, 

pausing on top to regain balance, 

we can see what IS,

not what “should” or “could” be,

and if we the summon the faith

to take a leap into the reality,

causing the walls to collapse behind us,

we can leave our castles to erode into dust,

and land on our feet--

shaking, perhaps--

but ready to walk forward.

WANTING (a new poem to be read aloud after a deep inhalation)

                        

Wanting 

                                            by S. L. Lipson                                

     I am sick of mediocrity

     and superficiality 

     and damn conditionality 

        rewarded by society,

        more so than humble piety

        or dignified sobriety,

     or earnest dedication,

     while valuable education

     is devalued in this nation,

        and money is equated

        with all that’s highly rated 

        by teachers who have stated

     that they define what’s best

     with mere numbers on a test,

     scores higher than the rest,

        as if that is a measure 

        of what we all should treasure

        over intangible pleasure—

     like laughter shared with friends,

     warm hugs that make amends, 

     mere awareness that transcends

        the tangible into gratitude,

        becoming a blessed attitude;

        and this is no mere platitude!

            It’s a call to all to reassess

            the key to peace and happiness:

            to value more while wanting less.

Sparked by Injustice, I Wrote This Poem...

Questions Raised by Belittled Testimony

By Susan L. Lipson

Why is it that men who’ve cried out

years after their abuse by priests

are considered brave heroes,

with suppressed memories—

PTSD, in fact—

when they step forward publicly,

painfully recounting memories to the best of their abilities;

supported by the outraged community

who condemns the defiling of innocence;

not interrogated by critics determined to cast doubts

on their very characters,

to victimize them again,

to mentally rape them

with slander;

while women who dare to cry out

about having been molested, harassed, abused, raped, 

and violated in their past youth

by power-seeking men who once were

boys, just being boys

(not “assailants” or “abusers” or “rapists”—just randy boys),

are not considered heroes, but rather:

“politically motivated pawns,” 

“confused and misguided neurotics,”

“vengeful liars or self-righteous exaggerators,” 

or even “attention-whores”?

Why is double jeopardy illegal,

But not double victimization?

#NationalPoetryMonth

          #NationalPoetryMonth inspires me to add more poetry to both my own and my students' writing collections. So I use prompts with them that also move me to write what I assign. My students liked this, and I hope you will, too.

Inner Riot

(inspired by the poem "Harlem," by Langston Hughes)

by Susan L. Lipson

What happens to social outrage,

never acted upon?

Does it whirl around like a funnel cloud,

in search of captives to uplift and transport,

Or does it hover indecisively,

Then get blown out to sea?

Does it spark like twigs and logs,

carefully stacked and lit,

Or choke like embers

smothered by handfuls of sand?

Maybe it just gets buried,

like nuclear waste?

Or does it burn like a city set ablaze by rioters?

Poetic Response to a Mass Shooting: Another Day in the Life of America

Sometimes the only response to recent news is an angry poem:

Abomination 

(written after the mass shooting at the Pulse dance club in Orlando, Florida, June 2016) 

By Susan L. Lipson

The Holier-Than-Thous are twittering again,

moaning online and calling for public “moments of silence”

to honor more victims with the passivity of prayer,

victims whom they’ve victimized themselves

by dubbing gay love an “abomination,”

and by restricting their rights to liberty in love,

and to living with acceptance, rather than mere tolerance.

The Holier-Than-Us call out for prayers

to protect our world

(when they really mean their world)

from terrorism

(when they really mean a certain non-Christian religion),

and also from hate crimes

(not including their crimes of exclusion, derision, and delegitimization).

How convenient to pray now for the souls of some of the “sinners”

whom they previously reviled,

to pray in the interests of the “greater” Good

(their greater Good),

and how ironic that they do not dare now

to publicly call that Pulse stopped by evil

“a Divine scourge against sinners,”

only because this time, the judgment was wreaked by those

who also threaten them.

A murderer planned to induce terror,

but instead, he induced a bittersweet moment of forgotten labels and  

       remembered humanity.

A moment of possibility,

lasting only until the next judgmental rant…