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~ arts journal~ Lewis J Whittington

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Monthly Archives: August 2011

MetroScape

28 Sunday Aug 2011

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Saturday night reading and monitoring the storm but was getting pretty antsy. Around 11:30 there were dire predictions about flooding and power outages and indeed, the rain belts were really picking up some force, so it was time to get out in it, so I headed out on foot. I tucked myself under the cutaway shelter of the Dorchester building overhang, so there was a tunnel effect of the Rittenhouse canopy a topiary in violent motion of green leaves, driving rain and inky skies.

Sunday biked down to the river which was supposed to crest at 2PM. tooling down the Partway with the Art Museum looking magnificent against the cloud masses that were starting to separate. At the engine and mill Schuylkill River lookout people were gathered to see the river rage through. A spindly women in her 80s with regal gray hair and deep blue eyes inched closer to the water, and twirled in the wind. She could have been Casandra on the promontory, warning us. But, she nodded and smiled. Families were taking photos. The sounds of the waters rushing were drowning out chatter and in fact people were being rather quiet with each other. It was so serene, just humans in the presence of a natural event. Further down the waters were encroaching on boat house row and around the bend the stone sculpture garden causeway was completely flooded out. Two mighty red-tail hawks were circling, surveying their turbulent territory.

botanicals

28 Sunday Aug 2011

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‘Jan’s Green’

from Days of Mercury

a dreamt image sees something pulsing
some arteria
lustily formed
a mirror atom
busted through
so cells probe their own
questions carve
black holes only
answerable to infinited universes
craves momentum
inside the illusion
of stillness

I didn’t see Bach
as a musical garden
as my mind wants
to flourish
in that cathartic field
but my soul at rest
forever and ever and ever revealed.

August poem

21 Sunday Aug 2011

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from Days of Mercury

Wind tide eastward
dust spikes
Determined to blind
Or close the throat
other fetid
remnants would
appear on alternate days
waters trisecting
a frieze northward
toward an invisible gushing
balance
traced along that promontory by Mercury
left untouched even
Though he knows that
It is all over for now
The copper eyes obliterating
light years and
feet accelerating
chronicling foliage
at mach speed
Brushes his temples to
Remember the silence of
the metronome that
keeps pulse
his time along the
burning gallery
Now collapsed into
Fevered static expanse
But a quotient does
that does not recall
thought
Mercury flies
from the disappeared
it is all water music
heard inside
the concussion
unseen with stillness at dusk
particles that reject
that all his missions had
been vaporized
when he lowered
his eyes to pierce the cobalt cove toward Olympus

politic tic tic

14 Sunday Aug 2011

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GOP revives gay apocalypse script

By Lewis Whittington

A year ago, the token gay Republican advocacy group GOProud was confident that their party was going to skip antigay rhetoric and policies in the next presidential election. Other things, like jobs, seemed to be more important than worries about whether Adam and Steve are about to make their announcement in the New York Times, along with their plans to adopt an unwanted baby. Actually, they are getting a clue, as the GOP girds for the next election that it’s déjà vu all over again. The field of candidates and have already started wielding that homophobic divining rod with pledges and litmus tests. Most have been shopping their individual brands of homopanic.

Even though he told CNN that he has gay friends, Rick Santorum has long despised us. In fact he equates gay sex with bestiality. Rick Perry had to clarify that he was against gay marriage when he was seemingly too soft on NY. Romney, who courted the gay vote when he was governor, is now calling for an antigay litmus test for judges. Herman Cain just outright hates gays. If you are a gay Muslims just forget having one of his pizzas delivered.

Which brings me to Michele Bachmann, currently the undisputed leader of the antigay agenda pack and current GOP frontrunner. She got where she, by all accounts, on her proud of her distain for gays, though lately she has been dodgy about fessing ups up about the fact that her husband offers ‘cures’ in his Christian counseling center, which has, after all, received federal funds. No matter, her antigay agenda cred is firmly established and what tipped elections before can work again.

Back in 2004, the George W. Bush’s staff called voters in the South on the eve of the election warning of the gay takeover. It worked. Ironies of ironies is that Ken Mehlman, Bush’s campaign manager and Karl Rove, whose father was gay, engineered the most anti-gay national campaign ever. Get a self-loathing traitor to his own people to show you how to run a successful hate campaign.

Actually, the other deciding factor this time is that President Obama has become the most pro-gay president ever, despite doubts and disappointment coming from his solid GLBTQ base. In the wake of gay marriage in New York and the repeal of DADT, to the rabid right wing, he might as well be Rupaul and Elton John‘s love child.. Politicians know they can successful fan prejudices during tough socioeconomic times. In New York, those against gay marriage are suing that their religious rights have being trampled on. How they are being harmed is a riddle inside a maze wrapped around a heterosexual puzzle.

Meanwhile, there is a leveling complacency of gay activism that must be address. Time to rally kids, there are mighty forces working to bring back the closet. Gay America sites shows like “Modern Family” and “GLEE” as being evidence that times have permanently changed and that is true in the fictive world of television, but outside urban areas, there are many layers of homophobia that successfully keep gay people in a closet.

Not that we will ever en masse go back to the way it was, more glbt people live open lives than ever before. The religious right has to privatize to get their homophobic message out. In the wake of the repeal of DADT and gay marriage in NY, many conservatives want stepped up efforts to convince gay members of their own families to stay hidden. ‘reparative’ therapy, whether the Bachmanns practice it or not, is back. Even NPR had an on its resurgence last week.

Meanwhile, there are few stories about Ava and Eve who have lived together for 30 years are about to graduate their 3rd son from college and retire from teaching and private medical practice to work in social services for distressed teens threatens Britney Spears ability to get married and divorced in the same week in Vegas by an Elvis impersonator.

It is over 40 years since the Stonewall Rights and a generation after gay solidarity in fighting AIDS brought us the streets to demand justice and rights. Note to GOProud, there will be room for you to march along side of lgbtq communities when we take to the streets again, as we must do, to ensure that we are not political pawns of the political agents of antigay hatred.

Midsummer

02 Tuesday Aug 2011

Posted by alternatetakes2 in Jan Carroll, photography

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‘Escaping’ by Jan Carroll

from Sassafrass

If I taught you to steep tea
If I couldn’t get
you down from that crag
to sit to hear
it seepseepseep
or some such thing

while waiting
over the basin
your face
in amber

muttering stupid curses
If then I let you

lay tealeaves
across my body
soaking the unknown past
through my skin,
If then we are,
If then.

All poems by Lewis Whittington unless otherwise noted

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August 2011
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