The New Normal [Today's News Poem, April 2, 2011]

The New Normal [Today's News Poem, April 2, 2011]

I thought that the average was something like grasping,
Something like murder and incest; torture and me.
I thought that because I could break, I was broken;
Born to a luck that I spurned because it's not fair.
And life is for idiots, error, repentance.
Life is not fair, so go quickly, even it out.
I've tried to exhaustion the rage and it failed me
Anger's the doorway to patience, love, compassion.
And normal's not average, it's more aspiration,
Noble and lie it's the mother goddess of hearth.
The lies do not bind us and babies aren't silenced
Shouting them down, nor by reason, terror—just love.

"there are many reasons to believe that measuring and reporting metrics of social mobility will be a meaningless task. Complete measures of social mobility, such as looking at the link between parental and children's incomes or parents' and children's education, take a lifetime to evaluate."
—Imran Hussain, Letters, The Guardian, Saturday 2 April 2011
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/apr/02/income-inequality-social-mobility

"A host of Asian performing artists have staged a three-hour charity concert in Hong Kong to raise funds for victims of Japan's earthquake and tsunami. "
—Xinhuanet, 2011-04-02 11:13:09
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/video/2011-04/02/c_13810387.htm

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Tales From The CombatWords Arena. 26.75 More Hours of Combat Left!

http://combatwords.blogspot.com/2011/04/combatwords-april-1-2011-nostalgia.html

If you've been avoiding CombatWords because you are threatened by the idea of competitive writing, maybe you should be. I want you to note the timestamps for this combat after you admire the quality of the offered samples. If you can't take the heat, that's cool, but consider being an anonymous chicken and critiquing the comps. I mean, you might bring up valid points, but trust me, nobody is going to feel threatened by someone too scared to step into the arena him or herself.

Onyxsupersonics (April 1, 2011 4:52 PM PST http://onyxsupersonics.blogspot.com/):
"my first trip to philadelphia, my first trip to new york, when i saw guernica at moma, my first flight to london ... i always thought i could do it again and it would be even better ... sometimes i did it again and it was, sometimes i did it again and it wasn't, but usually i couldn't and i'll never know whether it would've been or wouldn't have been ... "

Valerie Valdes (April 1, 2011 5:32 PM PST http://candleinsunshine.com/asthemoonclimbs/):
""In Cuba, it wasn't like this"
was the common joke
when something bad happened
in America."

Amalia Dillin (April 1, 2011 6:42 PM PST http://blog.amaliadillin.com/):
"My cousins and I jockeyed for the center seat, crawling over one another, climbing, twisting. The hammock twisted and one of them was hanging upside down on the outside, clinging like a monkey. We helped him back in, pulling him up like a sailors dragging a drowned man from the sea. "

Steven Marty Grant (April 1, 2011 7:30 PM PST http://roomspimp.blogspot.com/):
"Of course I know
I fought with her too
but those battlefields
are green and over grown;
Appomattox, Utah beach,
Hue City. "

Seann McCollum (April 2, 2011 11:34 AM PST http://carrioncall.blogspot.com/):
"In all the years since the weekend you
“didn’t sleep with” that fellow
you met at GothFest at the Trocadero"

I can't sit this one out--looks too fun. It's an extra good combat this week which is why you should try it out. I respect anyone willing to fall flat on his or her face in public, even if not for the quality of composition.

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