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capri0mniThis came out much longer than I expected. But strangely, it feels tighter than the original 14-line sonnet I first tried to cram it into (NB: This still might not be done)
Oh, even gentle souls, who'd never dream
To call me “cripple” (such a bigots' word)
Will choose to speak of crippled abstract things
(Like city roads, or functions of the state)
Whenever they are weak and broken down.
And we both know the reason why they do:
The human meaning of the word remains,
And my life is a life no one would want.
At last, one day, there came a tipping point –
I longed to see its bones displayed and marked,
To know, without a doubt, it was a lie.
Instead, upon the dictionary page,
I saw an outline so much like myself
It might have been the hollow in my bed
I leave behind me when the morning comes:
A fossil imprint left in hardened ground.
Below the definition (noun and verb)
Within poor “cripple's” Anglo-Saxon roots –
I saw two symptoms noted in my chart
By which my diagnosis had been made
(First: crippan: Bent – as in “contracted limb”
And then, came creopan: “crawl upon the ground”)
From near a thousand years before my time.
That was the lie I did not think to find.
I had been taught my “challenges” were new.
Within our living memory, so they said,
The babies born too soon, with crooked limbs
Who never learned to walk, but only crawled,
Would be, with conscience clear, allowed to die.
'Twas more than penicillin saved my life,
More, even, than the incubator's warmth –
'Twas modern day enlightenment and grace.
How could those lexicographers have known
That they were oracles by accident,
To send me ancient truth from ancient ghosts?
“Please know: we've always lived upon this Earth –
We few, we stubborn few, who made our way.
We have been seen. And we've been spoken of.
And even though your history forgets,
Our lives have left their mark upon your life.”
And now, I only wish to free this word
From all the ragged hand-me-downs it's worn:
Moth-eaten blankets soaked in Pity's tears.
And wrap it up in something new and soft:
Bright silks of creativity and pride.
I'll wear this scarlet letter on my chest,
And speak the word in honor of my kind
And then, I'll smile when the bigots flinch.
Oh, even gentle souls, who'd never dream
To call me “cripple” (such a bigots' word)
Will choose to speak of crippled abstract things
(Like city roads, or functions of the state)
Whenever they are weak and broken down.
And we both know the reason why they do:
The human meaning of the word remains,
And my life is a life no one would want.
At last, one day, there came a tipping point –
I longed to see its bones displayed and marked,
To know, without a doubt, it was a lie.
Instead, upon the dictionary page,
I saw an outline so much like myself
It might have been the hollow in my bed
I leave behind me when the morning comes:
A fossil imprint left in hardened ground.
Below the definition (noun and verb)
Within poor “cripple's” Anglo-Saxon roots –
I saw two symptoms noted in my chart
By which my diagnosis had been made
(First: crippan: Bent – as in “contracted limb”
And then, came creopan: “crawl upon the ground”)
From near a thousand years before my time.
That was the lie I did not think to find.
I had been taught my “challenges” were new.
Within our living memory, so they said,
The babies born too soon, with crooked limbs
Who never learned to walk, but only crawled,
Would be, with conscience clear, allowed to die.
'Twas more than penicillin saved my life,
More, even, than the incubator's warmth –
'Twas modern day enlightenment and grace.
How could those lexicographers have known
That they were oracles by accident,
To send me ancient truth from ancient ghosts?
“Please know: we've always lived upon this Earth –
We few, we stubborn few, who made our way.
We have been seen. And we've been spoken of.
And even though your history forgets,
Our lives have left their mark upon your life.”
And now, I only wish to free this word
From all the ragged hand-me-downs it's worn:
Moth-eaten blankets soaked in Pity's tears.
And wrap it up in something new and soft:
Bright silks of creativity and pride.
I'll wear this scarlet letter on my chest,
And speak the word in honor of my kind
And then, I'll smile when the bigots flinch.
no subject
Date: 2014-09-17 12:47 am (UTC)*applause*
*more applause*
no subject
Date: 2014-09-17 01:17 am (UTC)thanks.
Ta.
Seriously, I've been working on this poem for about two weeks straight. After a while, it was like swimming through alphabet noodles... I was starting to lose track of which metaphors were which. I wasn't even sure it was intelligible.
Well...
Date: 2014-09-17 10:17 am (UTC)Neither compassion nor cruelty are new, but both have been with us from the beginning. It just varies which a given culture or individual favors.
Re: Well...
Date: 2014-09-17 11:17 am (UTC)That doesn't prevent the meme that "Disabled babies were left to die the moment they're born" from being as ubiquitous as the ABCs in our culture. I was pretty much told that, in so just many words, on a few occasions as a youth and teenager -- usually in response to me complaining about poor access, being taunted by peers, or condescended to by authority figures:
"It's not so bad. At least, you're alive. If you'd been born just a generation ago, the doctor would have recommended withholding care." (Which may also have been true, depending on the doctor, place and time.) "We really have come a very long way." (Which is probably less true).
Also, if you read any standard history of medicine, you'll probably come across the "Fact" that "Spastic Diplegia" (later classified as a specific type of Cerebral Palsy) was "First discovered" by Doctor William John Little in 1860 -- that he was the first to notice, ever, that certain children, who'd had premature and or difficult births all had very similar symptoms, among them, having contracted limbs with tight, stiff movement, and never advancing past the belly crawl stage of locomotion at five months (? I think that's the developmental stage for that, more or less). As if we were entirely invisible until a white anglophone physician decided to talk about us with other white anglophone physicians. I was originally going to include a stanza on "Little's Disease," but I didn't want this to become too pedantic.
I wanted to use this poem to say that just paying attention to our language proves that both those "Facts" are untrue.
no subject
Date: 2014-09-17 12:07 pm (UTC)"I saw an outline so much like myself
It might have been the hollow in my bed"
no subject
Date: 2014-09-17 12:51 pm (UTC)The very first metaphor I tried, for this iteration of the poem, was of "Cripple" as a traveler, who had zir passport stamped by Pity every time ze crossed our lips. And that of seeing myself as a sketched outline, where there ink had faded, and the paper worn thin (seeing myself in the moment I realized someone like me had been seen).
But that image failed when I put it up against seeing the "bones" of the word displayed in the dictionary.
And then, that metaphor fell apart when I wanted to say that words were like territories of thought, and how I wanted to reclaim "Cripple" from the bullies/bigots that had since claimed it (lucky for me, and future readers, that I couldn't make "Territories of Thought" fit easily inside iambic pentameter).
But the bed fit with the fossil image, and (bonus for the win) it conveys the idea that cripples can be comfortable in their own bodies, sometimes.
no subject
Date: 2014-09-17 01:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-09-17 01:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-09-21 02:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-09-21 11:24 am (UTC)It's tricky to simultaneously convey something as abstract and intellectual as etymology and convey my gut reaction. I worried that I was coming off as writing a few paragraphs in a textbook, and just being tricky with my word choices.
So I'm glad to know it worked.