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Morning Open Thread: No One Is Coming to Save Us . . . the Poor, As Always, Pay the Tab [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-05-12
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“Democracy is not a spectator sport.”
― Marian Wright Edelman,
African American activist for civil
and children’s rights, founder of
the Children’s Defense Fund
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“This is how elected autocrats subvert democracy—
packing and “weaponizing” the courts and other
neutral agencies, buying off the media and the private
sector (or bullying them into silence), and rewriting
the rules of politics to tilt the playing field against
opponents. The tragic paradox of the electoral route
to authoritarianism is that democracy’s assassins
use the very institutions of democracy—gradually,
subtly, and even legally—to kill it.”
― Steven Levitsky, author
of How Democracies Die
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Welcome to Morning Open Thread, a daily post
with a MOTley crew of hosts who choose the topic
for the day's posting. We support our community,
invite and share ideas, and encourage thoughtful,
respectful dialogue in an open forum. That’s a
feature, not a bug. Other than that, site rulz rule.
Morning Open Thread is looking for
contributors — either occasional,
or weekly. If interested, please
contact officebss or Ozarkblue
for more information.
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So grab your cuppa, and join in.
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13 poets born in May, survivors
and seekers, prophets and pundits,
voices from past and present,
with warnings we should heed.
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May 11
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1901 – Rose Ausländer born in Czernowitz in the Bukovina. She lived through its tumultuous history of belonging to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Kingdom of Romania, and eventually the Soviet Union. It is currently Chernivtsi, Ukraine. A Jewish poet and translator who wrote in both German and English, Ausländer became a U.S. citizen, and was editor of the U.S. German language newspaper Westlicher Herold while she lived in New York. But she returned home to care for her mother, and lost her U.S. citizenship because she did not return to the U.S. for over three years. The Nazis invaded in October 1941, and from then until 1943, she worked as a forced laborer (Zwangsarbeiter) in the city’s ghetto, with her mother and brother, but then spent another year in hiding to avoid being deported to a Nazi concentration camp. Most copies of her first books of poems were destroyed during the Nazi occupation. She escaped to the U.S. in October, 1944. Ausländer then wrote only in English for several years before resuming writing primarily in German. In 1963, she published her second book of poetry, Blinder Sommer (Blind summer). She returned to Europe in 1967, and settled in Düsseldorf, where she died at age 86 in January 1988.
Czernowitz before the Second World War
by Rose Ausländer
Peaceful hill town
encircled by beech woods
Willows along the Pruth
rafts and swimmers
Maytime profusion of lilac
About the lanterns
May bugs dance
their death
Four languages
Speak to each other
enrich the air
The town
breathed happily
till bombs fell
“Czernowitz before the Second World War” from Selected Poems: Rose Ausländer, © 1977 by Rose Ausländer – London Magazine Editions
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1909 – Kim Kirim born as In-son Kim in Haksung, North Hamgyong Province, Korean Empire (now part of North Korea); Korean modernist poet and literary critic. In 1930, he graduated from Nihon University in Tokyo, Japan, with a BA in literary arts, then returned to Korea where he worked as a newspaper reporter for the Chosun Ilbo, in Seoul, now considered Korea’s newspaper of record. In 1933, he was a founding member of the Circle of Nine literary association. He took a leave of absence (1936-1939) from Chosun Ilbo to earn an MA from Japan’s Tohoku University, then resumed his work as a reporter until the forced closure of Chosun Ilbo in 1940 by the Japanese colonial government. In 1942, he worked as an English teacher at Gyeongseong Middle School near his hometown. In January 1946, after the liberation of Korea from Japanese colonial rule, he crossed the 38th parallel, where all his property and books were taken by force. He was living in poverty in South Korea, but managed to get the rest of his family over the border by 1948, then became a teacher at Chung-Ang University, and later a professor at Seoul National University. There, he founded and was director of the New Culture Research Institute until the Korean War broke out, and he was reportedly abducted by North Korea’s state political security department. He is presumed dead, date and location not known. His poetry collections include: The Weather Chart; Wind Speed of the Sun; The Sea and the Butterfly; and The New Song.
The Sea and the Butterfly
by Kim Kirim
No one told him about the water’s depth.
The white butterfly did not know how to fear the sea.
Thinking it to be a field of blue radish leaves, he floated down.
Young wings ended up pickled in the waves,
Then he returned, tired like a princess.
No flower blossomed on the sea of March’s moon. The grieving
Butterfly’s waist was cold with the pale crescent.
“The Sea and the Butterfly” from March First Movement: Korean Translations, translation © 2016 by Jack Saebyok Jung
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May 12
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1812 – Edward Lear was born in the Holloway district of London, in Great Britain. He was quite famous as an English artist, illustrator, musician, author, and poet, but is now remembered mostly for his limericks, a form which he helped popularize. In 1846, he published A Book of Nonsense, his first collection of limericks, under the pen name “Derry down Derry.” His health worsened in the cold and damp English winters, so he spent his last years in Italy, where he died of a heart attack at age 75 in January 1888.
There was an Old Man on the Border
by Edward Lear
There was an old man on the Border,
Who lived in the utmost disorder;
He danced with the cat, and made tea in his hat,
Which vexed all the folks on the Border.
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1947 – Penelope Shuttle born in Staines-upon-Thames, Middlesex, UK; British poet, novelist, short story writer, and non-fiction writer. She and her partner Peter Redgrove, a poet and scientific journalist, co-authored The Wise Wound: menstruation and everywoman, and its self-help sequel, Alchemy for Women. Shuttle was honored as a distinguished poet with the 2007 Cholmondeley Award. Her poetry collections include: Nostalgia Neurosis; The Orchard Upstairs; Adventures with my Horse; and Sandgrain and Hourglass. A founding member of the Falmouth Poetry Group, she lives in Falmouth, Cornwall, with her partner and their daughter Zoe.
Orchard End, or The Laboratory of Continuous Effort
by Penelope Shuttle
An apple tree bent double with fruit
grew in the middle of the living room
shaking gently
as the average family pootled by with plates
or devices in their hands
The room was almost all tree
everyone edged round it
Curiously no one picked a single apple
nor did the ripe fruit ever fall
The full tree stood there
a daemon to behold
Who lives in that house now
I can’t tell you
My childhood lives on there
and my parent shadows
and all my days and nights that will never bear fruit
The apple tree I speak of
roots itself partly in truth and partly in lies
Those roots are splinters of the true cross
They alone know why miracles are best avoided
“Orchard End, or The Laboratory of Continuous Effort,” © 2016 by Penelope Shuttle, appeared in the December 2016 issue of Poetry magazine.
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1989 – Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello born in Korea; a transracial adoptee, she was raised by non-Korean parents in Ithaca, NY; American poet, radio show producer, professor, and translator. She learned Korean as a teenager. Cancio-Bello earned a BA in English from Carnegie Mellon University in 2011, and an MFA in creative writing from Florida International University in 2014. Her poetry collection, Hour of the Ox, won the AWP Donald Hall Prize for Poetry. She is a co-founding editor of Print-Oriented Bastards. Cancio-Bello is also a founding member of the Starlings Collective, and has been program coordinator for the Miami Book Fair, and a producer for The Working Poet Radio Show. She currently lives in Miami.
Lucky
by Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello
When I was younger
and better, I found a pin
shaped like a gold clover,
four leaves and green
loopy lettering O’
Calabretta and my father
told me he wore it
on St. Patty’s Day to keep
away the Italian in him
and the Irish fists at bay
at least one day of the year.
I never found the pin again.
It disappeared as if he was
ready to forget each bruise
or wanted me to stop asking
what he was like at my age
or wanted to believe
the world could be
kinder to every Calabretta
who came after him,
saying that I was already
one of the lucky ones.
“Lucky,” © 2018 by Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello, appeared at cordella magazine, an online literary magazine
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May 13
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1904 – Earle Birney born in Calgary, Alberta, and raised on a farm in southeastern British Columbia; Canadian poet and novelist who twice won the Governor General’s Award, Canada’s top literary honour, for The Last David and Other Poems in 1942 and Now is the Time in 1945. He died at age 91 of a heart attack in 1995.
Plaza De La Inquisición
(for pat)
by Earle Birney
A spider's body
limp and hairy
appeared at the bottom of my coffee
The waiter being Castilian
said passionately nothing
And why indeed should apologies
be made to me
It was I who was looking in
at the spider
It might be years
before I slipped and drowned
in somebody else's cup
“Plaza De La Inquisición” from The Poems of Earle Birney, © 1969 by Earle Birney – McClelland and Stewart
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1962 – Kathleen Jamie born in Edinburgh and raised in nearby Currie; Scottish poet, essayist, and travel writer; appointed in 2021 as Makar (National Poet for Scotland) for a three-year term. Her poetry collections include: Black Spiders; The Queen of Sheba; The Tree House (2004 winner of the Scottish Book of the Year Award and the Forward Poetry Prize); Waterlight; and The Overhaul.
Lochnagar
by Kathleen Jamie
The alder boughs hang heavy,
Red weighs the rowan-trees
That line the well-loved path which climbs
To Lochnagar from Dee
And knows at last the open hill,
Those ancient wind-honed heights
Where deer stand shy and sky-lined,
Then vanish from living sight,
Where grief is ice, and history
Is distant roiling skies,
Where weather chases weather
Across the lands she strived
To serve, and served supremely well,
Till the call came from afar:
Back to the country kept in her heart,
the Dee, and Lochnagar.
“Lochnagar” was written on the passing of Queen Elizabeth II at Balmoral in September 2022 — © 2022 by Kathleen Jamie
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May 14
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1935 – Roque Dalton born Roque Antonio Dalton García, an illegitimate child, in San Salvador; Salvadoran poet, essayist, journalist, political activist, and revolutionary. He joined the Communist Party of El Salvador, and was imprisoned in 1959 and 1960 for inciting revolt, then went into exile, spending time in Mexico, Czechoslovakia, and Cuba, where most of his poetry was published. Following his return to El Salvador in 1965, he was arrested and interrogated. Dalton left again in 1969, to work in Cuba and Prague as a correspondent for The International Review: Problems of Peace and Socialism. Also in 1969, he won the Poetry Prize Casa de las Américas for his book Taberna y otros lugares (Tavern and other places). In 1973, he joined Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo (People’s Revolutionary Army – ERP) during the unrest leading up to the Salvadoran Civil War, but ERP leader Alejandro Rivas Mira accused him of trying to divide the ERP, and Dalton was executed by the ERP’s military faction at age 39 in May 1975.
Como Tú
by Roque Dalton
Like you I
love love, life, the sweet spell
of things, the sky-blue
landscape of January days.
And my blood boils up
and I laugh through eyes
that have known the buds of tears.
I believe the world is beautiful
and that poetry, like bread, is for everyone.
And that my veins don’t end in me
but in the unanimous blood
of those who struggle for life,
love,
little things,
landscape and bread,
the poetry of everyone.
“Como Tú” (Like You) from from Poetry Like Bread: Poets of the Political Imagination, edited by Martin Espada – Curbstone Press, September 2000 edition
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1976 – C.L. Bledsoe born in Wynne, Arkansas, as Cortney Lance Bledsoe, and was raised on a rice and catfish farm in eastern Arkansas; American poet, novelist, short story writer, and blogger. His blog is Not Another TV Dad, and he also cowrites a blog, How to Even, with Michael Gushue. He has published several poetry collections, including: Goodbye to Noise; Anthem; Leap Year; Trashcans in Love; and Having a Baby to Save a Marriage.
Bespoke Apocalypse
by C.L. Bledsoe
I’d like flowers in the sky, falling
to engulf traffic under the weight
of their petals. Flames in the Fortune
500 buildings and those they’ve bought.
The sky full of ashes; I like
to pour them in my coffee for a little pep.
The water taps keep going.
We can shit in a bucket and empty
it on Wallstreet. Same for
the politicians, the country singers.
It’s the poor, as always, pay the tab
when the bar closes. The billionaires
dying in their rockets on the way
to Mars. Loan me a missile,
and I’ll pay you back ASAP.
None of that running you see on TV.
The zombies all voted to die in the sun.
Get to know your neighbors. Plant
a garden and hope for the best.
We can eat squirrels. Deer. The rich.
No one is coming to save us.
They can’t even save themselves
without a lobbyist and campaign donations.
The thing I miss the most is things.
But it finally got me off the dating apps.
“Bespoke Apocalypse” © 2023 by C.L. Bledsoe appeared in the online oddball magazine’s November 29, 2023 post
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May 15
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1935 – Utah Phillips born as Bruce Duncan Phillips in Cleveland, Ohio; American Industrial Workers of the World member, labor organizer, folk singer, storyteller, poet, pacifist, and train-hopper. He wrote many songs, including “There is Power in a Union,” “Solidarity Forever,” “Joe Hill,” and “All Used Up.” In 1976, he was the Do Nothing Party’s candidate for President of the United States. In May 2008, Utah Phillips died at age 73 in Nevada City, California.
the old guy's annual labor day message
by Utah Phillips
hip hip hurray,
the eight-hour day,
potato chips and beer!
go all the way,
the four-hour day,
the four-day week is near!
(the boss don't care;
he gets his share,
and a mighty big share, i hear.)
but who can scoff
at another day off
and potato chips and beer?
well, tell the pol
we want 'em all;
the bosses are up the creek.
'till they obey
a no-hour day,
we'll just take us a no-day week!
© 2007 by Utah Phillips
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1949 – Alice Major was born in Scotland, but came to Canada at age 8; Canadian poet, young readers novelist, and essayist who grew up in Toronto before working as a weekly newspaper reporter in central British Columbia. She has lived in Edmonton, Alberta, since 1981. Her first book, The Chinese Mirror, a fantasy novel for young readers, appeared in 1988. Major has also written an essay collection Intersecting Sets: A Poet Looks at Science. She is a past-president of both the Writers’ Guild of Alberta and the League of Canadian Poets. Major was the City of Edmonton’s first poet laureate (2005-2007). Her many poetry collections include Time Travels Light; Lattice of the Years; Welcome to the Anthropocene; Memory’s Daughter; and Knife on Snow.
She wrote this poem for the Edmonton celebration of winning athletes returning from the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics:
The athletes enter the closing ceremonies
by Alice Major
We watch them jostle in.
We are aware of our own wonky knees,
our tendonitis and carpal tunnels,
our hernias and narrowing aortas –
aware of all the ways
the physical can fail us.
We have been awed by their bodies –
the strength and bulk of muscle,
the sleek speed of skaters, skiers,
the targeted exactitude
of wrist and hand, sinew,
nerve, eye.
But now it is their glowing faces
that fill the TV screen. Not the sheen
of medals, but the beautiful,
inebriating joy. It reminds us all
of how the body goes beyond itself.
Becoming, somehow, soul.
“The athletes enter the closing ceremonies” © 2010 by Alice Major
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May 16
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1929 – Adrienne Rich born in Baltimore, Maryland; American poet, essayist, and radical American feminist icon. She is credited with bringing “the oppression of women and lesbians to the forefront of poetic discourse.” In 1950, her first collection of poetry, A Change of World, was selected by renowned poet W. H. Auden for the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award. Auden wrote the introduction to the published volume. In 1997, Rich famously declined the National Medal of Arts, in protest of the vote by the Republican-majority in the House of Representatives to end funding for the National Endowment for the Arts. In the 47 years in between, she published at least 20 more poetry collections; won too many fellowships, awards, and medals to count; published five books of well-reasoned and impassioned essays on women and their rights, motherhood, lesbianism, the privilege of white feminism, the invisibility of women scholars and artists of color, art in society, the clash of politics and culture, and the art of poetry. Before she was done, there were six more books of poetry, and four more books of essays and nonfiction. She died at age 82 in 2012, after years of suffering from rheumatoid arthritis.
For the Record
by Adrienne Rich
The clouds and the stars didn’t wage this war
the brooks gave no information
if the mountain spewed stones of fire into the river
it was not taking sides
the raindrop faintly swaying under the leaf
had no political opinions
and if here or there a house
filled with backed-up raw sewage
or poisoned those who lived there
with slow fumes, over years
the houses were not at war
nor did the tinned-up buildings
intend to refuse shelter
to homeless old women and roaming children
they had no policy to keep them roaming
or dying, no, the cities were not the problem
the bridges were non-partisan
the freeways burned, but not with hatred
Even the miles of barbed-wire
stretched around crouching temporary huts
designed to keep the unwanted
at a safe distance, out of sight
even the boards that had to absorb
year upon year, so many human sounds
so many depths of vomit, tears
slow-soaking blood
had not offered themselves for this
The trees didn’t volunteer to be cut into boards
nor the thorns for tearing flesh
Look around at all of it
and ask whose signature
is stamped on the orders, traced
in the corner of the building plans
Ask where the illiterate, big-bellied
women were, the drunks and crazies,
the ones you fear most of all: ask where you were.
“For the Record” from Your Native Land, Your Life, © 1986 by Adrienne Rich – W.W. Norton & Company
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May 17
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1936 – Lars Gustafsson born in Västerås, Sweden. He was a Swedish poet, novelist, and scholar. His first novel was published in 1959, and his first poetry collection the following year. Some of his poetry collections have been published in the U.S, including: The Stillness of the World Before Bach; Elegies and Other Poems; and A Time in Xanadu. Gustafsson was a professor at the University of Texas at Austin from 1983 until 2006, when he retired and returned to Sweden. He died at age 79 of cancer in April 2016.
The Wind Turns the Pages
by Lars Gustafsson
Late summer, the time of year
that suits my age.
And the slow,
one might almost say,
the patient, waves
only go in with hesitation
and hide
in the small dark cavities
under the stones of the shores.
It is best
to bail out our boats
only when it is really necessary.
A simple wisdom, this.
And not unlike this one:
To read the future,
the unfinished text,
only when it is really necessary.
“The Wind Turns the Pages” © 2005 by Lars Gustafsson, translation © 2005 by Susan W. Howard – first published at the online sight Poetry International
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G’Morning/Afternoon/Evening MOTlies!
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