Stop. (Verse) With Video Confrontation by Otep

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Paternalism refers usually to an attitude or a policy reminiscent of the hierarchic pattern of a family based on patriarchy, that is, there is a figurehead (the father, pater in Latin) that makes decisions on behalf of others (the "wife" and "children") for their own good, even if this is contrary to their wishes.
It is implied that the fatherly figure is wiser than and acts in the best interest of its protected figures. The term may be used derogatorily to characterize attitudes or political systems that are thought to deprive individuals of freedom and responsibility, only nominally serving their interests, while in fact pursuing another agenda; and when the pursued agenda is directly against the interests of the individuals then the result is oppression.


The term paternalism has two important meanings: the first is the assumption that the more powerful and the better-off in any society have obligations towards the less powerful and the poor, and the second is the set of informal expectations and codes of manners held by men about how to behave towards women. What unites these two assumptions is the idea that it is the responsibility of the more powerful to demonstrate concern for the less powerful, but without disturbing existing power relations or taking steps to ensure that those in weaker social positions are enabled to improve their situations. Paternalism is frequently associated with nineteenth- and twentieth-century attitudes towards the poor: paternalistic strategies advocated acts of individual charity to alleviate poverty while rejecting more radical attempts to provide social assistance that did not depend on acts of individual goodwill. In the latter part of the twentieth century, western feminism has identified paternalism as a masculine pattern of conduct that maintains male power and is essentially random and individualistic. At the same time, other critiques of paternalism have identified it as a set of expectations that are always organized around the presumption of the authority of the powerful (whatever the source of power) over the less powerful.
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Stop.


I don’t care what the stars say
this is the age of women
women rising up and laying claim
in their God given gifted intelligence
And uttering new truths
against hypocrisies

How many of us can you beat down?

we will come at you
with that and a 1000 more

We are sick and weary
of your excesses
your abuses
your territorial
drawing of lines
in the sand not to be crossed

while bullets and bombs
rain down crushing
our sons and daughters


we are sickened by your greed
wars and unconscionable excesses

You have corrupted our children
with your hatreds and cruel expectations
we are not put upon this earth
to be in servitude to you

we who birth both sons and daughters
grow within us the very secret of all healing
we who are the foundation of the home

we are not chattel

you run around in a bag with a view all day
we are tired of you twisting religion to justify
your barbaric cruelty on our tender flesh

you deny us an education
so deeply you fear an educated woman

you make up laws that insure
we will be abused, starved, raped,
kidnapped and sold
stop imprisoning us for things you know
we work too hard to have time to do

We are not inferior

stop suffocating us with wet towels for lacking
a small piece of meat between our legs
stop throwing acid on our beauty
simply because 20 cents is a cheap revenge
and you can

Stop filling our bodies with bullets for standing up
speaking our truths and standing in our light

Stop reflecting your corruption
upon the mirror that is our hearts

when you know
we have done nothing wrong
but piss you off



Brightfire Woman © 2009 All rights reserved

I Would be a Liar

I Would Be a Liar


My world careens like a car with a cut brakeline.

I swerve along leaning into the curves
all lines have become a gray blur

so close I count the pebbles in the asphalt.
So surreal I have time to think about it
this centrifugal force that keeps me,

In round and around…

I am the master running the top of the wheel;
all out to go no where but not down.

Life has always been different than most;
peculiar, childlike, eccentric,
With the occasional shattered glass entry.

Thoughts… dropping like swat,

as my mind slips… out the back exit
avoiding that which I can not bare

the thought of happened anyway.
I just don’t have it in me to care anymore
or maybe… I just can’t call it forth

without opening the door

It matters, to even, a caged bird…
where the windows are

If they can’t escape they have a view
for vicarious imaginings of
freedoms I can no longer feel.

I would be a liar, to say, “I can’t remember“,

my flights of fancy … days were short
nights were long bated breath dances.

When I remember that… I remember what
I thought would just heal,
invisible and unknown to the naked eye

My snake like apathy of post traumatic,

coiling tightly flesh embedded,
destroying from the inside out.

I must soar rather than suffocate,
rise above falling below…
and find my way back to

being the woman that got beyond it.




Brightfire Woman ©2009

On the Edge of Shallow

I have insulate myself

I hide in flesh and hair ill-kept
the secrets I keep poisoning

the woman hides behind me
I put her into baggy clothes
and this side of locked doors

I do not know what she needs

growing weaker in a disgust for
the atrocities entertained for game

slow motion fights suicidal wishes
sinks deep barbed wire memories
of utter disgust for what was done

while time alone embeds it to bone

the darkness of an inferior evil nature
night sweats, can’t breathe, weak knees

humming bird palpitations beat hollow
swallowed back tears choke while
stomach acids rise in a too tight throat

drifting in and out of suffering lost

deliberate disarray builds to new heights
leave it where it lays booby-traps topple

just another psycho sick fuck too close
damages run deep when my dreams
drown on the edge of shallow



Brightfire Woman © 2009
All Rights Reserved

Beautifully Frail(Verse) with 'Unwell' Match Box 20 (Video)

Beautifully Frail


I can see shadowy sketches of a better life.

But blind shoots are shooting up,
out of no where everywhere
like horror film vines.
Blocking the light of reason
tangling my decisions
holding all things too tightly
in the same place.
Making me feel so sorry for myself,
So weakly ashamed of my own inadequacies.

My brain is beautifully…frail…

Sometimes it runs itself down
Most times it is like a steam locomotive,
with a mad man dripping
sweat and slinging coal…
Like hot hungry orange slung
head on into pitch black
Fuel, spark, flames lick… fire.

Where is today’s passion?

It has left the room put on it’s best negligee,
and crawled back into bed.
Without me.
Making me feel lonely … cold,
not quite whole --
Some.


Brightfire Woman
Copyright 2009

Real Magic (Verse) with B.B, King Farm Aid Video 1985

Real Magic

I am a witchy woman

uncertain of her path
yet feeling
with a 7th sense of knowing
the tethers of a collective whole
feeling moved to speak

knowing that
nature has a love for living
It is innately self healing and forgiving

Long in neglect it will rise up and bless
the hand that tends each sign it sends

of need to seed it each pain to ease it
Our simple place in a most complex grace
No more than that to apease it

So I began…

The bees have returned
Drawn to
the flowers that drew
my first humming bird

tall plants in which to hide
brought wildlife back to abide

Food. Water. Shelter.
Offerings have always
fed not Gods but life passing by.

Do you not hear the call
to return to stewardship?

It was in the snow that fell twice past Mid-April
It was in the flooded crops of rivers breaching banks in June
It is in the coolest July I can ever remember

It is not true
that with enough money at stake
anything can wait or be bought and forced to

or that we can do nothing when we can not do everything
It was that line of reasoning that started all this.
Do you not see that greed is an obsession?

That we have traded self sufficiency
for convenience and dulled senses?
traded agriculture for industry

while our strong backed
sons and daughters
were working to make rich
captains of industry
manufacturing all that was homemade
for home and family needs

From textiles, needle arts and decorative
Profiting not only from our labor
But from selling us
All that no one was home to make

Dinners in a basket
Ho-hoes, Twinkies and Ding dongs

No more women in aprons
telling stories snapping beans
For the next day’s supper

family farms became factories
They wouldn’t bail out the farmer
But they bail out the banks

Now nothing is built to last
Poorly constructed designed
to break or be out date soon

with materials made to not biodegrade

add technology to our industry
Amass mountains of disposable products
metals to be harvested from

parts that release airborne toxins
Into the lungs of the children
that are the future

While
whole countries
hide their waste
out in the open
waters?
To wash up on tired shores
the premises being,
who gets around to

THAT side of the ocean
where the natives are poor
the coral is already dying and broken?

Centuries old knowledge and instincts
are being forgotten along with thousands
of years of resources depleted

Dumping a mix out of a box
and adding water
Is not
baking from scratch

and diamonds simulated in a lab
are not diamonds

Our children no longer have the know how
that our grandparents once did
they would feel lost in the dark
without a microwave

So let us begin again now
to speak to our elders
about how it all was done
before the rush to cities and towns

Let us begin to grow something
in any space we can

on roof tops and empty lots,
on sink edges and deck rails
in repurposed containers and old pots,

no land to call your own
go hydroponics in Tupperware
grow flowers or little care bulbs

it is the heart of the gardener
that is being grown
after all

And the real magic is in the earth

Let your feet feel the connection
and the dirt warm in your hand

It is healing
It is empowering
Imbibe in the color green

Let your shorn lawns grow long
to enrich the soil and protect it in drought

Plant fruits, berries and nuts
once
and they will come back
year after year

Save gas
shop and work at home
tend your part and I will mine

the land on which we stand
is but a square in an infinite amazement

not blanketing us but the very life
that runs though us and on beyond us

and know what the lies really are
If we tend it, it will heal
Food. Water. Shelter.
Everything multiplies.

You see the longer we think
it is too late to do anything
the longer we waste in wait
the more money they can make

feeding us upon single
servings individually wrapped
stuffed in a cardboard frame
so they won’t slosh in a near empty box

They show us how soon the end is near
how fast it will look like we were never here

When the waters
burst free
from all their trappings

when we are no longer here
to operate the locks and dams

our skyscrapers will crumble back to rainforests
in just a couple hundred years

Yet we can not go back fifty even half way
to save our species?

They want us to wait, they want us to procrastinate
They want us to debate and do what they tell us to
while they sell us more merchandise at 10 times the cost

How, I ask, can I sway you?
To for once
ponder how simple it would be
to sow instead of reap

To refuse to wipe your backside
on ancient forests
with one hand

While ordering up a plate
with the other
that pays for the raping
scraping raw of all life
upon the ocean floor
all flora and fauna

We are devouring
other life forms to extinction
poisoning
every living thing including ourselves
on a daily basis

We need to reconnect to the memory
be less needy of our wants
more in touch with our needs
we would begin to live on less and have more

Just by stopping
all that buys our way into hell

Lets keep it real
at the rate we reproduce
we were once meat as well

try living as there is no trying dying


Brightfire Woman © 2009 All rights reserved.


This is B.B. King singing at the first farm aid in 1985 In Champaign, Illinois and I remember this number as I am looking up from below watching the sweat roll down his cheek and from the best I can tell since I am short I am one of those below stage level waving arms. Hey, I fought for that position starting from back bleachers. It seemed an appropriate reconnect. And my God I sure felt differently about crowds back then...it is the first footage I have seen having been there I kinda missed the telethon at home. Also you will notice the tarp over the camera as we were soaked most the day in utter downpours. I remember thinking we were saving the farms for good...not so.

Whispers (Verse) with Whispers (Video)

Whispers

　

I am overwhelmed by the unexpressed

emotions of family communications,

the talk of saying nothing more

and thinking of so much less.

I think none feel real;

seen and felt for who they are,

respected for how they live

what they think and do.

There are always whispers in the crowd.

Actions unexplained and seldom openly questioned.

This one is not there or that one had to run;

this one is once a year…

that one can not stay there.

Does every family bleed through their armor

wield words like weapons;

have landmines laced through all attempts

at social interactions?

Forgive you or not…

It is a tap dance on the butt of a wooden stake;

tapping tap-tap- mean mouth ill rapping,

fraction by fraction deeper,

into the heart of it doesn’t matter.

　

Brightfire Woman © 2009

A Good cry(Verse) and videos

To Reach You (Poetry) with Video: Wake to Wither By Nebelhexe

To Reach You


Depressed. Oppressed. Suppressed.
Stop pressing me stressing me
there are no juices left in me.

Appetites for the material
have left nothing
to materialize with…

Let us rub two rolling stones
over nothing
and see what there is
to ignite

lessons in the futility
of making do right
Long ago not far away

just a snap or two
Three… four

saw you shut the door
Seven… eight

changed mind not fate
a monster hesitates

too late
broken
terminally unspoken
stuck in a place behind
the back side of able
Unable

two beats late
to swallow
Too afraid of dying
in a sea of disbelief
to wallow

as in then
here in now

I will never be
the domino
in pocket
leading you to
what simpering need
feeds

I am a loaded gun
you can not fire
neither straight nor true
nor free of debris

there will
be no series of
lives in ruin
or mercy for
the repulsive
side of view

I am a prisoner from
the land of tied tongues
in a world of move on
holding you over the edge
where I cast down
my shadow long gone

silently knowing
watching you watch me
both of us stretching
tightly as you twist slightly
dangle painfully threads thin

from the starvation
of waiting for
the winds of your Karma
to reach you
Brightfire Woman © 2009

The World

The World
The World was not safe from Itself
If it had been human it would have rolled around
in it’s blue blanket seas and pulled the clouds
that billowed on endlessly
Up over it and waited to die
as only the most deeply depressed do
And sighed.
The kind of sigh that slips out slowly.
So Slowly you begin to contemplate…
if there might not be a gentle way to just not breathe.
But you always do…not having the energy not to.
Yes, just like that. The World Felt.
Mind you, nobody knew…I ask you how sad is that?
The thing was all a misconception which the World defined as a human error.
Humans conceived only the physical vessel, the earth,
as the World.
It was that, seeing the sum of parts as the whole,
that left a great deal not in the inventory…
which made the World…quite distressed
When the World is not happy all that walks
upon her surface may not be safe.
But this?
Oh, far worse!
In this state the World was not safe.
She was weak with grief and numb with pain
For too long she had been under attack.
On the inside she was torn and on the outside she was worn
And somewhere in the middle she huddled really small
And waited.
For someone human to note she had consciousness
But no one did… and that really…
as she sniffled back a year’s rain in one place
to sob it out and flood another place…
Was the last straw
Something snapped. Not like rubber band snap. More like large tree branch snap under a really big foot kind a snap?
Like ‘not wanting to be long around these parts’, kind a snap.
muttering angrily about and slamming stuff
Waves off of distant shores spilling the contents everywhere
What good, she screamed, was beauty unshared?
What good was awareness with nothing to express it to?
Had She not waited since the beginning of time?
Every leaf in her being trembled
for just a second all creatures great and small
focused intently on her…
the humans
she felt the flash and fire of enlightenment
they had sensed her presence
Too late for saving Grace
how deeply damaged she was how unstable
in this, not her best of moments…
billions of eyes seemed to see her
for once
Not past her or through her
And in those eyes and in that instance
all hope was dashed… she saw only
fear and disgust looking back
For what she thought in feverish shame
Had never been felt so deeply before
for her lack of not being
what they had suspected and expected
All eyes turned away from her in swift rejection
As if pretending she wasn’t there to be seen
Made it as good as it had been before
Her Self-Realization had cause their recognition
She took one last breath
spoke in spectrums of light that were long and undulating
And this is what she said,
How you fill the air, that is me, with your egotistical rants
and whining for more with your petty grievances and silly hatreds for each other
Like chickens you peck each black downy spot bloody.
It does not matter the color that you are.
I am infused with all color.
It has never mattered what you look like.
Can’t you see how ridiculous such things would be to me?
To me…who you could not see?
Do you not grasp it does not matter what you own?
To an entity that is all you have and has nothing?
Foolish creatures do you not see in comparison
you are all dirt below me even at your best
not a boastful hair’s breath between your worst and best
It does not matter if you be old or young
Time is but a making of your own
Or even who you love. All that matters is that you do.
And with those words, the World collapsed all her tears spent
And her fall was great and in it she lost consciousness
And without a thought the whole world ceased
It was not as she wanted or even close to what she needed
But at last there was peace.
　
Brightfire Woman © 2009