I Learned the Truth at Seventeen

Hillary Clinton is an enormously intelligent and hard-working woman. She is a very capable Senator. She is knowledgeable about foreign policy and economics. She ran a good, hard campaign and lost fairly against an opponent whose time had come.

And now comes John McCain, who chooses an inexperienced, right-wing-extremist, former-beauty-queen female as his running mate so that he can attract Hillary supporters. He really doesn't get it, does he?

So, for all the women who, like me, learned the truth at seventeen that women will always be judged first by their looks, and second by their qualifications:

ARTIST: Janis Ian
TITLE: At Seventeen

I learned the truth at seventeen
That love was meant for beauty queens
And high school girls with clear skinned smiles
Who married young and then retired
The valentines I never knew
The Friday night charades of youth
Were spent on one more beautiful
At seventeen I learned the truth

And those of us with ravaged faces
Lacking in the social graces
Desperately remained at home
Inventing lovers on the phone
Who called to say, "come dance with me"
And murmur vague obscenities
It isn't all it seems at seventeen

A brown eyed girl in hand-me-downs
Whose name I never could pronounce said
Pity, please, the ones who serve
They only get what they deserve
The rich-relationed home-town queen
Marries into what she needs
With a guarantee of company and haven for the elderly

Remember those who win the game
Lose the love they sought to gain
In debentures of quality
And dubious integrity
Their small town eyes will gape at you in
Dull surprise when payment due
Exceeds accounts received at seventeen

To those of us who knew the pain
Of valentines that never came
And those whose names were never called
When choosing sides for basketball
It was long ago and far away
The world was younger than today
And dreams were all they gave for free
To ugly duckling girls like me

We all play the game and when we dare
To cheat ourselves at solitaire
Inventing lovers on the phone
Repenting other lives unknown
That call and say, "come dance with me"
And murmur vague obscenities
At ugly girls like me, at seventeen

I'm Sorry

When I made a tricky turn out of the Home Depot parking lot this morning, I pulled in front of a speeding minivan. She honked at me, of course, to inform me of her displeasure at having to slow down. I honked back and waved to let her know I was sorry, but somehow I think she may have misinterpreted what I was trying to say.

Why don't we have a quick and easy hand signal to say "I'm sorry"? We have a signal to say "Go screw yourself, you're an idiot anyhow", why not a signal to say "I'm sorry that my actions inconvenienced you, but I didn't mean to be hurtful and I won't do it again"? It might stop some road rage.

Dogs hide their tail between their legs and rub their heads on the ground when they are sorry. This keeps the rest of the pack from tearing them apart.

If cats have a signal to say they're sorry, I've never seen it.


Here is a poem by Stevie Smith about forgiveness, which doesn't have a lot to do with driving sins, but I like it.

Forgive me, forgive me

Forgive me forgive me my heart is my own
And not to be given for any man’s frown
Yet would I not keep it for ever alone.

Forgive me forgive me I thought that I loved
My fancy betrayed me my heart was unmoved
My fancy too often has carelessly roved.

Forgive me forgive me for here where I stand
There is no friend beside me no lover at hand
No footstep by mine in my desert of sand.

Stevie Smith

The State of the Nation

Humanity i love you
because you would rather black the boots of
success than enquire whose soul dangles from his
watch-chain which would be embarrassing for both

parties and because you
unflinchingly applaud all
songs containing the words country home and
mother when sung at the old howard

Humanity i love you because
when you're hard up you pawn your
intelligence to buy a drink and when
you're flush pride keeps

you from the pawn shop and
because you are continually committing
nuisances but more
especially in your own house

Humanity i love you because you
are perpetually putting the secret of
life in your pants and forgetting
it's there and sitting down

on it
and because you are
forever making poems in the lap
of death Humanity

i hate you

e.e.cummings


The puzzled ones, the Americans, go through their lives
Buying what they are told to buy,
Pursuing their love affairs with the automobile,

Baseball and football, romance and beauty,
Enthusiastic as trained seals, going into debt, struggling —
True believers in liberty, and also security,

And of course sex — cheating on each other
For the most part only a little, mostly avoiding violence
Except at a vast blue distance, as between bombsight and earth,

Or on the violent screen, which they adore.
Those who are not Americans think Americans are happy
Because they are so filthy rich, but not so.

They are mostly puzzled and at a loss
As if someone pulled the floor out from under them,
They'd like to believe in God, or something, and they do try.

You can see it in their white faces at the supermarket and the gas station
— Not the immigrant faces, they know what they want,
Not the blacks, whose faces are hurt and proud —

The white faces, lipsticked, shaven, we do try
To keep smiling, for when we're smiling, the whole world
Smiles with us, but we feel we've lost

That loving feeling. Clouds ride by above us,
Rivers flow, toilets work, traffic lights work, barring floods, fires
And earthquakes, houses and streets appear stable

So what is it, this moon-shaped blankness?
What the hell is it? America is perplexed.
We would fix it if we knew what was broken.

Alicia Suskin Ostriker

A Poem for Eliot Spitzer

Another politician has been caught with his pants down. I read somewhere that the same qualities that make a man a good politician, also make him more likely to be a philanderer. I suppose it's a power thing. But, it's nothing new and I find it hard to be shocked.


Authorship

King David and King Solomon
Led merry, merry lives,
With many, many lady friends
And many, many wives;
But when old age crept over them,
With many, many qualms,
King Solomon wrote the Proverbs
And King David wrote the Psalms.


James B. Naylor

What a Fool Believes

Ralph Nader is running for president again.

His name on the ballot in Florida in 2000 probably led us to 8 years of George W. Bush, but Mr. Nader is unrepentant. He said last Sunday "If the Democrats can't win by a landslide this year, they don't deserve to govern." Well, that's one way to look at it.

Mr. Nader apparently believes that his is the only voice in America speaking about poverty, the environment or universal health care, and that running for president is the only way to be heard.

I struggled to find a poem to express my feelings about Ralph Nader, and finally came up with song lyrics written by Michael McDonald and Kenny Loggins:

What a Fool Believes

He came from somewhere back in her long ago
The sentimental fool dont see
Tryin hard to recreate
What had yet to be created once in her life

She musters a smile
For his nostalgic tale
Never coming near what he wanted to say
Only to realize
It never really was

She had a place in his life
He never made her think twice
As he rises to her apology
Anybody else would surely know
Hes watching her go

But what a fool believes he sees
No wise man has the power to reason away
What seems to be
Is always better than nothing
And nothing at all keeps sending him...

Somewhere back in her long ago
Where he can still believe theres a place in her life
Someday, somewhere, she will return

She had a place in his life
He never made her think twice
As he rises to her apology
Anybody else would surely know
Hes watching her go

But what a fool believes he sees
No wise man has the power to reason away
What seems to be
Is always better than nothing
Theres nothing at all
But what a fool believes he sees...