It is not a time for shopkeeper souls, a poem

It is not a time for those with shopkeeper souls

Meticulous in their ways

Whose daily commutes are ruined

By signs of closed businesses, foreclosed homes

Affronts leading them to drive down more fortunate streets

How to disarm those on

Such a monotonous, finite journey?

Should we fling the sand of Iraq in their faces

Or the mud of tent cities?

Those shopkeeper souls

Whose daily tallies reckon not with the invisible

Never seeking beyond what appears

(So carefully controlled)

Pouting when disturbed by

The sound and sight of others’ suffering

(So carefully avoided)

Shopkeeper souls think not

There but for the grace of God go I

But mutter

Why don’t they pull themselves up by their bootstraps

It is time for the infinite,

The grace of those whose souls dance

Extending a hand , willing to fall

Getting down in the dirt

Eye level with people, not numbers

Seeing them as souls

Not tallying, but rallying

The spirits of the suffering

Embracing reality on every corner

Walking down every street

It is not a time for shopkeeper souls

Rolling over pinecones

The wheelchair crunches leaves, grass, sandwich wrappers

Rolls over pinecones

Stuck midair on a tree root,

A precipice

It rights itself with a bang.

A squirrel nibbling a nut stares wide-eyed

Human television in the wild.

Charity my fickle friend: a poem

Charity, my fickle friend
What business have you here?
Begone from me
O Charity
So full of fear you be
You offer help with puppet strings
That strangle and constrain

Your presence brings
Naught but pain
Your chiding
Naught but shame
The "could have" "should have" chorus sung
Is a demeaning refrain

Charity, you chase me down
No matter where I go
Awaiting one wrong twist of fate
A circumstance unknown
Tis a most annoying game
Take note- you play alone.

Right now I know three people who have disabilities - who work full time - who are experiencing difficulties continuing to work because of the high cost of the items we require to work.

It is sad indeed when the system encourages us or forces us to rely on charity despite our attempts to stay independent. It is both demoralizing and dehumanizing, a source of anger and frustration.

Some may think that the charity model of services, which has been around for a long time, serves the needs of the disabled community. I disagree. It is not only an erratic master, but it plays the role of unduly regulating our lives, forcing us to comply with often antiquated rules created for people with disabilities who do not work.

Why are the statistics for unemployment among people with disabilities so high? Lack of services, equipment, job opportunities, attitudes among employers - I could go on and on. But it's also the charity model of services that's at fault. For example, accessible transportation services are run in some ways like a yellow school bus. They work for some, but not for others. You can use them if you can plan ahead a number of days, but they don't work for spontaneous transportation.

This may seem like an unreasonable request to have, but think about this: how do you run a business, for example, if you have to plan your transportation ahead by several days? In a day and age where more of us with disabilities have to be creative to remain employed, it's a death knell to be so constrained. It works for going to the mall or the movies or "outings", which is what is often envisioned in the charity model of services. There are also limitations on where you can go, how far you can go, etc. This results in limits on participation in community activities, memberships in organizations as well as social activities.

In a consumer oriented model of services, the services are tailored to the actual needs of the consumer. This bypasses the often stringent rules that don't fit the consumer's situation. For example, the personal assistant services I receive can be tailored to my needs because they are consumer based. This allows me to work.

But far too many services for people with disabilities lag behind and are run by the charity model. This includes transportation. The high cost of vehicles is a bar to many. Taxis are not yet accessible in most areas. And although bus lifts and bus routes can be used by some, this is not true for everyone, depending on the level of disability and the need to pay for attendant care to do so.

All of these issues present a complex service delivery problem when addressing the needs of a continuously more diverse disability community. Yet not addressing them can, and will, exacerbate the problem by forcing more people with disabilities out of the work force and back where we began years ago - at the mercy of charity.

Mind Tree Poems

A link to a site with a bio of a young man with autism who is also visually impaired who has written poetry on an alphabet board. His poems are about his experience of living with autism.

An excerpt from The Mind Tree:

Maybe it is night
Maybe it is day
I can't be sure
Because I'm not yet feeling the heat of the sun
I am the mind tree
When I had been gifted this mind of mine
I recall his voice very clearly
To you I have given this mind
And you shall be the only kind
No one ever will like you be
And I name you the mind tree
via nationalgeographic.com

To read more, please click the link above.

h/t NJCIM list serv

Inclusion, diversity and what flowers teach us

Nature teaches us things. I'm not a pantheist and wouldn't say I worship nature, but lessons abound in it that are sometimes overlooked. I know for myself it's because many of the things I "see" in nature I'm not really seeing. I'm so used to them "being that way" that I overlook them.

Take flowers for examples. Many kinds of flowers are naturally diverse and include various colors and variations. Roses are one example, but there are many others.

Yesterday , as I was pondering inclusion and diversity, I wrote a haiku about it which I posted over on A Different Light.

Petals rose lemon yellow
Pink petals flutter
Inhale their diversity

I found myself thinking about this because I received an email from a teenager who is being teased at school about his disability. He is, in fact, the one I wrote the story "Gravity Sucks" for. My other blog, A Different Light, is full of stories and poems with disability themes that I've written either about - or for - people who email me and think they are the only ones who are going through things because of their disability. It's something I began to do years ago when I was a camp counselor. Back then I wrote songs about what the kids were going through- and found it helped them deal with issues.

Fiction and poetry have a way of presenting things in a very different light, which is why I chose that name for the blog. It's one thiing to write about a topic and yet another to create a character, a story and/or poetry about it. Sometimes the use of imagination or the ability to see someone else go through something helps switch our perspective enough that it's helpful.

After I wrote Gravity Sucks, this teenager told me that he interacted again with the kid(s) who were teasing him and found a way to befriend one of them. Yesterday he emailed me and asked if I would write a poem about how it's more natural for all of us to be together, rather than apart, even though we appear to be different.

I thought that was a really good idea for a haiku. Flowers came to mind because, to me, they have always symbolized dots of hope - perhaps on a field or in a forest - scattered there to remind us that nature is painted in glory for us to enjoy.

How much more that is true when we drop the barriers between us, get to know each other and practice inclusion among human beings!

[If you'd like to visit A Different Light, I've included a link above to one of the essays.]

"Can't Find a Way Out"

a new poem

Via A Different Light

All the While

a new poem via A Different Light

for anyone struggling with acceptance

another new poem is up over there: Vroom Vroom Vroom (that's for you electroDude)

Journal of Literary Disability

This new journal has just published its first issue online. It offers an excellent array of subject matter by prominent authors and poets. The theme of this issue is Disability and Poetry.

Subscribing to the journal is free. Click above to access it.

Who is now Reading This?

May-be one is now reading this who knows some wrong-doing of my past life,
Or may-be a stranger is reading this who has secretly loved me,
Or may-be one who meets all my grand assumptions and egotisms with derision,
Or may-be one who is puzzled at me.

As if I were not puzzled at myself!
Or as if I never deride myself! (O conscience-struck! O self-convicted!)
Or as if I do not secretly love strangers! (O tenderly, a long time, and never avow it;)
Or as if I did not see, perfectly well, interior in myself, the stuff of wrong-doing,
Or as if it could cease transpiring from me until it must cease.

-Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

A Poem: Watch Out

Over at A Different Light

The Ides of March Polka :A poem

Via A Different Light

Helen Keller's Long Lost Child: A Poem

She sits beyond the copse of trees
One arm slung over the back of a park bench,
Dyed red hair swimming in the breeze,
Her jacket embroidered with one word - wench.

Her paralyzed legs are placed atop
The wheelchair right in front of her.
Clad in denim, she chooses hip hop
On her iPod, dancing for

The seventy year old man on a cane walking his beagle
Two kids in hoodies skateboarding by
A mother pushing her twins in a double carriage
A cop standing watching a pigeon die.

"Is that yours?" the old man asks
The girl on the park bench, pity in his voice,
Pointing at her wheelchair.
Music blaring in her ears
She ignores his words.
Closing her eyes
She refuses to look at his expression of tragic woe
Or answer.

"Are you deaf? Are you blind?" he shouts.
The beagle pulls at him,
Causing him to stumble and curse
But not at the dog.
His wife has died the week before.
The loneliness is eating him alive.
He thought for sure
This girl would answer him
Perhaps even understand.
Instead he is ignored
The final straw.

He collapses to the ground, weeping
As the beagle licks his tears.
The girl looks over and pulls an earbud out
Listening, now, to the beat of his anguished cries.
She turns the iPod off and pats the bench next to her.
"Sit by me," she says.

He shakes his head
Saying "I'm sorry, so sorry".
Painfully he rises to his feet
Takes a seat
Next to her.
He no longer cries but cannot see through his tears.
He is too proud to wipe his eyes
Or too weary.

They listen to the sudden silence
Watching as the cop scoops up the dead pigeon
Into a small bag.
"My wife," he says "is also dead."
"I'm sorry," the girl replies.
She lays a hand on his gnarled one.
His body shudders, human touch already a foreign thing
And it's only been a week.
The beagle, sighing, lies down at his feet.

"Alone we can do so little,
together we can do so much"
The girl says. "Helen Keller. She said that.
She was deaf and blind."
She puts the earbud back in and
Turns on her iPod.

They sit beyond the copse of trees
An old man, a girl and a beagle
As the cop walks by holding
The small bag.

Copyright 2007 Ruth Harrigan

"Guiding Eyes"

Steve over at Planet of the Blind has posted an extraordinary poem about his first guide dog Corky, called "Guiding Eyes". Click above to visit his blog and read it.

Fly bye

You disappoint me, my friend,
Not because I expected you to understand-
Just not to pretend.

There was that moment (I recall)
When I became the cripple to them all-
Your eyes averted mine,
Denying it all.

Now you say it's all okay
That it would have happened anyway
And I've just got a chip on my crip self
Because I brought it up today.

Don't worry, because it won't happen again.
Go on, pretend.

And
I'll just offend,
Passing on your left
From the fast lane.
The screaming in my heart muffled by
The sound of my tires
Squealing, wheeling by
As I circle and fly.

Right on by.

And bye.

Our journey is the same

Our journey is the same
Whether on foot or on wheels
Whether sight unseen or sound unheard
Whether we speak or not.

Above us is the same sky
Below the same earth
Around us the same greenery
We all know death as well as birth.

So travel with me, my friend
Join me on this road
Tell me a story, sing me a song
Sit awhile, take a load
Off your feet.

I'll bring a sack full of food
A staff to lean on
A book to read
A hat to calm the sun's rays.

We will choose from east or west
And begin the day with a prayer
No matter the weather
We'll get there.

a poem

I pray
Watching the clouds outside
The large glass windows of our church,
Each cloud a silent witness awaiting
Its own miracle
Of turning inside out
To reveal a silver lining.

My gaze drops to the congregation
As people shuffle past me to pews.
A four year old in a pink dress who is
Dancing behind her parents
Stops to stare at me in my wheelchair.
Her hand goes to her mouth , her eyes grow wide
She asks “Mommy, what’s wrong with that woman?”

I smile.
The little girl blinks at me as her father reaches to pull her away.

I watch
As they go toward the front of the church and file into a pew.

I pray
She has not learned it is wrong to look at people in wheelchairs
I pray
She will be taught to be less afraid of those who are different
I pray
She saw my smile.