Invasive Species Poem

Over the summer while processing and participating in the Black Lives Matter protests and the police and Tr*mp-ian reactions to them, I found in my backyard a vine that had so deeply rooted itself that it had split into several different vines, each the thickness of a baseball bat.

These vines overtook trees that were thriving and had already killed multiple branches off by the time I had realized what was happening. The vine made me consider how things like prejudice and racism invisibly grown in the background of policies rooted in evil and eventually become the institutions themselves.

——

Invasive Species

The genius of the vine 

is patience.

Like colonialism,

or the police,

vines pillage silently

then violently.

Invisibly arriving,

sprouting shoots

tracing the earth,

and anchoring

tendrils to trunks.

What might have begun 

as a neighborly invitation to dinner

becomes a plundering.

The vine equivalent 

of a one-night-stand

that “forgot” to pull out.

Over months 

the guest,

overtakes its host

with order and intention. 

Mingling

in cedar canopies,

borrowing your car 

and returning on E,

leaving you with a pregnancy

you're unable to terminate. 

Those same vines that

once elevated 

your pretentious trellis,

giving you security and pomp,

are now shaking down

once vibrant organisms,

kneeling on carotids

whispering 

“stop talking, 

stop yelling, 

it takes a heck of a lot of oxygen 

to talk.”

“52 Things I Learned in 2020”

In an effort to share more things I find interesting, and also to stop annoying friends and family with constant links, I’d like to begin using this blog space as a place to share images, links, resources, etc. Sometimes posts will be related to my newest work and lots of other times it will be about weird things like the correlation of negative Yankee Candle Company reviews to COVID symptoms.

With any luck, this site will keep friends and family from muting me and could potentially earn me more internet acquaintances. Who knows :)

———

Tom Whitwell keeps an ongoing list of 52 things that he has learned each year (2018, 2019). This year’s reflection includes fantastic nuggets like:

1. Most cities plant only male trees because it’s expensive to clear up the fruit that falls from female trees. Male trees release pollen, and that’s one of the reasons your hay fever is getting worse. [Jessica Price]

38. 報復性熬夜 is a Chinese term that roughly means ‘Revenge bedtime procrastination’ — when “people who don’t have much control over their daytime life refuse to sleep early in order to regain some sense of freedom during late night hours”. [Lu-Hai Liang]

45. In 2014, the International Energy Authority forecast how the price of solar power would fall over the next half century. After just six years, we’re 40 years ahead of expectations. [Ramez Naam](Fluxx have been helping Legal & General develop new ‘net zero’ products to fund Solar Power developments in the UK)

Thank you, Tom, for this fantastic ongoing effort!