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Years ago, I read an article about Jose Sokoloff, who, through ingenuity, creativity, and imagination, was able to convince hundreds of soldiers in the guerilla army in Columbia to lay down their arms and return to their families. In a similar vein, I’ve been trying to think of ways to get ICE to leave Chicago and ultimately, leave ICE and become real people. I haven’t come up with a solid plan yet, but I believe the imagination is really the only nation any of us have any sovereignty over, so it makes sense to use the ample resources there. I wrote a play about this during Trump’s first term for Theater Oobleck called Reality is an activity (from a line by Wallace Stevens) about two women who try to use the stuff of poetry to transform the world. And on that note, because it’s Veterans’ day, I thought I’d share my first three ideas to melt ICE. Please let me know if you have more ideas, because the way I see it, ICE was someone’s idea and those ideas created more ideas and now there is a regime of demented assholes crawling around our neighborhoods with zip-ties, tear gas, and various other weapons they relish and can hardly wait to use or use again. Idea #1: ICE, take a Haik-u  Idea #2: Rewrite the Manual with Blackout Poetry Inspector’s Field Manual- Blackout  Idea #3- Name Inspiration
So, hey Greg Bovino, how about taking some inspiration from your own name? Because if you were inspired by your own name you could stop terrorizing Chicagoans and become a cow in a field, perhaps in Dekalb or elsewhere. (Illinois has plenty of fields.) So, Mr. Bovino, let’s let ICE be your old pasture, but, now you get to be a cow, part of the elite bovine class, a female of course, your udders full of milk, your gigantic, wet eyes shining, shining. If you become more like a cow than a Nazi Mr. Bovino, I’ll ask someone I know, who has just taken a course in it, to give you eyelash extensions. There’s a chart she uses with all the different styles and lengths. I suggest you go Kim Kardashian-- extra long, the kind that might even be so long as to extend over your eyes like prison bars so you can reflect upon your past of locking up innocent people. In your new pasture, you will be gentle and you will sweetly eat grass and chew your cud. Let’s get you a bell to wear around your neck. Let’s have it just have the tiniest sound, a sweet jingle sound like a movie about Santa and his sleigh bells approaching, Or maybe more like wind chimes purchased from a kiosk on a boardwalk somewhere like Navy Pier. If you like, feel free to syncopate your moos. We will milk you too, Greg, because you have taken so much from so many that, now in your cow form, Greg Bovino, you will provide us with the ingredients for cream, butter, and cheese. When we eat pasta made with a sauce from your milk, we will call it Pasta Bovino. What a heavenly cow people will also say when they see you and that’s good because you have been so hellish as a person, now you can have a small taste of heaven. Oh, and your first name? Well, Gregory means to be awake, to be watchful and the name is connected to the role of a shepherd or in your case, a cowherd. So exciting! You can both be a cow as well as the caretaker of yourself and leave everyone else alone!
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Hello & Wishing you as happy a Halloween as you can muster during these profoundly and increasingly nightmarish times.
Still, for your entertainment, I wanted to share this creative essay I wrote a few years ago for Jill Howe’s Story Sessions about being 12. The Heebie Jeebies I’ll tell you a balloon is a beautiful thing. Even the spelling: One “b” and then an “a,” followed by two “l’s and two “o’s so a double consonant and a double vowel and finally an n to seal the deal. I mean, how common is a spelling like that? Not very. And purple balloons? Wow. Here in Chicago, ICE continues to terrorize peaceful, non-criminal individuals and families. Postal workers have been accosted in the middle of delivering mail. Tear-gas and pellet guns have been used violently and without cause. Ordinary people just minding their own business have been hunted down, locked up, beaten up, or deported. Make no mistake, this is fascism taking hold, but Trump and his army of hate will never ruin our beloved city. Here is a clip from a piece I did at Miss Spoken about Lake Michigan and what she delivers.
https://barriecole.substack.com/i/177695806/beautiful-chicago |