#NaPoWriMo April 4-6

The poeming continues!

April 4

Mathematically and neurodivergently musing
Order preserving maps
If you could compare the input, you can compare the output.
Or:
Follow the charted paths in the order they are given to you.
Maps depict and preserve order (unless they don't.)
Is it X that marks the spot?
What is the spot?
And since we're talking inputs and outputs:
What's in the box?


April 5

Month of awareness,
Month of acceptance,
Month of hullabaloo,
Look at the moon and wonder:
How many messages are attached to the cycle of one great rock about another?
How many messages are we missing?


April 6

Conflations, confusions.
"Don't you agree that X is needed?"
The ends will not justify all means.
Any end can be reached by multiple means.
Conflate, conflate, conflate.
"She'll never get a job if she can't learn to stop that."
How old is this kid again?
Does there need to be a power struggle over it now?
Really?
Are you sure?
Would that power struggle have taught you the skill?
Really?
Are you sure?

April 1-3 #NaPoWriMo

Once again, April rolls around. That means National Poetry Writing Month, and it means Autism Hullabaloo Month. I have decided that is the name now because awareness months are generally for things that are bad and that we want to get rid of, and because acceptance isn't enough/is kind of getting appropriated, and because even the folks doing things I like are making lots of words and pictures and posts. Good ones, and I wouldn't have them stop if I could, but it does, in fact, add to the total hullabaloo. Which is sort of the point, adding good stuff to this mix so people can find such if they want it.

So here's my poems for April 1-3.

April 1:

Sidhe Fool, pray do tell,
How do you always jest?
How are your tricks always true?
Trickster, not liar,
Will you be my April Fool?


April 2:

Always remember: Icarus flew too close to the sun.
The higher you fly, the further you have to fall.
But when did heroes sleep safe?
And when did we forget the other word of warning:
Do not fly too low, too close to the sea.
We have forgotten, and so we remain.
Aim low, aim low, don't look up to the sky.
Aim low, aim low, locked still (unsafe) until we die.


April 3:

Questioning answers,
and questioning questions.
Theory of whose mind?
Awareness of what about autism?
Awareness for whom?
Awareness of whom?
Don't believe everything you read on the internet.
Are you sure you don't want me to believe what you say on the internet?
(Remember that your journal is online now!)

Flash

Now that they (don't) have our attention,
Fight, flight, freeze has the reins.
Thump, thump, thump goes my heart.
Couldn't they have just punched me in the face?

But no.
Punching is known to be violent.
Strobes?
Apparently not.

Computer games, commercials, supposedly provide them.
Warnings, warnings, warnings.
Even when they don't flash.
Can I get a notice before you actually strobe?




(Sooo one of the capstone groups thought strobe lights were a great way to get our attention before their presentation. And, in fact, it takes my heart rate longer to get back to baseline from that than from actually getting hit in the face. Not having epilepsy, my reaction is comparatively mild- strobes are not at risk of killing me- but seriously people need to not use strobes in class presentations, especially without warning. What if there was a classmate who did have epilepsy instead of "just" sensory processing issues?)

Be Brave (Revolution)

Say what you wanna say and let the words fall out.
They say war is necessary,
But we say war is child abuse.
Find the new ways that we must be king,
Instead of leading the young to our suffering.
I wanna see you be brave.

Sign what you wanna sign and let the words fall out.
Don't let them pretend they're saving you!
Don't bend, don't break, baby, don't back down.
There's no one here to save.
I wanna see you be brave.

Write what you wanna write and let the words fall out.
Start a revolution at the break of day.
So we're calling all the crows, they're coming in slow
It's gonna be a showdown, said the rebel to the revolutionary follow me,
We tell the court, you tell the king,
That we ain't listening to you no more!
I wanna see you be brave.

Type what you wanna type and let the words fall out.
You could cut ties with all the lies you've been living in.
It's time to try defying gravity.
Unlimited, together we're unlimited
As someone told me lately,
Everyone deserves the chance to fly.
I wanna see you be brave.



Another echolalic poem. Lyrics (sometimes slightly modified) from:
Brave- Sara Bareilles
People of the Sun- PONS
King of Anything- Sara Bareilles
White Flag Warrior- Flobots
It's My Life-Bon Jovi
Jumper- Third Eye Blind
Calling all Crows- State Radio
Knights of Bostonia- State Radio

On #WAAD I...

Check the calendar.
It's really today.
Can it not? Can we not?
Please.
One year, one day, someday.
But no. Blue is here.

I sigh, and don my armor orange.
April 2 is still a Thursday, still a long day.
Flap my way to class,
Rock in my chair,
Look a foot to my teacher's left.
No hiding today of all days.
No letting people think autism is only children.

In class, we are asked of stresses and strains.
(I'm an engineering student, and a math student.)
I flap for words.
I speak.
I flap for words.
Fewer words come.
I flap for words-No words.
They're gone.
I flap for words-No words.
Dare I type instead?

Don my armor orange.
No hiding today of all days.
Out the iPad comes, to speak.
Autism doesn't speak unless autistic people are speaking.

The Worst Nightmare You Don't Know

I am your worst, I am your worst nightmare,
You, you will suck, the life out of me.
You're trying to save me, stop holding your breath.
I'm just a problem that doesn't want to be solved.
Tired of being what you want me to be,
I am your worst, I am your worst nightmare,
Stab me with your steely knives, but you just can't kill the beast!

I'm a failure to you, a failure to you, yes I'm a failure to you.
Can it be, I'm not meant to play this part?
Oh, my soul needs to be free
I'm through with playing by the rules of someone else's game.
Bury it, I won't let you bury it.
I won't let you murder it, I won't let you smother it.
All I want to do is be more like me and be less like you.

I am your worst, I am your worst nightmare,
You don't know what it's like to be like me.
Get along with the voices inside of my head!
I'm not drowning; there's no one here to save.
I'm through accepting limits cause someone says they're so.
The flaw you're looking for does not exist,
It's just a figment of the higher man's tongue.
All I want to do is be more like me and be less like you.
I am your worst, I am your worst nightmare,



This poem is echolalic, pulling from song lyrics. I used lyrics from:
Novocaine- Fall Out Boy
Monster- Eminem/Rhianna
King of Anything- Sara Berellis
Defying Gravity-Wicked
Hotel California- The Eagles
Bats in the Belfry- Dispatch
Strangers Fate- High Tide (now The Saturday Nights)
Reflection-Mulan
Welcome to My Life- Simple Plan
People of the Sun- PONS (now The Saturday Nights)
Numb-Linkin Park
Open Up- Dispatch
Time is Running Out-Muse

I may attempt to record this at some point, we'll see.

In this poem, "I" is me/autism/autistic me, and "you" would be the folks who for some reason think autism is the scariest thing ever, just to be clear.

Keys

Clang, clang, clang, clang, clang, clang
Words ring in the background of my mind.
Try to ignore, try to press on,
Ringing drowns out my world,
Scattered words beg for release,
My mouth will not comply.
Clang, clang, clang, clang, clang, clang
Jumbling and fumbling between thought and deed,
Speech ever clumsy, hands ever yearning
For the keys to let my words free.

I am Autism

I am Autism

Here I stand, the epidemic, tsunami.
Here I stand, in your classes, on your streets.
Your teachers, your classmates, you neighbors.
Do I look so fearsome as I stand?
Maybe I should.

Strength you won't know, from bearing the world
Too loud, too bright, too close,
What's a moment's discomfort to me?
Tired of running, I stand my ground.
I am autism, hear me roar.

Disability Fearmongering Rhetoric Disorder

DFRD

Terrifying statistics, epidemics, children stolen by an unknown foe,
No person stealing us away, an abstract idea of miswired minds,
Of lives gone awry when the menace struck:
Disability Fearmongering Rhetoric Disorder.
DFRD, it leaves families empty and lifeless.
The tricksters laugh on, they need not steal what we throw away.
No need to hide what's presumed gone,
No need to take what's ignored in favor of fear.




So um this one got inspired by Amy's post about Autism Speaks Rhetoric Disorder (ASRD). I used a different name because it happens with other disabilities too and because Autism Speaks isn't even the only offender for autism. It's the biggest one, best funded one, here in the USA, but it's not the only one and I don't want to let the others slip under the radar, especially not Generation Rescue, considering that they actively promote stuff like bleach enemas and chelation.

Autism Fearmongering Rhetoric Disorder (AFRD) is a subdiagnosis of DFRD, with the Autism Speaks specific Autism Speaks Rhetoric Disorder a subcategory of AFRD. April is the awareness month for the entire Autism Fearmongering Rhetoric Disorder subdiagnosis, with Autism Speaks Rhetoric Disorder perhaps the most widespread due to the organization's large reach.

Two Days Poems

April is NaPoWriMo. (It's also Camp NaNoWrimo, but I'm not doing that.)
NaPoWriMo=National Poetry Writing Month. NaNoWriMo=National Novel Writing Month, for the curious.
What this means is I'm writing a poem a day in April. Here's the April 2 and April 3 poems.

April 2: Clovers

Looking over a 4-leaf clover.
Overlooking Awareness Day, intentionally.
Preferring my clovers, drawing my metaphors:
Clovers and autism between.
One helps find another.
One analogizes another.
What am I?
Four leaves, clustered, not as rare as believed.
Five leaves, surprising many by being real.
Can the clovers explain my existence?

April 3: Allism

Experiences.
Life with allism?
Does "lacking autism" disturb?
Is there a severe lack of stimming?
It's tragic, you see, this living with lacks.
Not the lives, just the words written of them.

Words of War

They come again with their words of war,

Awareness, vigilance, combat this new menace!

This stealthy thief of lives,

No need to take what you believe already gone,

The trickster-gods have their laughs.

And I, whom they seek to “free”?

I prepare to meet their charge.

Don my armor orange, sharpen my pointed words,

If it's a battle they want, it's a battle they'll have.

The tricksters, the tricked, and the living.

Completely making up which day goes with which NaPoWriMo poem

Working with the assumption that these are 25-27. Even though I'm pretty sure Ocean was actually 29 because I wrote it on the bus to get my passport application in and I think that was on the 29th.

Ocean

Salty air.

Waves.

A lighthouse.

White where a motor churned sky into sea,

Rainbow films above the white,

Darkening as sky returns to sky,

As white fades back to sea.

Happy

She is happy, they say.

They imitate a smile, a flap.

They do not know why.

Perhaps they do not care.

Perhaps they do not need to know.

The meaning is clear,

And that is enough.

Naming

Naming colors,

Naming color schemes,

Naming designs.

How?

It is abstract.

It is not of a thing,

It is not of an idea,

It is not of a meaning,

It is not of an emotion.

What can it be called?

Autism Is

Autism is a word for the ways I will never, can never be normal.
It is also the word for "why this doesn't bother me."
Autism makes me a foreigner in my own country.
It also protects me from culture shock, as I am accustomed to being "other."
Autism makes it harder for me to find friends.
It also keeps false friends away.
Autism makes it harder to take notes in class.
It also means I don't need to.
Autism makes mint, strobes, sirens painful.
It also allows me to stim.
Autism makes oral speech less natural to me.
It also provides my abundance of words.
Autism means challenges.
It also means solutions, if only I am allowed to use them.
-Alyssa.

This is my April 9 poem for NaPoWriMo 2013. I waited to publish until now so that ASAN's Autism Acceptance page could publish first. It's here.

April 19-21 NaPoWriMo

Trigger Warning: References to shooters and the Boston Marathon Bombing.


Unnamed

I will not learn his name.
I will not learn his face.
Nor where he is from,
Nor what he said on Twitter,
Not if I can help it.
Let him fade.
We do not need to know him.

The MIT police officer,
The runners who continued to the hospital,
Those who lost limbs or lives,
Those names, those faces.
They are the ones we should know.


Something New

I do not watch.
I know what I will hear,
And truly, I'd rather not.
I've seen this dance, I know the steps,
I've better things to do than watch,
Than listen, than spend my day in fear.

They will be racist, if they can.
They will be ableist, if they can.
They will be bigots, one way or another.
I do not need to see it.

So I will write,
And I will draw,
And I will stay away.
In this time, I will create.

I can not replace what has been lost,
But I can make something new.


Bostonia


We come together,
As knights of Bostonia,
All together,
And we will not fall.
Too ornery, too stubborn.
No lone wolf can break knights.
The lone wolf should listen up,
For all together, we are Boston.

I have had State Radio's Knights of Bostonia on repeat all week. I might be a bit echolalic. Maybe. ;)

Your Next Installment of... NaPoWriMo Poems!

April 16-18


Flap

Large hands, loud hands,
Flappy flappy happy hands,
Spread arms, flapping arms,
Telling the world of my joy.
An obsessive joy, you say?
Perhaps.
But JOY.
Do not begrudge my happiness.
Do not prevent its expression.
I will flap.



Tianjin

A place I have not yet been.
A place I have not yet seen.
I will be a foreigner,
But not alone,
No more than I am here.
Not isolated,
No more than I am here.
There will be no culture shock.
Just the realization:
For once, I should feel like a foreigner.


 If Only/But Really

If only we could be ourselves.

But really we are afraid.

If only we had the nerve,

But really we are cowards.

If only, if only, the woodpecker sighs,

But really, the world is as it is.

If only is all well and good,

But really is life.

(I took creative writing three times in high school, and this was a pattern that we played around with for poetry on occasion.)

And Yet Three More Poems

April 13-15


Rebellion

Rebellion opens with a single flap.
A refusal to look you in the eye.
An iPad used for AAC,
Rather than pretending I am just quiet today.
It says that I am what I am.
Asserts that I'm a who, if I'm lucky.
That I am not ashamed.
I reject your ideals and substitute my own.


Do you see what I see?

Do you see things others do not see?
What do you mean by that?
I see things others do not see.
But if I point them out, others see.
What I see is there.
They look.
Their eyes take in the same things mine do.
And yet.
Do you see what I see?
No.
I'm not sure I want to.


Rainbows

One Ausome Thing.
AutismPositivity.
AutismUpside.
Autism Acceptance.
Loud Hands.
Do you hear my Loud Hands?
Do you hear me tell you I'm fine?
Will you listen?
Because I am.
I'm fine.
Different, certainly.
Not better, not worse,
Not more, not less.
Not all sunshine and rainbows,
Not all doom and gloom.
But today?
Today I speak of sunshine,
Today I speak of rainbows.
You can't forget the rainbows are there.
I won't let you forget.

Three More Poems

I think that putting out the rest of my NaPoWriMo poems in sets of three seems good. Gives a good post length on poem days, still gives enough days for things that are not poems.

April 10-12, 2013

Unsafe

Silent, rocking.
I know what I saw.
I know what you said.
What you said.
I thought you were safe.
I was wrong.


The Lie

Worst-case?
You don't want to know.
Not really.
Most likely case?
You don't want to believe.
Not really.
You don't want to see the world we live in.
You don't want to know how this works.
You want to think differences are celebrated.
You want to believe the lie.
I wish I could.


Lone Wolf

Alone.
Not lonely,
Just alone.
Do you know the difference?
In a crowd, where no one understands.
Lonely, not alone.
In my room, writing.
Alone, not lonely.
The lone wolf needs no pack.

Three Poems

I've been writing for NaPoWriMo, but I haven't managed to put them up here.
So here they are:

Today, April 8, 2013, Yom Hashoah: Trigger Warning: The Holocaust

Remembering

I remember you.
Some I am related to by blood.
Some I am related to by religion, even if I am not religious.
Some I am related to by neurology, by disability.
Some I am related to in other ways, ways that were not what cost them their lives.
Some I have little in common with.
I remember them too.
I remember the Jews, with my relatives among them.
I remember the gay men made to serve out their sentence.
I remember the dissidents who dared to speak up.
I remember the Romani.
I remember the disabled, whose murders became mercy.
I remember the priests, I remember the Witnesses.
I remember the nameless, the forgotten, the lost.

Yesterday, April 7, 2013:

Finding Words

I hear, I know, I speak.
In the silence, I watch.
Quietly at times, louder at need.
Speaking when I can,
Sharing when I can't.
Writing because I must.

Sitting, typing, I find my words.
Words I did not know I had
Until I sat to write.
Words I had somewhere, but could not reach.
Now I can, now I write, now I am heard.

Saturday, April 6, 2013

The Day

A sign.
It says "Autism Doesn't Speak Unless Autistic People Are Speaking."
Another sign.
It says "Autistic and Proud."
A third.
It tells of the blood on their hands.
Three Autistics, one to a sign.
Sitting, waiting.
Spotting one who moves like us.
Watching.

A used book store.
A bin of free books, to look at, to bring home.
Shelves, shelves, books upon books.
One purchased, if only so that others do not read it.
Perhaps to be used in debunking.
Perhaps just to keep away from the innocents who don't know better.
Worth it.

A barbecue.
Meats, vegetables, sauces.
Udon noodles.
Three Autistics and a parent,
Eating together, happily.
A gong.
Loud, painful.
Overloaded.

The day ends.
Had ups, had downs, was good.

Rules

Words,
Syllables,
Ideas.

Metaphor,
Simile,
Symbolism?

Or do I dare refuse
The statements
Of what makes writers?

Am I not the writer I think I am?
Or are the rules not so hard as you believe?

Aware

Trigger Warning: Judge Rotenburg Center, Quiet Hands

I am aware.
I am aware that there is a thing called autism.
I am aware that it is diagnosed more than it used to be.
I am aware that people are scared of autism, and of autistic people.
I am autism aware.

I am aware.
I am aware of how we are treated.
I am aware of the Judge Rotenburg Center.
I am aware of "Quiet Hands."
I am aware of discrimination.
I am aware of abuse called therapy.
I am actually aware.

Notice the difference?