Author: stevekuusisto

Poet, Essayist, Blogger, Journalist, Memoirist, Disability Rights Advocate, Public Speaker, Professor, Syracuse University

Tuileries Palace

In his diary Uncle History really dishes–
Napoleon stinks of feces
Though he tries to cover it up
With antimacassar
Which only makes him smell
Like a rich man’s piss pot
His breath is like death after death
As for the Empress
She smells like burning bibles
His nose is Uncle’s best sense
Because no one ever sees him
He’s the future perfect
But he still shivers

The Mouse and Uncle History

“Don’t give up,” says the mouse to Uncle History
“There are monsters everywhere…”
“There’s always a fight between hunger and safety…”
And Uncle watches as the children starve
He remembers Stalinist purges
He watches Palestine
“What does a mouse have to tell me?” he thinks
Missing the point entirely
The mouse is correct about monsters
They hide behind hunger and safety
But Uncle is bored by this
He knows the monster is there
But he’s already moved on

Pertaining to Hope

Eivät olleet tänään kaikki tähdet kohdallaan

Not all the stars were right today

In Finnish, my father’s language, “toivo” means hope

I’m a toiveikas mies—a hopeful man

I come from a long line

I’m accepting of slow change

I push steadily, keep on message, say what needs to be said

Beyond the range of telescopes

And no matter their indifference

Not all the stars were right

Still happiness crawls in and out of me

Like that childhood song about the worms…

You can probe Uncle History but…

You can probe Uncle History but
There’s nothing there
His insides are just a hall
Of dead leaves
There’s a lot of writing of course
There’s always a lot of writing
Thucydides is on a pear leaf
Hobsbawm on an alder leaf
The sound of dead leaves in wind
Soothes Uncle History
Though he can’t sleep
It’s a grand reunion he’s after
The light and dark
Of a dream forest
He’s so empty
And he can’t read

Up High

When mountains talk
Uncle History stops to listen
The Himalayas give up
Their secrets, dead climbers
Revealed, one corpse
With an axe…
You become an “it”
When you’re frozen
Uncle thinks
It gives him comfort
He likes stories
Where men fight to the last
Persepolis, Stalingrad
This morning he hears a mountain
Speaking of women
Argentina, Bolivia, Chile,
Italy, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Nepal—
“Everywhere they protect us”
A pause—“what have men done?”

Admission

It’s not certain that when walking
Uncle History will find beauty
But sometimes a stranger
Resembles his father
A rare bird calls…
Once in London’s Hyde Park
Beside Prince Albert
He saw leaves
Bright as coins
Doubloons in dirt
He is, in general, a sad figure
And despises most people
Of god he knows nothing
But falling leaves can still surprise him
He moves a stone across the garden
A crow looks down
Uncle makes an invisible circle
With his toes

“You can’t get there from here,” or, the ADA and Higher Ed

“You can’t get there from here,” is the old tag line of a well known New England joke. As we celebrate the 35th anniversary of the Americans With Disabilities Act the line has been circling my head like a horse fly. In our nation’s higher education arena the disabled are blocked by colleges and universities that don’t take the ADA seriously and in turn do the least amount possible to provide accessibility to disabled students and faculty. And campus visitors. Your grandmother shows up for graduation and needs wheelchair access to the convocation. The doors are locked to the adjacent building where the only ramps and elevators are located. No one can find the key because it’s Sunday. No one is in charge. The maladapted ADA Coordinator is at home drinking a root beer. I know thousands of stories like this. A student requires note takers and the university fails to provide them for over half a semester. She flunks the class. When after months of wrangling the university admits it could have done better, they still take another year to expunge the failing grade. This prevents the student from joining a sorority. The ADA Coordinator is home drinking a root beer. The ADA Coordinator is not a bad guy. He simply has no power to fix anything. He’s the master of a Potemkin village. There are disability statements on the website. ‘If you need access click here” it says on the Information Tech page. Click it, and well, years go by. They’re not equipped to solve your problem with the new Blackboard learning software or the brand spanking new admissions website. Small wonder that only one in four students with disabilities who enter college actually graduates. Small wonder there are so few faculty with disabilities. I’ve railed about this situation on this blog and in meeting after meeting. What’s really interesting is that in the meetings where I talk about these problems no one ever, and I mean ever, says “how can I help?” Even though on the face of it the non-disabled faculty are progressive types, access isn’t important to them.

Morning Coffee

Uncle History has gotten his finger stuck—
Its hard to explain—
He’s like the Dutch boy
But instead of water
He’s holding back a tsunami
Of ghosts…Babi Yar, Palestine
And there’s Uncle’s finger in the air
Blocking the terrible dead
Phom Penh, Dachau
Spirits of ash
He’s holding his station, Uncle History
Guarding a port in pure nothingness
He thinks of how
The glances of faithful children
Are doomed
And move
From face to face

The Perilous State of the ADA

In disability circles there’s no future planned beyond this: your tomorrows are being erased in the halls of Congress. After health care and social security are gutted will they bring back the ugly laws? Will they lock up the disabled in ruined shopping malls?

This morning I found myself thinking of Aristophanes who I read assiduously in college. Here he is:

“Look at the orators in our republics; as long as they are poor, both state and people can only praise their uprightness; but once they are fattened on the public funds, they conceive a hatred for justice, plan intrigues against the people and attack the democracy.”

Meanwhile we’re being asked to celebrate the 35th anniversary of the ADA which, as we know, is about to be gutted. If you think I’m joking I’m not. Trump’s hot button dismantling of the Department of Education will destroy the capacity of the disabled to gain equal rights in education and even employment. So I’ll add to Aristophanes: when the normates are fattened on the public funds they conceive a hatred for equal rights.

Most of the ADA anniversary video celebrations I’ve seen are just treacle. As my late friend Bill Peace (known online as “The Bad Cripple”) used to say, “I’m not impressed.”