(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Morning Open Thread: All You Violated Ones With Gentle Hearts [1] ['Greg Dworkin', 'Matt Z'] Date: 2026-07-06 Of all our passions and appetites, the love of power is of the most imperious and unsociable nature, since the pride of one man requires the submission of the multitude. In the tumult of civil discord, the laws of society lose their force, and their place is seldom supplied by those of humanity. The ardor of contention, the pride of victory, the despair of success, the memory of past injuries, and the fear of future dangers, all contribute to inflame the mind, and to silence the voice of pity. From such motives almost every page of history has been stained with civil blood….” ― Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Volume I “Rather than struggling to share in a patently evil kind of power, the power of people who will demean and destroy those who are weaker than they, I think we might, more usefully, have sought to redefine that meaning of power, altogether.” ― June Jordan, On Call: Political Essays “They tell you power corrupts. They never tell you how quickly.” ― Hank Green, An Absolutely Remarkable Thing ________________________________________ Welcome to Morning Open Thread, a daily post with a MOTley crew of hosts who choose the topic for the day’s posting. We support our community, invite and share ideas, and encourage thoughtful, respectful dialogue in an open forum. That’s a feature, not a bug. Other than that, site rulz rule. Morning Open Thread is looking for contributors — we will have openings on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, for either occasional, or weekly posts. If interested, please contact officebss for more information. So grab your cuppa, and join in! ☕ _______________ 13 poets born in July, full of quiet fires and holocausts, sweet music, deep dirges, and hope embattled by despair _______________ July 5 _______________ 1889 – Jean Cocteau born in Maisons-Laffitte in northern France; French filmmaker, poet, playwright, novelist, designer, visual artist, and critic. He was one of the foremost figures in the surrealist, avant-garde, and Dadaist movements; and influential in early 20th-century art. Known as a filmmaker for The Blood of a Poet, Beauty and the Beast, and Orpheus, and as a novelist for the semi-auto biographical Le Livre blanc and Les Enfants Terribles, which was made into a film co-directed by Cocteau and Jean-Pierre Melville. Cocteau died of a heart attack at age 74 in October 1963. His many poetry collections include Le Prince frivole (The Frivolous Prince); Mythologie; and Le Requiem. Jean Cocteau’s Poem For Welles by Jean Cocteau Orson Welles is a poet through his violence and through his grace. Never does he tumble from the tightrope on which he crosses cities and their dramas. He is a poet too in the Loyal friendship he bears our dreams and our struggles. Others will know better than I how to praise his work. I content myself with sending him my fraternal greeting. His handshake is as firm as he is and I think of it each time my work obliges me to leap over an obstacle. “Jean Cocteau’s Poem For Welles” © 1948 by Jean Cocteau, published in the January 1949 issue of The New Yorker _______________ 1923 – Mitsuye Yamada born as Mitsuye Yasutake in Fukuoka, Japan; Japanese-American activist, feminist, fiction author, poet, essayist, editor and professor of English. Her father worked as an interpreter for the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, and the family lived in Seattle. Immediately after Pearl Harbor, her father was wrongfully arrested by the FBI for espionage, so her family was interned at Mindoka War Relocation Center in Idaho. She was only allowed to attend the University of Cincinnati after she renounced loyalty to the Emperor of Japan. Her first book, Camp Notes and Other Poems, was written during the war, but not published until 1976. She became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1955, five years after her marriage to Yoshikasu Yamada, who was born in Hawaii, and had served as a medic and a translator in the U.S. Army during WWII. Her other works include Lighthouse, her essay “Invisibility is an Unnatural Disaster,” and Full Circle: New and Selected Poems. Cincinnati by Mitsuye Yamada Freedom at last in this town aimless I walked against the rush hour traffic My first day in a real city where no one knew me. No one except one hissing voice that said dirty jap warm spittle on my right check. I turned and faced the shop window and my spittle face spilled onto a hill of books. Words on display. “Cincinnati” from Camp Notes and Other Writings, © 1998 by Mitsuye Yamada – Rutgers University Press _______________ July 6 _______________ 1947 – Floyd Skloot born in Brooklyn, New York; American poet, non-fiction writer, memoirist, and novelist. Skloot was disabled in 1988 by neurological damage caused by a virus, and has written a series of memoirs about reconstructing his life and his work, starting with In the Shadow of Memory, up to his most recent Revertigo: An Off-Kilter Memoir. He has also published ten poetry collections, including The Fiddler’s Trance; The End of Dreams; Close Reading; and Far West. Silent Music by Floyd Skloot My wife wears headphones as she plays Chopin etudes in the winter light. Singing random notes, she sways in and out of shadow while night settles. The keys she presses make a soft clack, the bench creaks when her weight shifts, golden cotton fabric ripples across her shoulders, and the sustain pedal clicks. This is the hidden melody I know so well, her body finding harmony in the give and take of motion, her lyric grace of gesture measured against a slow fall of darkness. Now stillness descends to signal the end of her silent music. “Silent Music” © 2006 by Floyd Skloot, appeared in Prairie Schooner, Summer 2006 issue _______________ July 7 _______________ 1906 – Helene Johnson born in Boston, Massachusetts, African-American poet, short story writer; granddaughter of former enslaved people, she was raised by her mother, her maternal grandfather, and her aunts. The writer Dorothy West was her cousin, and they moved to New York together in 1927, becoming part of the Harlem Renaissance. Johnson’s poetry was frequently published in Black magazines, like the National Urban League’s Opportunity, the NAACP’s The Crisis, and Challenge: A Literary Quarterly, published by the Negro Universities Press. Her poem “Bottled” was published in the May 1927 issue of Vanity Fair. Johnson died on her 89th birthday in 1995. Her poems were not published as a collection until This Waiting for Love was published in December 2000. Sonnet to a Negro in Harlem by Helene Johnson You are disdainful and magnificent— Your perfect body and your pompous gait, Your dark eyes flashing solemnly with hate, Small wonder that you are incompetent To imitate those whom you so despise— Your shoulders towering high above the throng, Your head thrown back in rich, barbaric song, Palm trees and mangoes stretched before your eyes. Let others toil and sweat for labor’s sake And wring from grasping hands their meed of gold. Why urge ahead your supercilious feet? Scorn will efface each footprint that you make. I love your laughter arrogant and bold. You are too splendid for this city street. “Sonnet to a Negro in Harlem” from This Waiting for Love (collected poems and letters of Helene Johnson), edited by Verner D. Mitchell – University of Massachusetts Press, 2006 edition _______________ 1915 – Margaret Walker, African-American poet and novelist, born in Birmingham, Alabama, to a Methodist minister, and a mother who was a musician, teacher, and granddaughter of a former enslaved person. The family moved to New Orleans when Margaret was a small child. She met Langston Hughes when he gave a lecture recital at New Orleans University in 1932. He encouraged her to keep writing poetry, and one of her poems was published in The Crisis in 1934. Walker’s first collection of poetry, For My People, won the 1942 Yale Series of Younger Poets Award. She was the first black woman to win the prestigious award. Her first novel, Jubilee (1966), is regarded as the first work by a black author to advocate for the liberation of black women. During the Depression, she worked for the WPA’s Federal Writers’ Project. She taught literature at Jackson State University (1949-1979). Her poetry collections include Prophets for a New Day; October Journey; and This is My Century: New and Collected Poems. Walker died at age 83 of breast cancer in Chicago in 1998. For Malcolm X by Margaret Walker All you violated ones with gentle hearts; You violent dreamers whose cries shout heartbreak; Whose voices echo clamors of our cool capers, And whose black faces have hollowed pits for eyes. All you gambling sons and hooked children and bowery bums Hating white devils and black bourgeoisie, Thumbing your noses at your burning red suns, Gather round this coffin and mourn your dying swan. Snow-white moslem head-dress around a dead black face! Beautiful were your sand-papering words against our skins! Our blood and water pour from your flowing wounds. You have cut open our breasts and dug scalpels in our brains. When and Where will another come to take your holy place? Old man mumbling in his dotage, crying child, unborn? “For Malcolm X” from This is My Century: New and Collected Poems, © 1989 by Margaret Walker – University of Georgia Press _______________ July 8 _______________ 1621 – Jean de La Fontaine, French poet and fabulist, born in Château-Thierry, northeast of Paris into a bourgeois family. In 1647, he married Marie Héricart, an heiress, but they separated in 1658. He inherited from his father the office of inspector of forests and waterways, which he held from 1652 to 1671, while making regular forays to Paris. By 1657, he was a protégé of Nicolas Fouquet, the wealthy superintendent of the nation’s finance. From 1664 to 1672 he served as gentleman-in-waiting to the dowager duchess of Orléans in Luxembourg. For 20 years, from 1673, he was a member of the household of Mme de La Sablière, whose salon was a celebrated meeting place of scholars, philosophers, and writers. In 1683 he was elected to the French Academy in spite of some opposition by the king because of his unconventional and irreligious character. He is now known primarily for his Fables, based on traditional stories from Aesop and East Asian storytellers, but enhanced by his wit, humor, and eye for detail. He died at age 73 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, just west of Paris, in 1695. The Cat Metamorphosed Into A Woman by Jean de La Fontaine A bachelor caress’d his cat, A darling, fair, and delicate; So deep in love, he thought her mew The sweetest voice he ever knew. By prayers, and tears, and magic art, The man got Fate to take his part; And, lo! one morning at his side His cat, transform’d, became his bride. In wedded state our man was seen The fool in courtship he had been. No lover e’er was so bewitch’d By any maiden’s charms As was this husband, so enrich’d By hers within his arms. He praised her beauties, this and that, And saw there nothing of the cat. In short, by passion’s aid, he Thought her a perfect lady. ‘Twas night: some carpet-gnawing mice Disturb’d the nuptial joys. Excited by the noise, The bride sprang at them in a trice; The mice were scared and fled. The bride, scarce in her bed, The gnawing heard, and sprang again, – And this time not in vain, For, in this novel form array’d, Of her the mice were less afraid. Through life she loved this mousing course, So great is stubborn nature’s force. In mockery of change, the old Will keep their youthful bent. When once the cloth has got its fold, The smelling-pot its scent, In vain your efforts and your care To make them other than they are. To work reform, do what you will, Old habit will be habit still. Nor fork nor strap can mend its manners, Nor cudgel-blows beat down its banners. Secure the doors against the renter, And through the windows it will enter. This poem is in the public domain – translator not credited _______________ 1902 – Gwendolyn B. Bennett born in Giddings, Texas; African American poet, artist, columnist, educator, and arts administrator associated with the Harlem Renaissance movement of the 1920s. The family moved to Washington D.C., and her parents divorced. When Gwendolyn was eight, her father kidnapped her, and they lived on the run on the East Coast. She did not see her mother again until she was an adult. Bennett went to Columbia University, then transferred to the Pratt Institute. Her first poem, “Nocturne” was published in Opportunity magazine in 1923. She taught art at Howard University (1924-1927), but took a year’s leave in 1925 to study art in Paris on a scholarship. She moved to New York, became a contributor to Crisis magazine, then taught high school in Florida, but returned to New York, and worked for the WPA Art Project (1935-1941), and also directed the Harlem Arts Guild. She was scrutinized by the House Un-American Activities Committee from the 1940s well into the 1950s. Bennett worked for the Consumers Union (1948-1968), then opened an antiques store in Pennsylvania. She died at age 78 in May 1981. Hatred by Gwendolyn B. Bennett I shall hate you Like a dart of singing steel Shot through still air At even-tide, Or solemnly As pines are sober When they stand etched Against the sky. Hating you shall be a game Played with cool hands And slim fingers. Your heart will yearn For the lonely splendor Of the pine tree While rekindled fires In my eyes Shall wound you like swift arrows. Memory will lay its hands Upon your breast And you will understand My hatred. (1926) “Hatred” from Nocturne & Other Verses, by Gwendolyn B. Bennett – originally published in 1927 – reproduced by Public Domain Press in 2023 _______________ 1944 – Mourid Barghouti born in Deir Ghassaneh (now Bani Zeid), near Ramallah in the Governorate of Palestine. He studied English Literature at Cairo University, graduating in 1967, only to be barred from his homeland after the Six-Day War in June that year. Barghouti spent thirty years in exile—shuttling among the world’s cities, never secure—never certain whether he was a visitor, a refugee, a citizen, or a guest—separated from his family for years at a time. He was married to the novelist Radwa Shour. Their son Tamim, is also a poet. Barghouti’s memoir, I Saw Ramallah, won the 2003 Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature. He published 13 books of poetry, but only A Small Sun and Midnight and Other Poems have been translated into English. He died at age 78 in Jordan, in February 2021. Without Mercy by Mourid Barghouti There is a sweet music, but its sweetness fails to console you. This is what the days have taught you: in every long war there is a soldier, with a distracted face and ordinary teeth, who sits outside his tent holding his bright-sounding harmonica which he has carefully protected from the dust and blood, and like a bird uninvolved in the conflict, he sings to himself a love song that does not lie. For a moment, he feels embarrassed at what the moonlight might think: what’s the use of a harmonica in hell? A shadow approaches, then more shadows. His fellow soldiers, one after the other, join him in his song. The singer takes the whole regiment with him to Romeo’s balcony, and from there, without thinking, without mercy, without doubt, they will resume the killing! “Without Mercy” from Midnight and Other Poems, © 2008 by Mourid Barghouti, translation © 2009 by Radwa Ashour – Arc Publications _______________ July 9 _______________ 1936 – June Jordan born in Harlem, New York, the only child of Jamaican immigrant parents. She was a poet, essayist, teacher, feminist, civil rights activist, and self-identified Bisexual. The students at most of the schools she attended were predominately white, and at Barnard College, “No one ever presented me with a single Black author, poet, historian, personage, or idea for that matter. Nor was I ever assigned a single woman to study as a thinker, or writer, or poet, or life force … Nothing showed me how I might try to alter the political and economic realities underlying our Black condition in white America.” She left without graduating, but returned later. Her first book, Who Look at Me, a collection of poems for children, was published in 1969. She wrote 27 more books, the last three published posthumously. Jordan was the librettist for the musical Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky. She taught at several colleges and at SUNY at Stony Brook, then founded the Poetry for the People program at UC Berkeley in 1991. She died of breast cancer at age 65 in 2002. Apologies to All the People in Lebanon by June Jordan Dedicated to the 600,000 Palestinian men, women, and children who lived in Lebanon from 1948-1983. I didn’t know and nobody told me and what could I do or say, anyway? They said you shot the London Ambassador and when that wasn’t true they said so what They said you shelled their northern villages and when U.N. forces reported that was not true because your side of the cease-fire was holding since more than a year before they said so what They said they wanted simply to carve a 25 mile buffer zone and then they ravaged your water supplies your electricity your hospitals your schools your highways and byways all the way north to Beirut because they said this was their quest for peace They blew up your homes and demolished the grocery stores and blocked the Red Cross and took away doctors to jail and they cluster-bombed girls and boys whose bodies swelled purple and black into twice the original size and tore the buttocks from a four month old baby and then they said this was brilliant military accomplishment and this was done they said in the name of self-defense they said that is the noblest concept of mankind isn’t that obvious? They said something about never again and then they made close to one million human beings homeless in less than three weeks and they killed or maimed 40,000 of your men and your women and your children But I didn’t know and nobody told me and what could I do or say, anyway? They said they were victims. They said you were Arabs. They called your apartments and gardens guerrilla strongholds. They called the screaming devastation that they created the rubble. Then they told you to leave, didn’t they? Didn’t you read the leaflets that they dropped from their hotshot fighter jets? They told you to go. One hundred and thirty-five thousand Palestinians in Beirut and why didn’t you take the hint? Go! There was the Mediterranean: You could walk into the water and stay there. What was the problem? I didn’t know and nobody told me and what could I do or say, anyway? Yes, I did know it was the money I earned as a poet that paid for the bombs and the planes and the tanks that they used to massacre your family But I am not an evil person The people of my country aren’t so bad You can expect but so much from those of us who have to pay taxes and watch American TV You see my point; I’m sorry. I really am sorry. “Apologies to all the People in Lebanon” from Directed By Desire: The Collected Poems of June Jordan, © 2005 by The June M. Jordan Literary Trust – Copper Canyon Press _______________ July 10 _______________ 1640 – Aphra Behn born in Kent, in southeastern England; English poet and one of the most influential Restoration era playwrights. Her parentage remains disputed, and her early years unknown. She was a traveler; a widow; a spy for a King who then didn’t pay her, so she was thrown into debtor’s prison, then wrote her way out; and a novelist. One of the few women of her time to write under her own name and earn her living by her pen, she was vividly talented, outspokenly opinionated, self-supporting, scandalous, and legendary —Aphra Behn refused to accept the restrictions society imposed on women. She lived by her own rules, even in her last years, when illness made it difficult for her to write. Love Armed by Aphra Behn Love in fantastic triumph sat, Whilst bleeding hearts around him flow’d, For whom fresh pains he did create, And strange tyrannic power he shew’d; From thy bright eyes he took his fire, Which round about in sport he hurl’d; But ’twas from mine he took desire Enough to undo the amorous world. From me he took his sighs and tears, From thee his pride and cruelty; From me his languishments and fears, And every killing dart from thee; Thus thou and I the God have arm’d, And set him up a Deity; But my poor heart alone is harm’d, Whilst thine the victor is, and free. “Love Armed” from Selected Poems of Aphra Behn – Fyfield Books, 2003 edition _______________ 1875 – Edmund Clerihew Bentley born in London, England; English journalist, novelist, and poet. He attended London’s prestigious St Paul’s School. Gilbert Keith (G. K.) Chesterton was a fellow student, and became his best friend. When Bentley was 16 years old, he started to write short verses about people he knew, or famous people he had read about, which became known as Clerihews. Chesterton took up the hobby too and the rhymes were often accompanied by his sketches. Clerihews have 4 lines, the subject’s name is in the first line, the rhyme scheme is AA/BB, it tells you something about the subject, and it should be amusing. In 1913, exasperated with the infallibility of Sherlock Holmes, he published Trent’s Last Case, regarded as the first “modern” detective novel. E.C. Bentley may be the only author credited with starting two literary forms, one in poetry and the other in genre fiction. He died at age 80 in March 1956. George the Third Ought never to have occurred. One can only wonder At so grotesque a blunder. “George the Third” from The Complete Clerihews, © by E.C. Bentley – 2008 edition, published by House of Stratus _______________ July 11 _______________ 1899 – E.B. White born in Mount Vernon New York; American author, contributing editor to The New Yorker, but best known for his books for young readers, including Stuart Little, Charlotte’s Web, and The Trumpet of the Swan. In 1959, White revised and updated The Elements of Style, originally written by William Strunk Jr. and published in 1920, created the classic “Strunk & White” guide to clear and stylish writing. He died at age 86 in 1985. Youth and Age by E. B. White This is what youth must figure out: Girls, love, and living, The having, the not having The spending and giving. And the melancholy time of not knowing. This is what age must learn about: The ABC of dying. The going, yet not going. The loving and leaving. And the unbearable knowing and knowing. “Youth and Age” from Poems & Sketches of E. B. White, © 1981 by E. B. White – Harper & Row _______________ 1948 – Alan Chong Lau born in Oroville in Northern California, the son of Chinese parents, and grew up in nearby Paradise, California; American poet and visual artist. He graduated from the University of California, Santa Cruz, with a B.A. in Art. He is the Arts Editor for the Asian American International Examiner newspaper. In 1981, his book Songs for Jadina, won an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation. His 2000 memoir in poetry, Blues and Greens: A Produce Worker’s Journal, is about his time working in Seattle’s Chinatown. As a painter, he is known for his abstract paintings, often inspired by Chinese calligraphy and Japanese Sumi-e, but he also did the illustrations for The Hakka Cookbook: Chinese Soul Food from around the world (2012). Finding The Hair Of A Mexican Woman In This Box Of Sugar Peas by Alan Chong Lau I put the lemon grass out stripping the dried stems off each stalk With each tear a lemony mist scents the air around us As we work, Ahn tells me in his country lemon grass grows in the backyard a natural fence to keep snakes away I find your long hair curled around the stem of a sugar pea as I pour out their flat green bodies in a pile I wish I could twist these stems of lemon grass into a fragrant skirt for you to wear and keep the slither of snakes from rustling around your sturdy ankles as you pluck each pod off vine after vine after vine “Finding The Hair Of A Mexican Woman In This Box Of Sugar Peas” from Blues And Greens – A Produce Worker’s Journal © 2000 by Alan Chong Lau – University of Hawai’i Press _________________________________ G’Morning/Afternoon/Evening MOTlies! _________________________________ [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2026/7/6/800064302/community/morning-open-thread-all-you-violated-ones-with-gentle-hearts/ Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/