POST ARCHIVE is an archive of original HOME page posts: poems, comments, etc. This is not for posting or editing online…it is an archive of the older home page where poems, etc were originally posted. You are free to download it for your own archives.
I’m Not Worried About Seeing Dick Cheney In Heaven
by David Madgalene
I’m worried about my health, and I’m worried about the economy,
I’m worried for my wife, my family, friends, I don’t have children of my own
but I worry about my nieces and nephews, the future generations.
I’m worried about the Gulf of Mexico, the ice cap melting, and the North Pacific Gyre,
I worry about the multinationals, the military-industrial complex and this endless war,
but, y’know, I’m not worried about meeting Dick Cheney in Heaven.
I hate to say this,
but I don’t know if I’m so worried about Osama Bin Laden anymore,
and we certainly showed Saddam Hussein who’s boss.
I might be a teensy bit worried about the Underpants Bomber,
but not half-as-much as I worry about the Republicans
and those spineless jellyfish they call Democrats.
I’m not worried about the end of the American Dream (it’s high time we woke up),
and I never was a big fan of the American Empire
(as for me, I’d rather stick to the Monroe Doctrine).
I do worry about the possible demise of our great noble American Experiment,
but I don’t worry about bumping into Dick Cheney up in Heaven.
Now I keep up with the news, I pride myself on that.
I watch TV, read the paper, magazines, follow how many blogs on the Internet.
I can’t tell you how important I think it is that we stay informed on current events.
So I do, and, frankly, it gives me a lot to worry about.
I worry about Angelina, and I worry about Britney.
I worry about Lindsay, and Paris, and Jamie Lynn.
I worry about—why, I even worry about
Mandy, and Hayley, Heidi, Jessica, and Ashlee.
Now I admit I may be the only one left who still worries
himself over Christina Aguilera and the Olsen Twins…
sometimes I lay awake at night and can’t get to sleep
wondering whatever happened to J Lo or what’s to become of Haile Berry,
but I never worry about running into old Dick Cheney in Heaven.
Now I don’t like to come off as if I’m being self-righteous.
Just like you, and everybody else, by my own lights
I do the best I can to live a life that’s of service to my fellow men and women
(especially the women. I’d like to be of service to the ladies whenever I can.
Ladies, all you have to do is ask)
and I believe a person should do right for the sake of doing right,
let me say that again, do the right thing because it is the right thing to do,
not looking to cop a reward in some hypothetical afterlife.
Yet, if I should find that I’m wrong after I have died,
and I’m going to go and burn in Hell for having not led a life pleasing to Jesus Christ,
friends, I’m here to tell you, it’d be worth it to me to go to Hell
just to see good old Dick Cheney getting fried!
“Simply because Me Loves You” … by Nana Nestoros
______________________________
You’re gonna touch my hand
And the lights of Cosmos will spread out into my soul
And a celestial deathly silence will give its place
To divine chants
You’re gonna look me in the eyes again
And the Earth will seize your impulse
It will quake and spurt the lava
Again, you’re gonna say to me “I love you”
The glow not going away from you, not even for a moment
And Nature will conspire with us
For a hunting to which no other has ever been alike
Along together we will run to capture life
Not ever letting it go away
And let us trap Peace under the dome of the Universe
And hook it tightly
Upon the sun rays and the arms of the stars
Thus like a veil, love will fall around humans
Just Simply because Me Loves You
~ 2006, translated from Greek, Nana Nestoros~
I Don’t Have Time To Write This Poem
(and you don’t have time to read it)
So look around and get up
off the goddamn sofa of the earth
and pick up a mop and bucket
and clean up this place, because
there’s no beer in the refrigerator,
the t.v.’s on test pattern,
and it doesn’t matter about screaming
and yelling to “Throw the bums out!”
because they can’t hear you,
and your wife’s to-do list ain’t
never gonna get done, and
lady gaga has gone to the store
for more makup
(and won’t be back for half-a-century.)
You already know those guys running
back and forth, up the field and down the field
and knocking each other over in-between,
will never get further than those funny H’s
at either end, so what’s the point of Superbowl
anyway, when everything interesting is on the outside?
and you don’t read Roman numerals anyway,
and the plums were already delicious.
You don’t need heart, you don’t need a strategy
you don’t need to pick your nose and see
if Sarah Palin or something worse comes out
(could it if you did? what would you do then?)
and there is no tomorrow like tomorrow
which is going to be the same fucking same
as it is today, and if you don’t know that
by now, then there is no tomorrow
and you don’t need one any more
than I need a doctor to tell me
to stop smoking because
there is no remote control, either,
and if there was, the batteries are dead
and I won’t be living long enough to see
how it all comes out, even if I stop
dragging my ass and get up off this
sofa of an off-my-meds brain that I’m living in
(and, clean that up too, while you’re at it)
and just go do the damn to-do list
before she’s gone and the to-do list is gone
and I’m gone, and your gone,
and the earth is gone and there is no today,
and the plums were delicious.
– rs, 2011
les patriotes
(for Pat Tillman)
a stupendous handle manipulated
by well coordinated crews
juts from the side of the machine
its thick torqued springs
build a frightening tension
and then exhale their soft release
“slowly, very slowly”, yells the foreman
from the mechanical arm of his perch
workers in sleeveless shirts
bear down, foreheads glazed
drip black to steel tipped boots
the passers-by pause
start to gather
huddle in groups, gaze fixed
upon their own reflection
off the mirrored sprockets
a stout man in swallow-tailed coat
smiles, rouses the band
to play louder…
much louder
than the straining gears
someone waves a small flag
stapled to a wooden stick
young girls paint the air in colors
of leotard and undulating ribbons
and even the knowing
stand hollow-eyed monks
shifting in sparse shadow
of the bradford pears
AJ Morelli
love it. Hey, Morelli, how do I get in touch with you? – you can back-channel me here or from the ‘lobby’ of my website.
You can leave a message here
http://allpoetry.com/AJ_Morelli
Náufrago.
Sem remos de faia.
Expiação.
Quisera calcular exatamente
a dívida da fuga,
como fazem sedutores comerciantes
e raparigas de programas. Poeto tamancos,
crucifixos,
ferrolho de dizeres, penetrações,
masturbação de mil tédios
que suporto com alergia
e mais estábulos,
metralhadoras.
A fuga da dívida bubuia e é falsete,
organismo sofismado em cacho.
Gala.
Rhythm Of Words for Social Awareness
Part of 100 THOUSAND POETS FOR CHANGE
September 24, 2011
6-10 PM
Tate Street Coffee House Greensboro, NC
A Free Public Event
Choose an issue you feel strongly about and speak on it
Play about it
Sing about it
Tell a story about it
Use comedy to help heal
Poets
Musicians/Singers
Storytellers
Comedians
Open Mic element intertwined throughout program
Oh I see technical then Rhythm Of Words for Social Awareness
There fore change requires words?
Poetry requires words?
What if I say……………………
sigh space bar x 10 nothing
Heartfelt embrace dot pause pause pau…….se heart felt pause
Sigh
Space bar Pause space bar x 10
Does that mean something to you? If it is interpreted exactly as I input it it in more or less meaningful or suggestive meaning because I have implied meaning by signing in and saying I have something to say, or more importantly, not say??
I want to say nothing! Blank. Spacebar
. .
See when this is posted it will be . spacebar . but that is not what I wrote!!!!!
Blue Lion
We measure air’s history from a tube
Stuck through the heart of a blue lion,
Watching as it enters the silence of stones
In metal spirals, awaiting what centuries of ice can tell us,
We are transient yet leave much behind
And rise in the clarity of glass,
What is invisible, imperceptible is captured
In an air bubble and preserved like a gesture through time,
What two hands have fused is instantly universal
And we watch the birds for answers or forebodings;
We look for replies in the stomachs and on the slick black
and white coats of emperors,
We are agitated as chunks collapse into ocean.
We have much in common; we are both of water
And we both hang by a thread.
by Teresa Chuc Dowell
(first published in Jack Magazine)
Poignant and beautiful poems.
Eternity in Gaza by Teresa Chuc Dowell
Khan Younis Refugee Camp, 2001
When the canisters fell, they were ready,
thinking, “More tear gas”, but a white cloud
flowered above, then changed colors and emitted
a sweet odor that made them want to breathe in
the way one breathes in the smell of sweet tea.
The color darkened until it looked like a burning
and people ran to put out what they thought were
fires on their neighbors’ rooftops. Muscles began to
cramp up, constricting as if from the bite of a scorpion.
A woman dropped her child as she scratched herself in a fit
of convulsions. A father attempted to hold down
his son who flailed and moaned until he fell into a coma.
The teenagers who played with the canisters, who taunted
their apparent harmlessness, shrieked and shook in pain for weeks.
The doctors had never seen anything like this before. The villagers
had never seen anything like this before. The convulsions came
like waves for an entire month and family who sat and cried at bedside
wailed in pain almost as much as the victims who looked like rabid dogs.
Some visitors were stunned silent, their eyes inward, heads tilted to the side
as if not looking would somehow make it not truly happening.
In a laboratory far away, were beakers, scientists in white gowns and goggles,
microscopes, and gloves. At the end of the day, they went home
to their wives and wives to their husbands. The tables were set,
the dinner was ready, warm and steaming,
and the children swung their legs beneath the table.
(first published in the anthology, L, by Silkworms Ink)
A Poem in English and Spanish by Elina Florez Pindeda, Bogota, Colombia
WAKE UP WORLD -100 Thousand Poets for Change
It´s time to wake up world,
To fight with something more than arms
To fill the planet with bombs made out of words.
To unite nations with hearts full of solidarity
It´s time, our planet is hurt,
Let´s unite strengths to try to heal it.
There are so many who don´t understand
What others try to tell us
For their dialect is not the same.
Our planet is one only caló, love,
Let´s be the breather it needs
For its sad fissure,
100. thousand poets for change
We come to say hello,
To give a stain of peace to our mother earth.
Wake up people,
The voice is here with only one goal
To prove that out love for the world does not know social class.
Wake up people, black, white, no matter the race,
For our world we are going to march, the 24th of September
Will be a date to remember.
Brother, sister, let´s march for equality
For a political and social change,
With words made out of general wisdom.
No more absurd wars
That destroy with evil,
The good intentions of those who fight for peace
No more violence with our earth
By wanting to snatch its natural resources
Snatching its lungs for it to breathe
Wake up world we are staining our children
With environmental destruction,
Taking, the future of humanity to its total destruction.
Wake up world, our earth
Is starting to wrinkle
Victim of the suffering that we let happen
Wake up world, lets unite more than gross forces to fight.
Inspired poems that make us weep
With only one universal language, love for our world before marching.
By : Elina Florez Pindeda
Despierta Pueblo, 100. Mil Poetas Por El Cambio
Es Hora de despertar mundo,
De luchar con algo mas que armas,
De llenar el planeta con bombas hechas de palabras.
De unir naciones con corazones llenos de solidaridad
Es hora, nuestro planeta esta herido,
Unamos fuerzas para tratar de sanarlo.
Son tantos los que no comprendemos
Lo que otros quieren decirnos,
Pues su dialecto no es el mismo.
Nuestro planeta es un solo caló, el amor,
seamos el respirador que necesita
Para su triste fisura,
100. mil poetas por el cambio
Venimos a saludar,
A regalar una mancha de paz a nuestra madre tierra.
Despierta pueblo,
Que llego la voz, con un solo fin
Demostrar que nuestro amor por el mundo no conoce clase social.
Despierta pueblo, negros, blancos, sin importar la raza
Por nuestro mundo vamos a marchar, el 24 de septiembre
Será una fecha para recordar.
Hermano, hermana, marchemos por la igualdad
Por un cambio político y social,
Con palabras hechas con sabiduría general.
No más guerras absurdas
Que destruyen con maldad,
Las buenas intenciones de los que luchamos por la paz
No más violencia con nuestra tierra
Al quererle arrebatar sus reservas naturales
Arrancando sus pulmones para que pueda respirar.
Despierta pueblo, que manchamos a nuestros críos
Con la destrucción ambiental,
Llevando, al futuro de la humanidad a su destrucción total.
Despierta mundo, nuestra tierra
Se empieza a arrugar
Victima del sufrimiento que le hacemos pasar.
Despierta pueblo, unamos más que fuerzas brutas para luchar.
Poemas inspirados que nos hagan llorar
Con un solo lenguaje universal, amor por nuestro mundo antes de marchar
Por : Elina Florez Pineda.
Green door …by Nana Nestoros
________________________
Lethal waves gulping us to the toxic bottom
Where the corals have withered and thrown up on red murdered whales.
Trying to hold on a sun ray to save us
But we fall again, pull our hands ’cause they burn
Trying to swim to the oily surface
And our faces become black as we look at the sky
Breathing fog filled with tumors lurking
Trying to find emergency exit from the past
And the wheel will turn this time
Opening the green grand door
And those who hid paradise
Shall be closed outside forevermore
We refuse world NUCLEAR
We accept world NEW and CLEAR
And we hope this is enough clear to all
~ 25 June 2011 by Nana Nestoros~
Black Tongue Review is dedicating our 2nd issue to 100TPC. It is going to be a wonderful issue, featuring poetry by Matt Hart, Di Suess, Mary Ruefle, Chad Sweeney, Jennifer K. Sweeney, Gary McDowell, Greg Santos and many more! We make it our goal to send out all of our poems across to the world to international artists, who then create an image for each poem. We are forming a bridge between nations, using art to change the world. 100% of all proceeds to go a selected charity or foundation. Help us by liking is on Facebook and purchasing our special 100TPC issue. Our last issue donated over $200 to Save the Children Foundation and we plan to double that this issue. We have published artwork from Peru, Brazil, Paris, Sweden, Australia, Africa, UK and other areas around the globe. Help us help others! Sept. 24 is the official release date! https://www.facebook.com/pages/Black-Tongue-Review/213847208661314?ref=ts
You’ve Got To Be Fearless
I was born in Israel when it was
only three years old.
First war, I went through at
four years old.
Three more wars to follow.
My grandparents murdered
for their religion.
So, what was I taught?
You’ve got to be fearless.
Much more easily said than lived.
England saved me when we moved
there at the age of six.
They embraced me with history,
architecture, beautiful and natural
countryside.
Then the world’s most amazing city,
London, took over my life,
cared and taught me everything I know.
But, when push came to shove,
Great Britain said
“You have to be fearless”.
Now, here in California.
America my home since 1979.
My life still complicated,
changing, and not quite there yet.
I know I have to be fearless.
The StanzAviv poetry collective are pleased to announce that ‘The Last Stanza: An Anthology of Poems from Tel Aviv’ is now available to buy online.
All proceeds from the book go to the ARDC (African Refugee Development Center), a charity hich serves some of the thousands of African refugees who are in Israel escaping persecution, rape and other atrocities in their home countries. (For more, visit: http://www.ardc-israel.org/en/).
Topics of poems range from seeking refuge, travel in Africa, war, love, meditations on existence, being Jewish at Christmas, internet banking, waking up drunk on a riverside and more.
The book costs $18.44 or £11.40 and can be mailed to anywhere in the EU and USA. To buy a copy, or two, please click here:
http://www.shop.danscribe.com/The+Last+Stanza/p667352_3755317.aspx
Thank you.
Percy Bysshe Shelley. 1792–1822
Ode to the West Wind
I
O WILD West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being
Thou from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,
Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
Pestilence-stricken multitudes! O thou 5
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed
The wingèd seeds, where they lie cold and low,
Each like a corpse within its grave, until
Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow
Her clarion o’er the dreaming earth, and fill 10
(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)
With living hues and odours plain and hill;
Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;
Destroyer and preserver; hear, O hear!
II
Thou on whose stream, ‘mid the steep sky’s commotion, 15
Loose clouds like earth’s decaying leaves are shed,
Shook from the tangled boughs of heaven and ocean,
Angels of rain and lightning! there are spread
On the blue surface of thine airy surge,
Like the bright hair uplifted from the head 20
Of some fierce Mænad, even from the dim verge
Of the horizon to the zenith’s height,
The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge
Of the dying year, to which this closing night
Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre, 25
Vaulted with all thy congregated might
Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere
Black rain, and fire, and hail, will burst: O hear!
III
Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams
The blue Mediterranean, where he lay, 30
Lull’d by the coil of his crystàlline streams,
Beside a pumice isle in Baiæ’s bay,
And saw in sleep old palaces and towers
Quivering within the wave’s intenser day,
All overgrown with azure moss, and flowers 35
So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou
For whose path the Atlantic’s level powers
Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below
The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear
The sapless foliage of the ocean, know 40
Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear,
And tremble and despoil themselves: O hear!
IV
If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;
If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;
A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share 45
The impulse of thy strength, only less free
Than thou, O uncontrollable! if even
I were as in my boyhood, and could be
The comrade of thy wanderings over heaven,
As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed 50
Scarce seem’d a vision—I would ne’er have striven
As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.
O! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!
I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!
A heavy weight of hours has chain’d and bow’d 55
One too like thee—tameless, and swift, and proud.
V
Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:
What if my leaves are falling like its own?
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies
Will take from both a deep autumnal tone, 60
Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,
My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!
Drive my dead thoughts over the universe,
Like wither’d leaves, to quicken a new birth;
And, by the incantation of this verse, 65
Scatter, as from an unextinguish’d hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unawaken’d earth
The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?
The Voice Not Heard
(does it even make a sound?)
I know a world that pulls itself apart,
and from the start did not know when to stop,
that hooked itself to evolution’s wake
and tailless told stories ’till it dropped.
Above it was that mightiest of trees
whose branches bore it all it ever knew;
and, though the leaves still glittered golden
far above the fallen fruit, they’d take an axe
and chop it down in hopes their tales
might show through its rotting root.
Who’s left to hear of that now fallen branch
that would not be content to leave it so;
if storied end was what they wished to be,
why did they take the rest of that great work
and bring it, soundless down, to lay with thee?
PEACE TRAIN
Now I’ve been happy lately
Thinking about the good things to come
And I believe it could be
Something good has begun
I’ve been smiling lately
Dreaming about the world as one
And I believe it could be
Something good’s bound to come
For out on the edge of darkness
There runs the peace train
Peace train take this country
Come take me home again
Peace train sounding louder
Ride on the peace train
Hoo-ah-eeh-ah-hoo-ah
Come on the peace train
Peace train’s a holy roller
Everyone jump upon the peace train
Hoo-ah-eeh-ah-hoo-ah
This is the peace train
Get your bags together
Come bring your good friends too
Because it’s getting nearer
Soon it will be with you
Come and join the living
It’s not so far from you
And it’s getting nearer
Soon it will all be true
Peace train sounding louder
Ride on the peace train
Hoo-ah-eeh-ah-hoo-ah
Come on the peace train
I’ve been crying lately
Thinking about the world as it is
Why must we go on hating?
Why can’t we live in bliss?
For out on the edge of darkness
There rides the peace train
Peace train take this country
Come take me home again
Peace train sounding louder
Ride on the peace train
Hoo-ah-eeh-ah-hoo-ah
Come on the peace train
Come on, come on, come on the peace train…
–Cat Stevens
clikity-clack, clikity-clack… we keep chuggin’ along.
I found this very interesting and informative and am posting it here with permission.
(Transcript of lecture) I have put in bold some lines I find important.
INOVATION IN ALBANIAN LITERATURE
by Kristaq F. Shabani
Albanian Literature has progressed so far to become highly appreciated and a worthy competitor in Europe’s literary tradition. It is due to its nature of being expressive and authentic. This has its consequences as the original voice which speaks stylistically, figuratively, philosophically, laconically, satirically and convincingly. It reflects artistically of events, real phenomena and improvised imaginations, labeled “Illyrian-Albanian”. In the plan of the analytical literary study and literary research, it is frequently mentioned the phenomenon that the Albanian Literature is a literature which has a new breath and composition. It is based on the fact that in the last centuries it has been enriched and has created its grand corps. This Literature has endured because its authors have been dynamic activists in all components and literary genres. The artistic bent of Albanian people has always been well known. They have a great many literary voices inside Albania and around the world. They have been distinguished for the variety of themes, the great messages they have delivered for a proud country and its rich ancestry and traditions.
Our literature has a dynamism that moves and motivates the masses towards social and moral progress. This vast body of literature represents the intelligence, the spiritual and artistic personality of the people.
These characteristics can be observed in Albanian folktales, a rich resource of intelligent genre. The messages delivered by ethnic musical tradition including ballads and dance speak for an expressive folk choreography.
This variety of movements is characteristic of a nation that possesses a distinctive way of singing and discourse in its polyphonic song. We value it for its richness and creative expression. For examples we turn to ballads such as “Konstandin and Dhoqina”, “Gjergj Elez Alia” “The song of Ymer Aga”etc. These pieces astonish even the greatest scholars of Albanian arts. These compositions occupy a distinguished place in the history of world arts.
Those scholars who disagree are nevertheless enthusiastic. In this context we do not intend to rewrite history. We stress that the Albanian nation has always been separated from others by facts of history. They created a new style of literature from the places of their exile. It was based on Albanian tradition and further enriched by the literary traditions of their adopted cultures. Worthy of mention are the literary developments of the ‘arberesh’ of Italy, ‘arvanitas’ of Greece, the typical representative of literature in countries such as Bulgaria, Romania, Russia, Egypt, USA and Canada. But let’s not forget the contributions of the minorities of Albania such as Greeks. Those in Kosovo have contributed many values especially in the last decade. It is beneficial to mention the Albanian literature in regions of Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro and the Balkans. Such literature is characterized by advanced fantasy and creative mind as a result of the finding of self and the advantage of being supported by a positive environment. As a result of this finding of self and support by this culture, the quality of these creative works is varied and memorable. We must stress that in Kosovo and other countries where Albanians live, there have been threats to the Albanian creative. But is has persevered in delivering the message of literary freedom to the masses.
The Albanians who have settled abroad have distinguished themselves with talent and dignity.
We mention many examples such as Jeronim De Rada, Gavril Dara (I riu), Zef Skiroi, Jul Variboba, Zef Serembe. These fine intellectuals carried the philosophical thought of their culture and cultivated literature in their new homeland. A representative literature conveys its values and spirituality of one who has left his motherland to live in another environment, in another mentality, in a second world.
We should stress that our people during his whole existence has always been characterized by amazing creative skills, which would be envied by others: mastering of talent to create and contributing to the places where they settled, where they earned a good name. This is better expressed in the whole creative heritage of the Albanian people, a heritage which is like a giant corps of literary creation, which cannot be denied its creative value, skill and traditional reflection.
This generation has its representatives the most typical of which is Hasan Zyko Kamberi, who wrote the beautiful verses for the money and other later representatives such as Ali Asllani, Lushi i Nakaj etc. Without underestimating other names, we reach a logical conclusion: “Albanian Literature since its beginning in its lands, has been produced with original style, thus it has been a literature of the golden dynamic mentality, which has its undeniable role in the universal exchange of values. In later periods Albanian Literature is heading toward progress represented by great names with a great reputation worldwide.
They were activists and dynamic in the countries they settled in, consequently they penetrated deeply in the literature of other countries. Thus the Albanian authors infiltrated in the Literature of the places where they emigrated. We would like to mention here the famous Albanian historian Marin Barleti . But Albanian literature was fully developed in the framework of the great movement, the NATIONAL RENESSAINCE, where great authors of the international level were distinguished, who deservingly gained great titles. I would like to mention some of their names in front of this honorable audience: Naim Frashëri, National Poet, with his great poem “TI, SHQIPËRI, MË JEP NDER MË JEP EMRIN SHQIPTAR” (you, Albania, you make me proud, and honor me with the name Albanian), Andon Zako Çajupi another great poet with his great poem “MËMËDHE QUHET TOKA, ATJE KU KA RËNUR KOKA”(MOTHERLAND IS LAND WHERE YOU PROSTRATE), Pashko Vasa, Ndre Mjeda, Milosh Gjergj Nikolla, Gjergj Fishta, Fan Stilian Noli, Faik Konica and many others, who made use of allegory laconism and satire to illuminate people’s minds and were persecuted by the Ottoman regime as well other dark regimes. This illuminated literature in all its genres served for the acknowledgement of the Albanian literature’s progress in other countries as well as for the acknowledgement of the literature of other countries due to the translation of the great works of art from Homer to continue with other writers such as Servantes, Gollsuorth, Man, Balzak, Frans, Uitman, Drajzer, Heminguej, Pushkin, Gorki, Tolstoi, Stendal, Turgeniev, Dostojevski, Shollohov, Seferis, Kazanzakis, Seferis, Hygo, Gete, Hajne etc. It was associated with a more clear vision and an introduction to the Albanian authors and readers of the great classics. It led to coming face to face of the values and to a total dedication to more respectful and more prominent works.
Worthy to be mentioned is Ismail Kadare. A great poet and writer, known for his dynamics of the literary thought, his creative arsenal in all literary genres, for his works distinguished for the treatment of great subjects with great delicacy. Ismail Kadare is from the town of Gjirokastra, where we have delivered the signals of a great international Ismail Kadare, due to his special literary values has become a writer of international level, a claimer of the NOBEL Price.
I do not think that anyone of you who are present in this honorable auditory does not know this talented writer, who represents the Albanian intellectual literature in modern times. There are many other writers and poets who possess such great values and skills and are capable of representing themselves in other countries by unfolding their literary values. This has been shown in the international competitions held in different countries of the world, where the writers and poets of all countries praise our literature.
I would like to mention some other writers and poets such as Dritëro Agolli, a great author typical for the Albanian mentality, Lasgush Poradeci, powerful lyric poet, Milllosh Gjergj Nikolla, poet of the sorrow, Petro Marko, Gjergj Zheji, Dhimitër Xhuvani, Sterjo Spasse, Ali Podrinja, Professor Rexhep Qosja , or wiiters of this generation such as Andon Papleka, Fatos Kongoli, Mimoza Ahmeti, Kristaq F. Shabani, Petro Dudi, Izet Çulli, Dino Çiço, Dhimitër Miti, Lumo Kolleshi, Jorgo Telo, Brunilda Zllami, Agron Shele and poets Luljeta lleshanaka and Visar Zhiti, etj.
During the period of 1944-1990 Albanian literature experienced a drama in a typical system, which, in addition to counter values produced a few values which are now administered. Albanian poets, writers and artists created and many times were persecuted for their advanced ideas and their being influenced by currents foreign for the Albanian literature such as surrealism, futurism, and hermetism. The punishment was great and many genuine writers could not put their thoughts in letter and express themselves in literature “otherwise”.
In this framework we should say that the expressive individual creative ability flourished. The so called literature of socialist realism sacrificed many great talents of the Albanian Literature, yet many of them have already bloomed in the new environment showing their talents even in the international scale.
After the years 90 of the last century, when the great transformations occurred, a galloping step is made in literature. In these 17 years of creation, Albanian authors feel themselves free in this democratic brittleness, which sometimes maintains the inheritance of striking with hidden methods.
Albanian literature and authors took another shape and, despite the economic difficulties, they freed their enchained soul, wrote their thoughts in letter with a strangely great fantasy and dedication touching different subjects, styles and methods that before were forbidden. Thus a typical literature, return to the origin, a literature without influences, without control or censured, that flows naturally and is deeply appreciated. This is the real literature of the dynamic Albania and its talented men of letters. Albanian Literature has become a literature with new findings, a return to figuration and freedom of the creation and translation, to the bloom of the creation of the many great literary associations such as the Albanian Authors Association “PEGASI” that I represent in this International Symposium. In this framework it is also worthy to mention the paradoxal, experimental and illustrative literature, which is represented by great artists of painting and sculpture, who have never been absent in Albania. I would like to mention some of their names: Odise Paskali (sculptor), Abdurrahman Buza, Guri Madhi, Avdulla Cangopnji, Zef Shoshi, Foto Stamo (painter) apo të mëvonshmit, që jetojnë edhe sot si Stavri Çatipiktor, tekstilist, Stefan Papamihali (skulptor), Bashkim Ahmeti (painter), Ksenofon Kostaqi, piktor, or Mantho Bozhori, Jani Guxo, Koço Beruka and other artists who have given their contribution in this great movement in Albanian literature, where the contour has already been wholly created and is in its way of perfection.
Here are a couple poems I wanted to share:
Whisper
These days
there are all kinds of whisperers.
Horse, dog, cat. You name it,
someone is whispering to it.
American idols, who are they?
There are politicians whispering
behind closed doors, on cell phones,
to large piles of money. Who
are these faces and what lips
can whisper such secrets
designed to hurt so many?
As for me, I am whispering
to the trees. For so long,
they have whispered to me
and now I beg them, please,
teach us to be more like you,
steadfast, but flexible.
Don’t just hug a tree.
Be a tree: root, stretch
shade, blossom. Then,
when the wind blows,
whisper “thank you.”
Lisa Vihos
and one more…
Listen
You can hear the slight whoosh
of blood through veins
and wind through fallen leaves.
Listen. You must stop talking
and even stop thinking
to hear the sound
of spider diatribes,
bird soliloquies
and the wonderments of worms.
Did you know if you are quiet enough,
you can hear dirt? You can hear
what the rain is planning.
These vibrations,
beyond all measurable
and immeasurable frequencies
are the same sounds that emanate
from a father’s hand,
or a mother’s thigh, or the sun.
These are the sounds of connection
and creation, the murmur of crescent moons,
the songs of stars that children hear
because they haven’t forgotten yet
how to be like fish or flower;
an aerial tuned to everything.
Lisa Vihos
been there, done that. dipped my cupped hands in that pond, splashed water on my face. It was cool and delicious. The trees shimmered and fish swam through their branches.
Toronto’s poems for change
from onecloud
onechange fore me
that poetry inform
our culture’s goal
for children’s glee
an untitled poem for change
by: Cheryl Trudeau
Can’t even lead the old, Appaloosa ponies to water,
on account of my own dehydration.
They remain stagnant unaware of their self-imposed duress.
Suspecting a storm to come, but not enough to break the dam.
Change by Mary Fish
A Poem
. .
. .
. !
. …?
Copyright Mary Fish July 2011
from Max Layton
I just want to thank the other 99,999 poets for helping to make this happen! See you in September… Meanwhile, here’s a poem appropriate to the tenth anniversary of 9/11…
TO SING ANOTHER VILLANELLE
To sing another villanelle
We climb or, drowning, die of thirst
At the bottom of this well
No fitter rhyme could this tale tell
For we, though last, are not the first
To sing another villanelle
When towers burned in sky-high hell
We found ourselves, our world, reversed
At the bottom of this well
When lovers jumped and others fell
Our parched hearts yearned, before they burst
To sing another villanelle
That sidewalk thump will sound our knell
Unless, in art, that sound is nursed
At the bottom of this well
Though words can never death dispel
Our spirits rise in verse unhearsed
To sing another villanelle
At the bottom of this well
Photosynthesis
for my son –
How can I convince you
that you do have chlorophyll,
that you can take the sun’s
energy and turn it into sugar?
Produce something sweet inside of you.
Take the waste people breathe out
and make it into something that
will keep you alive, that will keep
those around you alive, create oxygen.
Why do you say that this metaphor
doesn’t work, that you don’t have
the powers of a plant, that nature
didn’t intend you that way?
Look, how you twist and turn
towards the light.
by Teresa Chuc Dowell
(first published in EarthSpeak Magazine)
I like the ending of this poem very much. Your son as as sun flower perhaps?
(A Haiku)
Flock of chickadees
calls and feeds in soft sifting
snowy woods. Alone.
– S. M. Hutton
By Ken Bena
Forgive me if these words don’t put on the garment of my culture
For i was born into a time
When poverty,murders,arson and corruption
Fell like rain drops of torture
And our code of conduct?
A mere reflection of western horrors
Pardon me if i choose not to borrow
From What i despise
For like a fish brought ashore
I would die if i dare imitate the evil ways of today
I was born a Nigerian expected to live as an african
But there no Africans in Nigeria
They all fled in streams
Cleanse from the skin by some lotion
That causes cancer in slow motion
And prostitution?
I don’t recall to have met that shameless woman
In the good old days
When we all walked proud and naked all day
Yet here she is,walking around with a proud smile
Of wantonness
While dignity covers his head in shame
At such un holy business
Wait!dont flee if these words snap at the heels
Of your conscience
For if you think HIV a concept full of nonsense
Than wait till your bones become thin
And your flesh shrinks
While the lawyers are busy asking for your next of kin
This is not Africa but Nigeria
Here we are awaken
Not by the crow of the cock
But the alarming cry of a bomb
The bark of a gun
And the harsh glare of the sun
Maybe now you understand the reason
Why i don’t speak of corruption,hunger and unemployment
Who would listen?
Maybe the innocent laying sick in indifferent prisons
Or the homeless shivering under the baleful gaze
Of haggard bridges
Could be the pregnant mothers
Staring into the cold eyes of an empty kitchen
Parhaps the unnamed baby’s left to rot in rubish dumps
For no reason
Would they forgive and maybe some day listen?
I think not
For life in this country just aint easy.
POETS
Poets are a gang,
pretending nomads,
indecisive interpreters
of banalities and eternity.
They are useless seekers,
intemperate lovers,
hunters of lost words,
the spies of roads and seas.
Poets are vain gardeners
of overgrown royal gardens,
vanguards of star derailments,
messengers of sunken ships,
desecrators of secret paths,
crafty repairers of the Ursa Major
and the Ursa Minor,
collectors оf astral dust.
Poets are thieves of illusions,
troubadours of rejected utopias,
seducers of any kind,
tasters of poisoned food,
prodigal sons and professional seducers,
heroes which spontaneously
put their heads at the guillotine
at which they are also executioners.
Poets are the crowned guardians
of language’s proper being,
lovers of unsolvable mysteries,
charlatans and pimps.
They are the favourites of gods,
tasters of magic drinks,
and crazy squanderers
of their own lives.
Poets are the last offshoots
of the most delicate sort of cosmic beings,
cultivators of the soul’s white flowers,
unreliable creators of untenable worlds.
Poets are interpreters of lost signs,
carriers of important messages,
a warning that Life is endless
and Universe an unfinished project.
Poets are fireflies on the junkyard of the Cosmos,
conquerors of the colourful rainbow belt
and performers of the holy music
of the cosmic birth.
Poets are invisible companions
in the silence of sense and absurdity
of all the visible and the invisible.
Poets are my only, true brothers.
© Duska Vrhovac
Outside Of A Small Circle Of Friends
By Phil Ochs
C D C D
Look outside the window, there’s a woman being grabbed
C Em F G
They’ve dragged her to the bushes and now she’s being stabbed
E Am
Maybe we should call the cops and try to stop the pain
F Am Dm G
But Monopoly is so much fun, I’d hate to blow the game
C Am Eb
And I’m sure it wouldn’t interest anybody
Cm F
Outside of a small circle of friends.
Riding down the highway, yes, my back is getting stiff
Thirteen cars are piled up, they’re hanging on a cliff.
Maybe we should pull them back with our towing chain
But we gotta move and we might get sued and it looks like it’s gonna rain
And I’m sure it wouldn’t interest anybody
Outside of a small circle of friends.
Sweating in the ghetto with the (colored/Panthers) and the poor
The rats have joined the babies who are sleeping on the floor
Now wouldn’t it be a riot if they really blew their tops?
But they got too much already and besides we got the cops
And I’m sure it wouldn’t interest anybody
Outside of a small circle of friends.
Oh there’s a dirty paper using sex to make a sale
The Supreme Court was so upset, they sent him off to jail.
Maybe we should help the fiend and take away his fine. (*)
But we’re busy reading Playboy and the Sunday New York Times
And I’m sure it wouldn’t interest anybody
Outside of a small circle of friends
Smoking marihuana is more fun than drinking beer,
But a friend of ours was captured and they gave him thirty years
Maybe we should raise our voices, ask somebody why
But demonstrations are a drag, besides we’re much too high
And I’m sure it wouldn’t interest anybody
Outside of a small circle of friends
Oh look outside the window, there’s a woman being grabbed
They’ve dragged her to the bushes and now she’s being stabbed
Maybe we should call the cops and try to stop the pain
But Monopoly is so much fun, I’d hate to blow the game
And I’m sure it wouldn’t interest anybody
Outside of a small circle of friends
[ Additional verse, 1974 ]
Down in Santiago where they took away our mines
We cut off all their money so they robbed the storehouse blind
Now maybe we should ask some questions, maybe shed a tear
But I bet you a copper penny, it cannot happen here
And I’m sure it wouldn’t interest anybody
Outside of a small circle of friends
August 1-5-th anniversary of death – the departure from this life, to my dear mother Anika, who still missing very much, and I have to many heart pain …I send my poetry:”To my mother Anika”
That night – ember of stars
Delayed “Anek” the trip from Pireaus
And I couldn’t reach…
Impeded, though
Back I didn’t go…!
Hurry, please – I told them –
Hurry up…!
With the eyes hinged on the opening door
She waits for me
Migrated and yearning with longing
In the ancient island named Crete,
Where embracing sun and sea
Kazanzatkis forever sleeps
Oh, mother!
Through August’s heat
Loaded with pain
And my longing that was burning the sun
I made my way through Pindus,
As once the patriots passed through deer’s…
I came… I did come that day
With the eternal farewell’s cent
To moisten your lips
To kiss your eyes…
The dawn of each month
Perturbed I am
A knot of sorrow in the throat…
Always pining for you my blessed, dear mother
When I am troubled and lost
Like in between waves of a storm
I always seek an advise from you, mother
To reach the shore or some other land.
Turn my head and look for you
And mutter to myself:
Wait to ask my mother!…
“Anek” ferry will delay from Pireaus
But will always find me in the harbors
Like my blessed mother’s will
On the shore of Mediterranean,
Far away in Crete…
Pole Star falls from the sky,
To bring you here in our midst
The love for each other
And the homeland
Our vow for you…
…………………………….A Haiku by John Vissers
Look at me now!
Ha, look at me now…..
Thrashing my arms in the sea…
I’m turning the tide!
It’s hard out there. We don’t party all the time as poets, writers, and artists, but we keep going and growing closer together.
I Want My Voice To Be Identifiable
Making each word count.
Showing off.
Letting literary confidence shine.
Declaring my thinking.
I want my voice to be identifiable.
Well, who do you write for,
you may ask?
For the general public that
includes you and me.
Not the intellectual scholars.
They’re already on board.
So, onwards, you and I.
I’ll write, you listen.
We connect.
It doesn’t get any better.
I CULTIVATE A WHITE ROSE
Cultivo una rosa blanca,
En julio como enero
Para el amigo sincero
Que me da su mano franca.
Y para el cruel que me arranca
El corazón con que vivio,
Cardo ni orgula cultivo,
Cultivo la rosa blanca.
I cultivate a white rose
In July as in January
For the sincere friend
Who gives me his hand frankly
And for the cruel person who tears
out the heart with which I live,
I cultivate neither nettles nor thorns:
I cultivate a white rose
-José Julián Martí Pérez (28 January 1853 – 19 May 1895)
I’m not trying to reply.. I’m trying to post … when I go to post archives there is a 300 page document …. how do you post something? … so much material to go through.. will it be cateloged by social issue?
Words are powerful!
A picture is worth a thousand words!
Actions speak louder than either!
So, put your “Poetry in Motion!”
this is my mantra, prayer, affirmation … other wise, words are cheap –
a dime a dozen! blah, blah, blah… and like masturbating, if no action set in motion… when it is, then we have love in action! ..
Geraldine, you just posted where you should be posting!…the “post archive” above is just that, a pdf. archive of an older page that no longer exists online. It is not active. The page you have posted on is the place to post. Everything in the end, the old and the new, will be part of the complete archive. So post away!
Thank you to our good friend Michael Castro, organizer for St. Louis, MO, for these beautiful words…
SEPTEMBER 24, 2011
for Michael Rothenberg & Terri Carrion
Poets blowing
in the winds of change
blowing truth to open ears
blowing truth in the face of fears
whispering wind
wailing wind
Poets blowing
round the world
blowing light
& blowing rain
renewing life
& easing pain
Poets blowing
everywhere
scattering seeds
against despair
Poets blowing
the human spirit
Poets blowing
can you hear it?
Can you hear it
corporations?
Can you hear it
sold out nations?
Change is blowing
because it must
Change is blowing
because it’s just
Poets blowing
In a worldwide choir.
Poets blowing
to inspire
Change is what
our planet needs
Poems are seeds
That lead to deeds.
-michael castro-
I HAVE A TARGET
By Tsoltim N. Shakabpa
Posted by Teresa Chuc Dowell-organizer-Pasadena, CA
I have a target
That some day
Our children will stand atop the plateau of a free Tibet
And wash away the ravages the Chinese left behind
I have a target
That one day
The Tibetan spirit will be exalted
And the Chinese power muffled
I have a target
That one day
The children of the Chinese who raped Tibet
And the children of the Tibetans who suffered under Chinese rule
Will sit down together at the table of friendship
I have a target
Now until our kingdom come
To make the Chinese leave Tibet
And to return the Dalai Lama to his rightful throne
I have a target
Not a dream
TSOLTIM N. SHAKABPA is a recognized Tibetan poet and a dedicated political activist for a free Tibet. He is the son of Tsepon Wabgchuk Deden Shakabpa, the eminent Tibetan historian, statesman, freedom fighter and former Finance Minister of independent Tibet.
In 1951 the world abandoned Tibet. Yet in 2011, they have still not abandoned us. The wisest most gracious people on the earth continue to travel this globe bringing words of enlightenment and wisdom, even as they stand on the brink of extinction. Note the words of the poet – not a call to ‘crush enemies’ or ‘take revenge and retribution’. No, but to “muffle power” and let the children of their warring parents rediscover one another. They, the people of Tibet, have resisted hate and ignorance and recrimination and denied it entrance, even to their hearts. Let September 24th also be a day that we let our family in that forsaken land know that we have not abandoned them.
My heart thanks you for your kind words of support for our cause.
Just sayin’
Gnome Alice copyright 2011 Toronto, Ontario
riots in London
“looters”
2200 people demonstrate in the Middle East
“revolution”
lose the cup
“hooligans”
extreme policing G20
“security”
misLead a Middle Eastern country
“dictator”
misLead a Western country
“bad politician”
just sayin’
Yes, my friend, so true. You need say no more to us. But on Sept. 24th, say it all. Name the names; expose the games; hold the up the pictures of the unborn lives and modest ambitions of people who simply want to have some food on their table and a roof over their head and educate their children – just say it all. thanx for your words.
When asked what kind of poem I would write about America,
I would rather write about how we beat the PACs
by grass roots smarts, an angry vote, and facebook.
By Yankee stubburness we caught the wind,
harnessed the Sun, grew our fuel in cornfields.
I could write this, almost, and tell true.
I would write, instead, how we are nearing that point
where our only choices will be Yes or No,
not when, not if, not why.
When the poets gather in their hundred thousands,
in malls, in bookstores, in squares,
I will rise up umong them, poem in hand,
I would rather read how children are happy,
how delicious the rivers of my home taste,
how the histories of our lives are carried forth
in the stories we tell around the table,
generations in one room,
telling so that we will remember
where we are from.
My poem will not be that one.
It will be the one where I fear
for the sitters at my table,
and hope we are as strong as we need to be.
THE 11th PANCHEN LAMA
By Tsoltim N. Shakabpa
The fake Panchen, Gyaltsen Norbu
Might as well be a mapo tofu*
He is no more than a Gya** Panchen
Sitting on top of our mighty gangchen***
For he’s just a simple stooge
Made to look holy and huge
While for the true Panchen Choekyi Ngima
Whose rays spread wide and bright like the ngima****
The Tibetan people have wept and wept
As under the carpet he has been swept
But cry no more, my countrymen
For Choekyi Ngima I will pen
A lasting tribute for he who
Is our true and treasured norbu*****
To the true Panchen Rinpoche
I prostrate and say “ka drin che” ******
* Chinese dish made of chopped pork and bean curd
** Chinese (a play on the first 3 letters of his first name)
*** Snow-capped range
**** Sun
***** Precious gem
****** Thank you
Copyright: Tsoltim N. Shakabpa – 2011
TSOLTIM N. SHAKABPA is a recognized Tibetan poet and a dedicated political activist for a free Tibet. He is the son of Tsepon Wabgchuk Deden Shakabpa, the eminent Tibetan historian, statesman, freedom fighter and former Finance Minister of independent Tibet.
An early poem…
WHY RABBITS NEVER SLEEP
Lettuce is Nature’s sedative, I read somewhere,
so at three a.m., I finally
decided to make a little salad.
There were cockroaches in the refrigerator
but I washed the vegetable well, then peeled
layer after layer, startling a sleepy worm
who crawled indignantly from beneath the leaves.
But the pieces lay untidily, splashed across the plate,
like splotches of sun on the street;
so I tried another strategy – common, really,
any housewife-poet will know it.
I took a knife, its blade seductive in the dark,
and I chopped. The fragments, I noticed, as I yawned,
had begun to take the most extraordinary shapes.
Somewhere I recognised a bride,
her toenails turned to ash,
a mother-in-law and husband shut the door.
Another piece bore the face of a politician;
a third was a child with eyes wide open.
And why did the dish resemble
a wounded Hiroshima?
I went at it like the smiling Nazi
in a half-remembered film, who invited
his prisoner to lunch, then demonstrated
the art of cutting carrots.
“Chop, chop,” he said, and as the slices fell,
still smiling, hacked the prisoner’s finger off,
two actually, with the words, “Chop, chop,”
and another smile.
That night, I discovered the reason
rabbits never seem to sleep.
A PRECIOUS DAUGHTER
(Dedicated to my daughter, Pema Yudon)
by Tsoltim N. Shakabpa
Though I want to relive
The memories of her childhood with me
And freeze every vision of her angelic face
She keeps on slipping through my fingers
Whenever I think I know her
She keeps on growing
Glowing, knowing and going
I know not how to let her go
Though I know I must one day
I recall every moment
I spent with her
Moments when I used to twirl
My finger across her palm
And she would fall asleep smiling
I treasure every instance
She hugged me tight and whispered
“I love you bigger than the universe”
Now she’s grown
And slipping through my fingers
And away she’s flown
Taking with her
All the plans I made for us
But life’s full of surprises
Full of hellos and goodbyes
Thus though sadly I must say goodbye
To a precious child I once knew
I’m so glad I can say hello
To a precious woman I now know
Whose love for me grows with age
And for whom my love knows no end
Copyright: Tsoltim N. Shakabpa – 2009
*The poet is the son of Tsepon Wangchuk Deden Shakabpa, the well-known historian, statesman, freedom fighter and former Finance Minister of independent Tibet.
The Porch Sitters
by Shelley Savor
The weight of the porch sitters
keeps the neighbourhood
balanced.
Their eyes go inside
after dusk,
then we depend on the gravity
of their shadows
to keep us aware
that we are being watched
by the imprints left
on the cushions.
Life’s Hell; Heaven is in our hands
People disappoint.
In gorgeous masks of delight
they may charm and amaze.
Ever beneath
vampiric stealth in the night.
Rude greedy mean thief
too overplayed for deception;
too many days self-deceived.
I like art.
The beautiful mask is itself,
when well-wrought portrays
the best of us. Spit the rest,
the unjust, over-blessed,
tawdry fuss, choking fumes,
whingers shaping wounds
on their breasts, unless
their etchings astound, caress the
ideal heart.
Beatific love, despite requite,
beyond petty acts of life,
unbound through crafted coin:
Art’s how we weak-voiced people join
June 29, 2011
if you were to ask for riches,
I would give you my rags,
that you would have the gift
that was given to me long ago
in the sackcloth of my heart
i was given ashes and grey
for to grieve in this world
is the only kindly response
that a blue jay lights on a limb
only to devour the worm
and a bee lights on the flower
to steal it’s very life, the amber
is the law we have been given
and only those who deny this
truly come to deep sadness
and go beyond the mild melancholy
for just as the strawberry winter
robs Spring of it’s coming
and the Summer still can rage in October
so in the deepest joy is there a hint of sadness
and in the darkest night, the hint of morning…
Take Back the Night
Is it true that we blow out a
star every time we lie? It’s so
dark in the streets tonight, not
one sun; and the four-masted
torture ship in the harbour is
moaning. Soul come back, it says
when the sails luff, meaning
every exhalation is unholy
and every inspiration a risk.
Who will brave this darkness,
climb a mast on the ghost ship
to spit across the bay at the
obscene yacht with a helicopter
on the bridge. Who? Are the
priests with soft hands all down
below drinking tea with the
politicians, their raised pinkies
bothering the air they have
dirtied with unkept promises?
No wonder wild women slink
out of the vanishing forests
with matches to ignite the kids
of Cairo, London and Damascus.
Dove e la luce? No wonder these
cities are pleading, soul come
back, the anthem of every ship
that moans while it burns, while
children take back the night?
Linda Rogers, Victoria
Manifesto for the Abolition of Bureaucracy
by Valery Oisteanu
To be and not to be…
In a failed American democracy
Watch the surf going up
While the Navy plays war games on the beaches of Puerto Rico
Can we survive the environmental conspicuous consumption?
Living next to the nuke dump, next to the oil drilling
Can you keep any individuality in the age of cloning?
Can you be yourself in a genetically brain manipulation society?
Let’s abolish medieval bureaucracy
Abandon the shabby machines of voting
The rigged system behind closed doors
De-vote Electoral College
Delete the obsolete elite
Dissolve the two party systems
To be or not to be an American-is the question
Dissent by any means necessary
Against cultural colonialism
Art as an instrument of exploitation should be abolished
All artists should go on strike
Against the prostitution of the art institutions
Against art as money laundering machine
Against the academies, the prizes, the competitions
And the army of dealers, auctioneers and agents
Power to the creative!
Power to the poets who are resisting greed, hate and intolerance
Ride the volcano of revolution into the sea
Blessed are the shamans, the stray holy-men of jazz
The underground gurus who are proving
That the collective subconscious is not a given
It must be created and nurtured
Le feu de tout bois
J’ai conforté le pouvoir du pouvoir, car je ne maîtrise pas l’inconnu.
Dieu est dans le ciel parmi les hélicoptères, les avions et les satellites ainsi qu’au fond du cerveau où la lumière réclame un nom.
La créer ou la découvrir n’est qu’une fantaisie. Elle est toute définie : c’est une propriété, un élan de désir, une marque déposée. Et pourtant… la liberté aurait pu être le contour de l’âme.
Se positionner pour croître. Détourner et réduire nos libertés qualitatives, se cristalliser en victimes de nos propres logiques. Liberté du non-partage, Maelström de réductions, cheval de Troie des petitesses, de l’ignorance et de l’incompréhension promues au rang de valeurs. Violences soignées par des violences. Fermeture des horizons, des chemins de traverse et des correspondances. Discipline de la raideur, forme niant son fond, cultivant, nourrissant et excitant ses monstres en colère pour mieux se faire peur et prouver par la preuve que le bien et le mal sont définitifs. Chaque chose à sa place. Notre bien cherche activement son mal.
Défense d’entrer-propriété privée. De l’autre côté du mur, un peu de quoi se reposer. Des chiffres ronds comme des colliers étincelant de zéros multiples masqués sous un loup bleu dans un bal charmant, cache-cash aux îles caïmans, du potentiel concentré en sommeil fiscal sous un petit parasol avec débris de glaçons.
Pratique pour la pratique. L’ennemi est désigné : la nuance qui menace l’immuable. Un immuable de pacotille, fantasmé, petit monde privilégié aux qualités toutes matérielles où l’on se purifie en brulant les conséquences de ses propres égoïsmes dont la noirceur se diffuse et s’étend dans tout l’espace laissé vide des essences perdues. Certaines formes rapides, devenues plus pauvres et identiques, s’élancent dans une dynamique de recherche sans fond, pur mouvement : celle de tous ces faibles qui réclament de la force. Alors on cultivera la force. Elle se nourrira d’elle-même, d’année en année, toujours plus grosse : futurs cadavres oubliés sur les champs de bataille de guerres absurdes et fratricides. La force implosera : ce n’était qu’une énergie éprise d’elle-même, comblant son vide glacial par le feu de tout bois. Holocauste au Dieu des absences.
L’homme (quel homme ?) transforme le monde à son image jusqu’à le dissoudre. Il ne lui restera bientôt plus que des images… Des images et des dollars qui se feront la course. Des images rongées par des images. L’homme appellera son monde aux abonnés absents avec un forfait spécial. Une grande facture universelle pleine de promesses tout de suite après la pub… En attendant le Messie, la Croissance, le tirage gagnant du loto, les princesses, les chevaux blancs, les hommes providentiels, les vaccins, la Révolution et la Finale de la coupe.
De quoi mon âme sera-t-elle faite ? Une âme-mémoire ayant bouffé son monde ? La plupart des essences sont nées de parents inconnus au-delà du ciel visible et des drapeaux. Gamines, encore avides d’amour et de caresses, elles venaient jouer jusque sous nos terrasses et quémander un nom. On leur a dit merde avec de petits riens. On leur a donné les dénominations en boutique, sur l’autel de la caisse pour faciliter l’effet et la digestion. Plus tard, écœurées, elles finissent par nier et se démultiplient en éclairages de basse consommation. On les jette dans la bataille, dans les arènes des experts auto-désignés en maillons faibles pour le bonheur hiérarchique des forts en force. Elles dansent, dansent et s’agitent, offrent leur cul, piétinent leur cœur palpitant… Elles le piétinent jusqu’à ce qu’il transpire de transparence, de maquillage et d’endorphines, pour que le monde fusillé de lumières artificielles change le loup en caniche, aligne les arbres et détourne les fleuves. Puis, désorientées, se cognent aux reflets de leurs collections de miroirs, elles deviennent nostalgiques et remplacent la création libre par des marbres dogmatiques, des âges d’or valeurs refuges et des prières aux images des origines comme un enfant malade appelle sa mère dans la nuit.
Elles dansent sur le top du top, satellites des pulsations du désir dérivé et des prières organisées. Puis on les exporte pétillantes et toutes consommées, démultipliées sur des étalages d’amour en boîte et de sourires en tube. Des sourires qui se conjuguent entre les îles, les détroits, sous le soleil et les orages pour s’échouer un jour, déchets plastiques mal décomposés dans le suc gastrique des dernières forêts primitives, denses et touffues où vivent des animaux sauvages porteurs d’émetteurs sponsorisés par des dons couverts de mousses et de limons. Des voix tendres et douces comme de la crème nous apprennent à les protéger en stéréo sur un grand écran plat, d’une définition parfaite, fabriqué dans l’autre hémisphère et embarqué sur un yacht tropical avec des « amis » (très chers) qui évacuent le stress sur fond de musiques mystiques et de massages coquins pour les générations futures dans un nuage d’avenir, d’espoir, de désir, de futur, de possible, de changement, de compétence, de papillons, d’enfants, de villages, de bons parents et autres ballons de campagne colorés du bond électoral sur la scène sécurisée en saluant la foule moderne qui trépigne et synchronise sa marche vers le synthétique bouillon primitif.
Creusez des sources curieuses et cultivez l’esthétique dans l’instant ouvert de la décision et de l’indécision, n’étouffez pas la respiration des idées et des qualités, tolérez la palette de leur diversité. Et pour l’évolution volontaire, réfléchie et déniaisée des potentiels, osez cultiver la paix, un peu d’amour et de partage. La violence se fatiguera alors peut-être ou, ne se prendra plus au sérieux, coeur en tambour, fleur vénéneuse, dans les cycles ouverts en sursis. Et nous verrons peut-être pointer le museau de l’amour qui viendra nous titiller et nous lui courrons après en riant dans nos forêts, dans les rues de nos villes, dans nos champs, dans nos étreintes fougueuses, sur nos océans, tout autour du monde et au delà… Et en reprenant notre souffle dans l’immensité nous nous exclamerons peut-être : Tout beau ! Que nous étions bêtes… !
Joël, very powerful. I fear my bablefish translation conveyed only a fraction of the original (even then, some of it clearly garbled). Like to see a good English translation, if you have one. A really excellent, if treacherous landscape. Thank you.
Poem: Embryonic Ideal
How can I change the World that I see,
unless I’m willing to begin with me?
Sharing the Word via the use of Godly platitudes
fails to work with the wrong heart’s attitude.
As human, we’re all inherently flawed;
we all need God’s grace and to not be judged by His law.
Although the world is in a hurting mess,
there’s help available for these times of distress.
We have within us the ability to find
solutions for the battles of our minds.
It’s certainly possible to make Change real –
Embrace this seed of an embryonic ideal:
See the embodiment of God in others,
since we’re the keepers… of our brother.
————————
Author notes:
Loosely based on:
Gen 4:9; Eph 4:23; Rom 8:6
Learn more about me and my poetry at:
http://www.squidoo.com/book-isbn-1419650513
By Joseph J. Breunig 3rd, © 2011, All rights reserved.
FLY IN THE EYE
By Tsoltim N. Shakabpa
A fly flew into her eye
Which led to a pain
Which led to a sore
Which will lead to an ulcer
Which will lead to cancer
Which will lead to death
We are that fly
In China’s eye
Copyright: Tsoltim N. Shakabpa – 2011
Looking forward to being pasrt of a great poetry event.
I
words by Gary D. Buxton copyright September 2001
I see
I call
I hurt
I feel,
I fall
I cringe
I cry
I reel
I rant
I rave
I wrong
I right,
I touch
I take
I keep
I might
I forget
I recall
I accuse
I blame,
I light
I stoke
I burn
I flame
I rue
I seek
I follow
I lead,
I love
I lose
I want
I need
love this
Someday, the natural language of the world might be poetry. In that case:
The President’s Poesy State of the Union Address:
I bumped my head on this low hanging ceiling,
looked around at the jackals nipping at my heels
like they hadn’t had a meal and were closing for the kill;
But I knew they’d eaten plenty the last time at this table.
They had their feast of fat and muscle (blood and bone as well) ;
they’d gorged themselves at our expense; looted the pantry,
turned on the spigots of war, and washed in the rivers
of dollars and cents, until it was time to pay the bill.
Now they yell and scream about hunger and lean,
while dismembering whatever is left of the carcass,
declare they weren’t involved in this fable
and pretend their lard-ass nowhere to be seen.
Though Justice be blind and the poor so much prey,
the rest of us bought off, or scared off, or tired,
The State of the Union demands ending this game;
that the people hunt jackal, till that species has expired.
– red slider, august, 2011
[ps. New sister petition to ‘Mission Accomplished’ is at http://www.change.org/petitions/starship-darpa-add-american-poets-to-your-specifications Please sign it. – red ]
The list of Triad Poetry Meetup poets and other local poets is growing hopefully there will be at least 20 poets or other artist signed up for this event plus the walk-in open mic voices for Triad Poetry Meetup four hour role in this movement.
LET US PRACTICE COMPASSION
By Tsoltim N. Shakabpa
The practice of compassion
Doth take many forms
Mindful of how despondent
The infirm, poor and dying were
Mother Theresa gave them a loving home
Mindful of how many innocent lives
Osama Bin Laden could annihilate
Obama rid the world of Osama
Let us too practice compassion
And rid China of oligarchy
Let us practice compassion
And let the voices of freedom be heard
Let us practice compassion
And rid the world of Chinese hegemony
Let us practice compassion
And free Tibet from Chinese occupation and repression
Let us practice compassion
And deliver the Han people in Tibet back to their homeland, China
Let us practice compassion
Copyright: Tsoltim N. Shakabpa – 2011
PEACE
I didn’t know
who he was, perhaps
he saw me somewhere, and
I was there too. I didn’t notice him, but
he remembered me, maybe. Anyway,
along the highway that circles the town, at midnight
at an all night gas station, over an espresso
shooting the breeze, he opened the door as I
was on my way out. Returning home on a late evening walk
he opened the door—
Saalam Aleikum
Aleikum Saalam.
Zev Davis
Snow on Baghdad
January, 2008
After another night of bombings, fire and death
the people of Baghdad woke
to falling snow,
fat, soft, lacy flakes
alighting on the fronds of palm trees,
roofs of skyscrapers and tenements,
ruins of ancient buildings,
spires of minarets,
coaxing people out on balconies and streets
bundled in their warmest clothing
to savor the delight
of the dazzling but gentle white.
Who, seeing the wonder in their eyes,
their giddy smiles, could deny
these are human beings –
human beings!
How can we tolerate
their being raped, murdered, plundered
in our name
by an insatiable empire so
much colder than the coldest, iciest snow.
There Is No Such Thing as a ‘Minor War’
I was born into the warlight of the world. There were beds in the corridor of the hospital and blackout curtains on all the windows. My unwrapped consciousness was already marked by the in-utero war rations and the pump of a daily cocktail of war-anxiety that rippled through the soup of hormones in which I bathed. For the next three-quarters of a century it would remain so.
There are big wars and small wars, fat ones and thin ones; wars that only kill ‘them’, ones that kill us, too. In the beginning, there was supposed to be just one; the one to end all the other ones. It didn’t. The script went on, the Theater of Pain kept producing new ones. I expect I will also die in the warlight of the world.
I set about selecting a few anti-war pieces suitable for the annual local get together of Poets Against War. I should not have been surprised that nearly all my work had some mark of war on it; on the surface or etched deep into the layers of the palimpsest of my life. Nothing, it would appear, can escape being marred by the years of reciting the same script, over and over. My mind simply cannot divorce itself from the scratches of war. Having some pure, peace-bent thought within a national consciousness that makes war the very centerpiece of its own ego is impossible. Everything we say or do is tainted by the fact that war is in the very air we breathe, the language we use and the thought we think. We cannot avoid the fact that we, too, are an occupied and preoccupied nation. No matter that we say we will fashion ‘peace’ – we are so tilted by war that the very path to that wish only circumnavigates a globe of horror.
We write, we cry out, we dance, we sing under the lamp of warlight. “Six big ones,” I said, but the reality is that the countless ‘little ones’, the ones that only spend a few days in the news, are not really any smaller. They all survive and metastasize and go right on re-enforcing our grand delusion that they are somehow “necessary steps” on the road to peace – “peacemaking’” or “peacekeeping” we dub them as we bomb the daylights out of someone or something.
Truth is, there has only been one war – and it is huge. Iraq, Afganistan, Pakistan, India – one war: Vietnam, Lebanon, Indonesia, E. Timor, Chile, One war. WWI, WWII, the next war; they are all the same war, and they are all MAJOR WARS. From the very beginning, those who wage them and those who suffer them – soldier and civilian alike – are war’s victims. For our species and our planet, there has never been and never will be such thing as a ‘minor war’.
– red slider, November, 2010
fr. “There Is No Such Thing as a ‘Minor War”, a chapbook.
http://poems4change.org/cbooks/nowar-s.pdf
our man Jack
our man Jack
a voice for change
not a voice in the wilderness
not a voice from the mean streets
our man Jack
a man of class
one who let his passion take action
one who gave his voice to justice
justice for one and all
our man Jack
a voice for civility in government
a voice for freedom in society
a man of action
our man Jack
who gave his best for all
we give our best to you.
We give our best to you
oh, Jack
we give our best to you
we give our hope to you
oh, Jack
who gives us a vision to hope for
who gives us a justice to dream for
who gives us the courage to stand
in the face of wrong doing by any
who don’t cherish this beautiful land
who gives us the courage to move onward
keep justice the vision we brand
so our children and their children also
will have children, and children again
DEFINING A NATION
By Tsoltim N. Shakabpa
The glory of a nation
Can be found in its people
Not in its rulers
The ruin of a nation
Can be found in its rulers
Not in its people
The wealth of a nation
Can be found in its values
Not in its money
The heart of a nation
Can be found in its streets
Not in its citadels of power
The joy of a nation
Can be found in its heart
Not in its celebrations
The beliefs of a nation
Can be found in its people’s silent prayers
Not in its politicians’ loud speeches
The power of a nation
Can be found in its beliefs
Not in its guns
The future of a nation
Can be found in its will
Not in its power
Copyright: Tsoltim N. Shakabpa – 2011
Tsoltim, I read each stanza as if it were a primer on how to build a society – like a train on which one only needed to select the correct track switches at critical junctures to arrive at a worthy destination: people>not rulers>values>heart>…. But the last stanza stopped me. “Will”? Yes, I thought, the will to pull all the right switches along the way. But for the final switch, the future…, i think I was hoping for ‘>the children’
OM MANI PADME HUM
Marty, I do so envy your optimism. A nice counterbalance to my dreary predictions of ‘nothing much changing’ – I’ll gladly confess, it’s the one time I hope the other guy’s right.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Layton
DEFINING A NATION
By Tsoltim N. Shakabpa
The glory of a nation
Can be found in its people
Not in its rulers
The ruin of a nation
Can be found in its rulers
Not in its people
The wealth of a nation
Can be found in its values
Not in its money
The heart of a nation
Can be found in its streets
Not in its citadels of power
The joy of a nation
Can be found in its heart
Not in its celebrations
The beliefs of a nation
Can be found in its people’s silent prayers
Not in its politicians’ loud speeches
The power of a nation
Can be found in its beliefs
Not in its guns
The future of a nation
Can be found in its will
Not in its power
Copyright: Tsoltim N. Shakabpa – 2011
TSOLTIM N. SHAKABPA is a recognized Tibetan poet and a dedicated political activist for a free Tibet. He is the son of Tsepon Wabgchuk Deden Shakabpa, the eminent Tibetan historian, statesman, freedom fighter and former Finance Minister of independent Tibet.
tanmoy roy organizer of bongaon, west bengal, india paint send by Barnaly Bala
A PRECIOUS DAUGHTER
(Dedicated to my daughter, Pema Yudon)
by Tsoltim N. Shakabpa
Though I want to relive
The memories of her childhood with me
And freeze every vision of her angelic face
She keeps on slipping through my fingers
Whenever I think I know her
She keeps on growing
Glowing, knowing and going
I know not how to let her go
Though I know I must one day
I recall every moment
I spent with her
Moments when I used to twirl
My finger across her palm
And she would fall asleep smiling
I treasure every instance
She hugged me tight and whispered
“I love you bigger than the universe”
Now she’s grown
And slipping through my fingers
And away she’s flown
Taking with her
All the plans I made for us
But life’s full of surprises
Full of hellos and goodbyes
Thus though sadly I must say goodbye
To a precious child I once knew
I’m so glad I can say hello
To a precious woman I now know
Whose love for me grows with age
And for whom my love knows no end
Copyright: Tsoltim N. Shakabpa – 2011
Something of the “I, you and world”
Many texts are in the preparation of translations in English and other languages.Dat is not easy to
translate everything from my Macedonian where I in the creation of original poetry. Must note that
the quality of lines remain, and the style of expression. How is the job of translation worked so I
advertised my poetry to you. And that of course if it creates pleasure.
I believe that accept my greetings
C O M E S
Truth, out night caresses,
by region horizon reaches that comes,
you’re, elegance ate, such you are, told you,
woman on a warm hand of hail,
related link desire to you, towing,
mote the idea thought we tower,
near Moscow, glamur,
‘re still my Russia wonderful,
where in a dream, shake the kiss in my arms,
and I wanted bell words fortune-teller,
Promised fairytale, to tell us to meet.
Composite verse, caressing hoof by heaven, to America,
respect life I was taught us, to love,
by you to walk and spaces that we want,
once and sometimes the open door of my Europe,
in aspiration gall related Arab beauty, if it does,
what luck Today more of us found,
that there is so, wish we meet,
the wall, I said, people, in the world they wore,
in his corner of the eyes expand,
flicker messages on all its sides,
jenny that cherry During that unselfishly we promised,
string to read my song,
to honor in ore by heaven and earth,
pleased to charm forces be, Tower,
with wave mountains and fields, sea and river,
come with me to the conversation.
The magical scene in starlit course, said,
I, man, by step, the shine and glow,
when I am by the length, anchor iron ring in the chain Aryan,
and wanted in my curd Andalusia to love,
somewhere in the ripple Paris by passions reach,
touch by walls hills floorcloth Queen of England,
I think with the lark woke spaces, long ago it was,
corner litter Feeding she-wolf saint, legend,
by the Caesar width shot,
caught wishlist range reaches,
when it is Asia in anfaz inflorescence its yellow face,
confluence beauty, soul and body,
in purple inflorescence, game smile, India,
in terms of its long cherry,
Ramzes, Strel is about his falcon,
the word a rousing night Red Day in Africa
by roads fairytales to us of ancient Thrace,
degree our lady Mary in it,
the bell to hail me Athens coach,
tone caught, Proud, talking about Helada,
by shine shield in the eternity of Macedonia,
the spear was thrown, lightning cuts,
landscape by the people, from there to here,
this world is our home, this world is our watering place,
in this world we have our truth,
in step coming.
Maksimovski Marjan
Victory
Today, we are narrating, and smile,
at watching, by thiness bells ringing,
binoculars with him, in terms that I see,
today, that we are burning song,
with games, magic,awakens us to Birth,
in contact, with glow, that radiates the source,
here, one for another, we, you and me,
to whisper rustle each sheet,
At any words directed,
by rainbow,in the landscape of the earth to heaven,
day on step, on
Fortunately the stood.
Today, word me is , for centuries,
from here to you, palms we docked,
as anyone,how our hearts knocking,
us by our forces,wake goodness,
and I, even in the dream, I was not hatred.
Long, I want you, to have you in my arms,
whirlwind that we are fresh that caresses,
themselves, and the entire world with us to create ,
with so many great victory of Sighs.
Today, with our feet throne walk,
way, as for us men for the glory,
in preference to this planet,
passion thrown during cuttlefish ,
find with you and with everyone,
in the century eternity written,
with desire purposes aimed sigh in the circle,
where the hand *alt’n width rushed,
ode in goblet flowering convert the,
Night, boiling kissing awoke,
with him, we even greater,
how many of covers Osten,
string sky month to blossom
happy
that our future.
Marjan Maksimovski
* (alt’n;altan; – Turkish word; word with the dialect area,
of Macedonia, for the color of gold, and something shining
or described as gold).
Translation is a computer program.
Meet
Tears sparks,from these eyes,chord you,
two *pupils engraved in heaven. *(pupils of the eye)
on whitish, sky landscape, the sun and the Moon.
In the morning ,next to whiteness days,
cradle time brings serenity.
From the legends of ancient give desire,
Today schism you did not, but hope.
For centuries the words, drink goodness,
somewhere as restlessness, girl, woman.
Propulsion of the great fairy tales and is not rendered,
are you, guard ancient desires,
what is now before me stand,
poured out wisdom, sigh and stature,
when empty night they give,
provided when you smile the day,
smile you are on the thrown landscape dawn
sounds whisper infinity our birth.
Once , I said, somewhere,
long thought carries me,
my and your desire,the written message,
the river which carries the,
that life is not forgotten,
of speck in the sky, the birds in view,
happiness, of sleep up reality,
on it, we met, provided palms joy.
Marjan Maksimovski
*(zenica-pupils of the eye)
Translation is a computer program.
CREATION
From sunset of the night
in the spirit of the time,
at Holi legends
In Witleem, to the present,
still, beauty.
For all of us,
when and West and East
and North and South
were next to us,
Drops dance passion
Beauty soul,
the gift of life.
When they are all for May,
Circle time,
life and spirit in him.
The creation of love,
mine and yours
and our and your,
We and they,he, she and you and all,
really is a kiss in the embrace,
time of love creates.
“On all the Clock watch hand is love at midnight”
Marjan Maksimovski
(*”On all the Clock watch hand is love at midnight”-Verse from poeme – “Suzana”
from the book of poetry “In Sunset tear Rose”–“Vo zalezot solzat rozi” from the
Stole Maksimovski). Translation is a computer program.
AMERICA FIRST
by John Curl
Beyond the well, along the dusty road,
America first,
the acrid, rust-red soil supporting
only an occasional small vineyard,
they strolled house to house,
executing families.
We heard a great noise and
were all enveloped in a wall
of heat and steam, while
concrete balconies crashed
into parked cars, an officer
lowered a plastic bag over her
head while another ground a lit
cigarette into her arm,
America first.
The melting snow, semi-translucent
and shining in the lantern glow,
seemed to be carved out
of a block of amber.
We worked
our way back, following
a little creek, sucking on
twigs of sassafras
and radiant sunshine
until, fringed by majestic pines,
we reached the canyon edge
and lit the sacred fire.
All we had were elders, drums, spirits,
and what they told us.
Although the time scale was so
vast and the abuse of evidence
so complete as to render it
unlikely, the flutes
and rattles summoned a
universal healing.
It was the moment of return,
the ancient languages,
long declared extinct by the experts,
springing suddenly back to life,
America first.
Copyright © 2011 by John Curl. All rights reserved.
flying birds – by maria toscano / Coimbra, Portugal
.
.
the birds fly through the wars
since the wars to this poem.
.
the children die in mummy’s arms
both lay down on this poem.
.
the soldier-child died through the bombs
his father hurts at this poem.
.
those birds flying in the dark sky
came softly to this poem.
.
birds. words fly inside my poem.
.
maria toscano.
coimbra, restaurante ‘jardim da manga’. 7 / agosto / 2011.
In San Francisco
at 826 Valencia
children’s words and
songs of freedom,
justice, peace,
origami doves in flight,
rise above walls of
ignorance, injustice
war
Black-eyed Susan
By DeEtta L. Leaton Crawford
Survivor of 18 ½ years of abuse
My name is Black-eyed Susan
That’s what I call myself
Survive and endure, my life of pain
If I walk away now, I will find no help
Black eyes and broken bones,
Upraised voices and pounding fists
Are they better than a broken home?
No one believes me when I say he did this.
Bruises all over my body
Wounds on my soul and heart
I looked in the mirror this morning
My face is a work of art
Punch me, kick me, trap me, slap me
Hit me, spit on me, punch me in the face
Refuse to divorce me, sexually force me
Abuse me, use me, put me in my place
Brutal assault, it’s all my fault
Shake me, break me, just to still me
You wish I was dead and hold a gun to my head
Boot me, shoot me, say you want to kill me
Dominate me, isolate me, take away all that I own
Tangle me, strangle me, choke me till I’m blue
Manipulate me, suffocate me, hold me under till I drown
I throw up my hands, what’s a poor soul to do?
Say you love me, turtle dove me
Say it will never happen again
But you knock me unconscious one more time
And I wake up in the hospital with a head full of pain
Helpless, hopeless, so numb I’m mopeless
No way out alive to my dismay
But the question remains unanswered but true
What did I do to be treated this way?
Every word in your poem hits my heart, I was a victim of abuse as well, I am no longer stuck in that cage, but I relate with every feeling you have expressed. thank you
Hole
A hole exists where you once were
I have been trying to fill it with busy work
My best friend is gone
I feel alone
I am still grieving
When I thought I was ok
A small trigger
The pain creeps back up
From the place I carefully
Tucked it away in
Moving on without you
I make myself blind
To keep away the pain
I am filling the hole
With nothingness
You were something
Something special
I no longer want this hole.
Written by: Merry O’Brien
August 30, 2011
© Merry O’Brien
AMERICAN SOLDIERS
By Tsoltim N. Shakabpa
Brave soldiers of America
With names like Joe and Erica
We honor you and stand by you
Trust in you and pray for you
No only our country do you defend
But many others upon you depend
American soldiers bearing arms in hand
Courageously riding tanks in desert sand
Gallantly lay their lives on the line
Heroically for your freedom and mine
For democracy and peace they stand
No matter what the country or land
They wave the red, white and blue
To God and country they stand true
Brave soldiers of America
With names like Cho and Jessica
We honor you and stand by you
Trust in you and pray for you
Not only our country do you defend
But many others upon you depend
Copyright: Tsoltim N. Shakabpa
From the bottom of our hearts…thank you.
DAVID, CHIRIQUÍ, PANAMÁ
POEMA AL CAMINO VIEJO
Maritza Magda Araúz
Por el camino viejo me alejé de mi hogar,
este viejo camino me dio su bendición.
Cuando yo me alejaba, él me decía muy quedo
aquí estaré esperando cuando quieras volver.
Ahora cuando vuelvo, él está siempre allí,
recostado tranquilo en su cama de piedra
y sus viejos recodos parecen sonreír.
Como un abuelo viejo que espera con paciencia,
revivir poco a poco los recuerdos de ayer.
Corrientes de alegría inundaban su cause
cuando los hijos pródigos volvían al hogar,
nuestra humilde casita se llenaba de luces
y hasta el viejo camino parecía florecer.
En las tardes tranquilas, cuando el sol ya se iba,
en sus brazos abiertos se podía descansar,
esperar que el camino mitigara las penas,
con luciérnagas mágicas las sombras deshacer.
Fotos: LOIS IGLESIAS
DAVID, CHIRIQUÍ, PANAMÁ
(Fotos: LOIS IGLESIAS)
POEMAS –
María del Socorro Robayo
DESDE EL VACÍO
Desde el vacío
de la soledad,
arrastrarás la ausencia
que te legaron los caminos
y, a pesar de que sacudas el polvo
y limpies el barro,
seguirás llevando en los ojos
el brillo del olvido.
DAVID, CHIRIQUÍ, PANAMÁ
(Foto: LOIS IGLESIAS)
POEMAS Mario José Molina Castillo
Obra poética: Desnudos en el silencio, 2010
Autor: Mario José Molina Castillo.
LA LUNA SE ENAMORÓ DEL SILENCIO
La luna ilumina la azulosa marejada,
el silencio penetra por la creciente,
y el arenal aflora a tus pies,
vino la vaciante,
tus poros se excitaron
y tu silueta desentraña las aguas,
el viento hace eco
y el cardumen corteja tu cuerpo.
Hoy convives en la sonoridad del caracol,
el alga se anida,
la respiración se acorta,
el pensamiento desvanece la realidad
y la luna cierne el adiós,
se enamoró de la soledad del viento.
me encantó / wow! gracias / thanks
DAVID, CHIRIQUÍ, PANAMÁ
(Foto: LOIS IGLESIAS)
POEMAS: Elvia Alvarado de Amador
Obra poética: COFRE DE POEMAS SELECTOS
AÑORANZA (1972)
Trae la brisa el pensamiento
de la tierra que añoramos
de los pollo, las gallinas,
cocinados y escondidos, también
de la chicha, el río, y la mano de pilón,
la nata de leche hervida,
la tortilla, el chicharrón.
La misa de los domingos
el paño y el abanico
las cuentas de mi rosario
y el olor de los jazmines
el sermón dominical y de noche
la retreta, los patines
y aquel sabroso raspado
saboreado con furor
y ese regaño oportuno por
la mancha que cayó
sobre ese vestido nuevo
que abuelita nos compró.
La navidad de diciembre
los dulces y banderitas
que daban en el marcado
por la compra generosa
que pagaba la abuelita.
El chocolate caliente
la rosca de pan de huevo
el cake de Casita Blanca
los besos brujos del BABY.
El 19 de marzo en el Jorón
y la Feria, los disfraces
la alegría, el sabor de patronales
la brisa fuerte y sonora
la hojarasca, el remolino
las cruces en nuestros dedos
alejando el torbellino.
Samana Santa en David
precesión, recogimiento, contricción
respeto a Dios que se lleva en el
Sepulcro, las velas en cada mano
y las cruces de macano
para pagar penitencias
¡esas coronas de espinas
presionando las cabezas.!
Año Nuevo, risas, llantos
y promesas,
estrechón de mano fuerte
abrazo de hermano a hermano
beso fortuito de novios
y plegaria a nuestro Dios
agradeciéndole el año que
a las doce se cumplió.
Son recuerdos que se evocan
porque no pueden volver
y a cada rato se añoran
pues fue algo que pasó
pero que dejó en la vida
felicidad y amor.
Amor a la patria chica
que muy grande se erigió
desde el Viguí hasta Burica
desde el Soloy al Barú.
Hoy la brisa me recuerda
mi David y su esplendor
el patio de la abuelita
y la leña que cortó
para hacer el Suripico
que enfrascado se traerá
al final de vacaciones
para acá, pa’la ciudad,
donde gritos y pregones
de pronto nos romperá
el embrujo de los campos
y el sabor de libertad.
Libertad de tierra adentro
mojada por el sudor
de hombres de raza fuerte
de mujeres de valor
de niños sanos y fuertes
de lucha de mucho amor.
(Fotos: LOIS IGLESIAS, Panamá)
A Poetry Hole Opened In The Sky
A poetry hole opened in the sky
And poetry started to rush out
At first we thought there must be so much poetry
It would take forever to empty the world
But each poem blew the hole wider
And so now we must get to work again
We must breathe into the word
And let language rise up among us
If there is no poetry left in the world
Our kind will die forever
Without poetry we won’t walk
out into the middle of the river
just to see what’s done
To our reflections by the waves
Quicker than time can drag poetry
Gasping away forever
We must make up the new world,
The new words, the new ways
robert!
thaaaaaaaank you! 🙂
thank you RP
poetry will overwhelm us!
Thank you for this. Many years ago I came across your poem “The man who invented wanting”. When I read it, I copied it by hand, in black marker, on three hole punched loose leaf. I still have it.
Poem for Change
I want a lot of stuff to change
Everything is changing, nothing is the same
it is impossible to stop change
each moment unique, all new and gone
Poets could change, I could write nothing
Stop drinking and get meaningful employment
we could ask for those around us to change
we could hold our breath until we turn blue
Change the weather? Change adults? Schools?
Education? Hunger? Change energy? I wish
Environmental disasters? Accept global warming?
Sex/gender, anarchy/social order, war/peace?
Maybe for me poetry for change means
I should stop talking or writing what I think
Get up and do something
Something …big….something powerful
The power to control and destroy
the power to create and nurture
Given the love of the vision of democracy
one would think equity would be most powerful
religion drives inequity like oil drives global warming
tell the global truth, let freedom ring
not just the romantic “suffering” of ourselves
but equity, the end of capitalism and imperialism,
Maybe I can’t change anything without words
I am without words or power. Am I minus power
I know the history of our civilization
Poets write there is no changing the past
I know we used to be cannibals
I know we are evolving in spite of Dick Cheney
we evolve if we steer or don’t
literature documents, leads and directs
Be accountable for what you sing, write, play
know the agenda you are supporting
require social responsibility of all art
treat the Earth as if she is your beloved
CHANGE
by Tsoltim N. Shakabpa
Life is changing
World is changing
Change will come
To all, not some
No matter what we do
Only thing we can do
Is decelerate change
Or accelerate change
But change we can’t change
It is real, though strange
And though we may try to deny
We cannot, by nature, defy
Change is a sure fire determinant
In our frail lives which are impermanent
Longing
by Suniita’ (Lynvilene Mitra Malapitan)
Hide my heart, hide for now.
For your longing for love will only set forth solitude.
And in your solitude invite silence and talk to it as one would to a friend.
And when the conversation is over and it’s time to part,
See to it that you set it free with gladness and let it long for love once more
For when solitude check out on you once again…
Your longing is a thing to hide no more
Now be glad my heart be glad.
For you are infinitely free and longing is just a passing thing you see.
Sooner or later you’ll meet again…
To long for more and love once more.
NINE ELEVEN
By Tsoltim N. Shakabpa
Let not nine eleven
Be the seventh heaven
For those who would destroy our freedom
And steal our democracy and kingdom
We may have cut off the head
But the tail is still not dead
Let us make cocksure
The tail wags no more
Let not nine eleven
Be our final coffin
Let us make them see their folly
Wave our flag and make them sorry
Let us show that nine eleven
Is to us manna from heaven
That instills in us the fervor
To love our nation and serve her
Copyright: Tsoltim N. Shakabpa – 2011
NATURE’S POWER
By Tsoltim N. Shakabpa
When the womb of nature
Gives birth to the splendor of life
The true grace of nature glows
As though in a kaleidoscopic vision
When the ocean of death
Storms onto the beaches of life
The true wrath of nature erupts
As though in a nightmarish dream
The whims of nature may be unpredictable
But the power of nature
Makes us realize the value of life
And implants in us the meaning of life
Copyright: Tsoltim N. Shakabpa – 2011
CHANGE
By Tsoltim N. Shakabpa
Change for the better
As you would your clothes
Change the one thing you can change
Rather than try to change the five things you cannot
Be “one in a million”
Instead of “one of a million”
Copyright: Tsoltim N. Shakabpa – 2011
100 POETAS POR EL CAMBIO
POEMAS DE LUIS TREVILLE LATOUCHE
100 POETAS POR EL CAMBIO
Recital Poético mundial
24 de septiembre de 2011
Contact: Michael Rothenberg, Founder
100 Thousand Poets for Change
P.O. Box 870
Guerneville, Ca 95446
Phone: 305-753-4569
https://100tpc.org
walterblue@bigbridge.org
Sede Chiriquí: Casa Cultural La Guaricha
Organizado en David, Chiriquí, Panamá, por:
Manuel E. Montilla
Fundación para las Artes Montilla e Hijos
fmontillah@yahoo.com
(507) 6687 1607
Pinacoteca de Arte Contemporáneo de Chiriquí
http://www.chiriquicultural.com
COPLAS TAVERNERAS
por LUIS TREVILLE LATOUCHE
(Panamá, 25 mayo 1943)
POEMA 1
por LUIS TREVILLE LATOUCHE
(Panamá, 25 mayo 1943)
Mariana, la de los senos grandes
y piernas gordas.
Castaño ahuecado es su corazón,
duermo en su custodio erótico,
me la llevo al arroyo.
Se seco el arroyo.
Mariana… NO.
David, 4 septiembre de 2011
……………………………………..
POEMA 2
por LUIS TREVILLE LATOUCHE
(Panamá, 25 mayo 1943)
Mi mamá era pobre,
mi mamá era triste,
tenía los ojos secos
como pasas.
Y no tenía panza
porque no comía.
David, 4 septiembre de 2011
……………………………………..
POEMA 3
por LUIS TREVILLE LATOUCHE
(Panamá, 25 mayo 1943)
Mamá creció sola con mi abuela,
mamá no tuvo luna, no tuvo estrella.
Mamá fue solitaria,
mamá parió cocuyos
mamá parió caracoles,
mamá parió arrozales,
mamá parió maizales.
Por eso mamá está seca
como una viruela.
David, 4 septiembre de 2011
……………………………………..
POEMA 4
por LUIS TREVILLE LATOUCHE
(Panamá, 25 mayo 1943)
Hoy he visto pasar frente a mí
aquella que fue mi viejo amor.
Ahora viuda, cabellos revoltosos,
mirar triste, caminar lento,
falda negra, pechos caídos,
la mirada perdida.
No me ha reconocido.
Yo fui su primer amor.
David, 4 septiembre de 2011
…………………………………….
POEMA 5
por LUIS TREVILLE LATOUCHE
(Panamá, 25 mayo 1943)
Cobijada bajo la sombra de un bambú,
la vi en una noche de luna llena,
estaba solitaria, danzando
junto a los vergeles y los nenúfares.
David, 4 septiembre de 2011
……………………………………..
POEMA 6
por LUIS TREVILLE LATOUCHE
(Panamá, 25 mayo 1943)
Calle del Silencio,
calle empedrada
del Barrio bolívar,
en donde el viento
sopla la arenisca,
y el árbol se mezcla
con la noche.
David, 4 septiembre de 2011
………………………………………
POEMA 7
por LUIS TREVILLE LATOUCHE
(Panamá, 25 mayo 1943)
La vi en el bar,
tomando cerveza.
La vi sola en el bar,
con su tristeza.
No me queda nada.
La vi sola en el bar.
David, 4 septiembre de 2011
……………………………………..
POEMA 8
por LUIS TREVILLE LATOUCHE
(Panamá, 25 mayo 1943)
La vi entre las brumas,
vestida de rojo,
una rosa en su pelo,
y una sonrisa de muerte.
David, 4 septiembre de 2011
………………………………….
POEMA 9
por LUIS TREVILLE LATOUCHE
(Panamá, 25 mayo 1943)
Me acerqué a ella,
vestida de azul,
sus negros ojos
se fijaron en mi.
¿Quién era?
No lo sé.
David, 4 septiembre de 2011
……………………………………..
POEMA 10
por LUIS TREVILLE LATOUCHE
(Panamá, 25 mayo 1943)
Hortensia, te invito
a cazar golondrinas.
Espero verte
al lado del puente añejo.
David, 4 septiembre de 2011
…………………………………..
POEMA 11
por LUIS TREVILLE LATOUCHE
(Panamá, 25 mayo 1943)
Mariana toca su flauta de bambú.
Un sordo la oye,
pegado a su balcón.
David, 4 septiembre de 2011
………………………………………
POEMA 12
por LUIS TREVILLE LATOUCHE
(Panamá, 25 mayo 1943)
Cobijada bajo el árbol que tengo,
la vi con sus ojos verdes.
Ella, sola y adolescente,
me miró con sus ojos verdes.
David, 4 septiembre de 2011
……………………………………..
POEMA 13
por LUIS TREVILLE LATOUCHE
(Panamá, 25 mayo 1943)
Hermosa chola Guaimí,
Que ocultas bajo tu falda de colores.
¿Un hijo del patrón?
David, 4 septiembre de 2011
………………………………………
POEMA 14
por LUIS TREVILLE LATOUCHE
(Panamá, 25 mayo 1943)
Cosechadora de algarrobas,
corte jovial…
¿Cuándo te hallaré
a la orilla del río David?
David, 4 septiembre de 2011
………………………………….
POEMA 15
por LUIS TREVILLE LATOUCHE
(Panamá, 25 mayo 1943)
Debajo del nance,
ella dormía.
Yo la vi de lejos.
El nance,
también la veía.
David, 4 septiembre de 2011
Foto: José Amet Caballero Vindas – Cerro Punta, Chiriquí.
Fotos: José Amet Caballero Vindas – Cerro Punta, Chiriquí.
El Desert Man
¿Y si me postergo,
y si me usufructo de naciones?
Es la duda que me mata,
no las ensoñaciones,
no la curiosidad voluptuosa
que retoza de felinos;
mininos.
Será la tierra del desierto,
la que amaso mi escultura,
no la blanda tierra de tu patria.
Y aunque un muro nos separa,
nos une,
nos desgarra;
desgarró.
Chiflo imperecederamente;
me transmigro a no me gustan las naciones,
sin pretensiones,
soy el hombre del desierto.
Oración de un desocupado
by Juan Gelman
Padre,
desde los cielos bájate, he olvidado
las oraciones que me enseñó la abuela,
pobrecita, ella reposa ahora,
no tiene que lavar, limpiar, no tiene
que preocuparse andando el día por la ropa,
no tiene que velar la noche, pena y pena,
rezar, pedirte cosas, rezongarte dulcemente.
Desde los cielos bájate, si estás, bájate entonces,
que me muero de hambre en esta esquina,
que no sé de qué sirve haber nacido,
que me miro las manos rechazadas,
que no hay trabajo, no hay,
bájate un poco, contempla
esto que soy, este zapato roto,
esta angustia, este estómago vacío,
esta ciudad sin pan para mis dientes, la fiebre
cavándome la carne,
este dormir así,
bajo la lluvia, castigado por el frío, perseguido
te digo que no entiendo, Padre, bájate,
tócame el alma, mírame
el corazón,!
yo no robé, no asesiné, fui niño
y en cambio me golpean y golpean,
te digo que no entiendo, Padre, bájate,
si estás, que busco
resignación en mí y no tengo y voy
a agarrarme la rabia y a afilarla
para pegar y voy
a gritar a sangre en cuello
de “Violín y otras cuestiones”
100 MIL POETAS POR EL CAMBIO
Sábado, 24 de septiembre de 2011
David, Chiriquí, Panamá
Fundación para las Artes Montilla e Hijos
Casa Cultural La Guaricha
Pinacoteca de Arte Contemporáneo de Chiriquí
http://www.chiriquicultural.com
MARIELA MIRONES GARCÍA
POEMAS – Panamá
1. AZUL
Las hojas
entretejen sombras
galopan
al ritmo del tiempo
mariposas y libélulas
conjugan su vuelo
duermen
con la brisa.
…………………………….
2. DETRÁS DE LOS OJOS
(México marzo 2005)
¿Qué buscas
detrás de los ojos,
historia o pensamiento?
La nostalgia se asoma,
un rictus de su luz
la acompañan.
Miro la tristeza,
en la sonrisa
de tus ojos agotados.
Siento tu ser escondido
en lo que dejas ver.
Tu alma se desnuda
en gestos.
Al hablar, en tu mirar.
inagotables hechos
resumen tu vida
son tuyos, solo tuyos
a nadie le importan.
…………………………….
3. AMANECE
Amanece el llanto del cielo
Amanece el olor a café
Amanecen las ramas húmedas
en el canto de los naranjos
Amanece el dormir animal
el aullar de los perros
Amanece la noche
que ha perdido su andar
Amanece el gris del alba
que deja entrever
el arco iris
Amanecen los cuerpos
encontrados
antes de tomar café.
…………………………….
4. SILENCIO
Silencio
no saltes
no grites
escandalosa
emoción
muere
en el llanto.
¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬…………………………….
5.
La noche se ha ido
en las alas del viento
Al envolver tu silencio
las penas trazan
desconocidos senderos
Tantos anhelos
se esconden en el tiempo
para volver a vivir
…………………………….
6.
Préstame tus alas mariposa
comparte conmigo tu vuelo
Arrastra la libertad del polen
que salta salpica baila
y se enamora
hasta copular en esencia de vida
…………………………….
[img]https://100tpc.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/MARIELA MIRONES GARCÍA – ARTE – Panamá – 1.jpg[/img]
100 MIL POETAS POR EL CAMBIO
Sábado, 24 de septiembre de 2011
David, Chiriquí, Panamá
Fundación para las Artes Montilla e Hijos
Casa Cultural La Guaricha
Pinacoteca de Arte Contemporáneo de Chiriquí
http://www.chiriquicultural.com
MARIELA MIRONES GARCÍA
POEMAS – Panamá
7. VERANO 2006
Policromos
cementerios de hojarascas
arropan cimientos
de caminos sin fin
Caprichosas danzas
cimbreantes formas
vuelan al morir el invierno.
Anuncian el verano azul
………………………………………
8.
Con besos suaves sinuosos
la niebla embruja la cima
camina despacio
En romántico coloquio
la infiel coquetea
Las flores la invitan al amor
mas la ingrata no desciende
Celosas entonces
vibran y contonean su belleza
sin lograr atraparla
Huidiza se esconde en la luz
que se asoma y deja libre el alma.
…………………………….
9
La luz
se acostó contigo
…………………………….
10. EL VUELO
Basta de angustias
y de sueños
Abre tus alas
inalcanzables
Esfuma las horas
los días y los años
No pares
Y cuando nazca la aurora
toma mis manos entre tus manos
y acaricia mi alma con tus labios
…………………………….
11. VOLVER AL AMOR
¿Y que rutas
siguieron tus besos
qué misterio los hizo dueños?
Atravesaron el infinito
que Cupido envolvió en rosas
para perfumar la distancia
y acercar los recuerdos
Las noches sin ti son grises
como gris es tu cabello
y los años que sumados
abrigan tu recuerdo
En la longeva experiencia
la entrega detiene el reloj
sin importar lo pasado
para en libre locura
volver al amor
…………………………….
12.
Plenilunio de noches blancas
nube desnuda de tu piel
al compás del relincho
mis dedos sacian
la sed de tu espalda
…………………………….
13.
Con el alma clavada en tus labios
no volverás a encontrar mi nido
ni arroparte con mis besos
dormirás con pipo
rememorando apagar el fuego
Tu caminar ya no vuela
tu sonrisa es mueca de relincho
en la bruma que sacude el adiós
(Heredia Costa Rica, julio 2008)
…… .………………………
100 MIL POETAS POR EL CAMBIO
Sábado, 24 de septiembre de 2011
David, Chiriquí, Panamá
Fundación para las Artes Montilla e Hijos
Casa Cultural La Guaricha
Pinacoteca de Arte Contemporáneo de Chiriquí
http://www.chiriquicultural.com
MARIELA MIRONES GARCÍA
POEMAS – Panamá
14.
El corazón en ramas secas
camina en el tiempo
agoniza
en el perfume que no huele
en el espacio que no se llena
Se fue el invierno
volvió la primavera
en los ojos de el de ella
en los tuyos y en los míos
Crepúsculo infinito
amanecer de primavera
esencia de las aves
que se alejan y se alejan
…………………………….
15.
La noche
perfuma la esperanza
que nunca está muerta
que envuelve los vientos
con ojos de sirena
como el mar embravecido
que mece los silencios
de almas que se amaron
y murieron en la entrega
…………………………….
16.
Desnudo el sentimiento
estremece el álamo
que sudoroso
se envuelve con el viento
Como la latencia del volcán
que anida el fuego
y prende el alma con besos tiernos
Miro tus ojos negros
negros muy negros
Cargados de miel
fragantes como el cerezo
límpidos como el silencio
En las noches de agosto
juré navegar el Atlántico
sin máquina sin vela
asido a la brújula
de tus ojos negros
…………………………….
17.
En las noches de mi alma
acaricio el plenilunio de tu iris
y entre las sombras del silencio
nazco al verdor
La esencia de jazmín
narcisos azaleas y gardenias
marcan destinos de barcas
mecidas por la nostalgia
Que vivimos en el ojo del Barú
lava de nuestra soledad
eso fue cierto
pero aún lo es más
que todo tiene su tiempo
y el nuestro ya no existe
Sucesos tras sucesos
borran la memoria
abren páginas blancas
Mañana será luz
volcán de nueva ilusión
…………………………….
18 AL PLANO DE LO INFINITO
(A Doris Dalila 3 de noviembre 2008)
La brisa te envuelve
en concierto de luna nueva
laberinto de acuerdos
anidan tu andar
Retrospectiva de azaleas y narcisos
del carpintero que danza y pinta
y se asoma a tu alma
para trascender lo infinito
Recrea la huella imborrable
del niño pintor, cantor
poeta, escultor, compositor
embrujo mítico trascendental
pasado presente futuro de genio
Voltea el lienzo
que las cenizas acaricien
el dosel de tu neonatal realidad
La vida es vida
con los que se fueron
con los que están
…………………………….
19.
El mar sacude su bravura
en el muro invisible
en las noches quejosas
en el canto lejano
de cuerpos cimbreantes
mecidos por la arena
retomados por el tiempo
asidos al calor
al fuego a la luz
que quema la brisa
y arrastra sentimientos
………………………………………………
World Poet
by David Madgalene
World Poet,
thank you
for not asking
my credentials.
Thank you
for not asking
where I went
to school.
Where have I
been published.
What books
have I written.
World Poet,
thank you
for your incredible courage.
I live in a free country
where I can say
pretty much anything
(and I have)
and nobody hears.
World Poet,
you speak for others
beside yourself.
You speak the truth.
World Poet,
you write at
the risk of
imprisonment,
torture,
exile,
death.
World Poet,
thank you
for showing
me that poetry
matters.
Thank you
for showing
me that I, too,
can be important.
you’re one of the good guys
THE POET
by Tsoltim N. Shakabpa
Swimming in the swift and winding river of lucid words
He enters the wide ocean of knowledge
To see vivid images of our mortal world
And to live the very words that enthrall him
With the rhythmic beat of his heart
He guides the entrancing waves of the mighty ocean
While his fragile body
Mingles with the urchins of the seas
Caring not for the diamonds at his feet
His trenchant mind
Wonders what wisdom
The lucent moon reflects from the brilliant sun
As he imagines dancing with the sparkling stars
Blithely does he battle and subdue the withering storms
While his humble soul rests peacefully
In the welcoming arms of resplendent rainbows
All in all
He finds warmth and peace
In the poetic words that awaken him
And shelter him from the wild winds
Of a turbulent and impermanent world
ON THE SUBJECT OF LANGUAGES:
The Role of English in Poetry by Tibetans
By Tsoltim Ngima Shakabpa
————————————-
Languages become universal because of the power of the people who speak those languages. English is one such language as exhibited by the British in the 17th to the early 20th centuries when historically their power and language spread far and wide across the globe. Languages remain alive because of the spirit of the people who speak those languages. The Tibetan language is one such language as exhibited by the Tibetans in their unique culture and quest to maintain their great heritage. To bring the ideas of a people struggling to keep their language alive into a universal language is in itself a difficult task; but to put it in poetry is an even more formidable task. Yet Tibetans are doing exactly that.
Tibetans are generally philosophically inclined by the very nature of their upbringing. Buddhism and the philosophy of Buddhism have deeply affected the Tibetan mentality, and by its very power the hearts of the Tibetan people. Bearing this in mind, it is easy to see why generally Tibetans are natural poets. Additionally, the pristine natural environment could have only aesthetically enhanced the philosophical Tibetan mind.
In the past, Tibetans used to write poetry in Tibetan with religious themes only. These poems were deep in thought and classic in their genius. They were the pulse of a nation steeped in religion and struggling to find the meaning of life. These poems were much more difficult to translate precisely into English unless one had an impeccable knowledge of the complex mechanisms of the Tibetan religion. Today, the pulse and emphasis are different. Tibetans are suffering immeasurably under the illegal occupation of Tibet by China. They are being persecuted, imprisoned, tortured and murdered. Their voices stifled; their places of worship demolished; and their true leader, the Dalai Lama, demonized. They are struggling for freedom from 60 gruelling years of brutal and tyrannical Chinese rule; and writing poems in Tibetan alone is not enough. They need to reach a world-wide audience in their fight for liberation and for that they have to use a universal language.
In the 1940s and 1950s, only a few Tibetans were fortunate enough to receive an education in English. Today, with thousands of Tibetans forced to live outside Tibet, many are fortunately learning English, some even good enough to write poetry in sterling English–and they are using their poetic gifts to reach out, in a universal language, to the world at large about their struggle for freedom. But there also are Tibetan poets who write, in English, about spirituality, family, illness, nature, love and life, in addition to the plight of their country, that adds abundant dimension to poetry by Tibetans. These Tibetan poets are presently few and far between, but their pioneering labour and leadership will inspire more Tibetans to expand their poetic capabilities.
Poetic ability is an inborn gift, and the language of poetry is best employed in the language one is most accustomed to. If Tibetan poets think in Tibetan and translate their poetry into English, there may arise problems in precise translation. But if Tibetan poets think in English, those problems may be surmounted though it may possibly cloud their Tibetan heart. The ideal situation is the ability to think both in English and in Tibetan. That way, the evolution of the two languages inter-mingling with one another in a translucent manner with the heart brings about the best attributes of the poetry in mind.
Yet, frankly speaking, there are times when English has no role in poetry by Tibetans as when a Tibetan writer tries to emulate a western thought. In such instances, the Tibetan mind distorts the western thought and jeopardizes the English verse. They become inundated and perplexed with a false perception of the truth, rather than the truth itself. The expression of thought must first come from the heart and then the language can be used as a tool to express what the heart feels. Rather than emulate a foreign thought, it is better for a Tibetan poet to express his thoughts and feelings in a foreign language, even if it be in Mandarin. At least the Chinese will know what is in the Tibetan writer’s mind and heart, such as his diatribe on tyranny and icy disdain of Chinese rule.
Since poetry comes from the heart, the manner in which the words are expressed are often not easily comprehensible. Thus, the reader too must read into the heart of the poet in order to understand the language of the poet. The Tibetan poet, therefore, has the added task of expressing in precise English what his Tibetan heart feels. This is a difficult task, if not an impossible one – so long as the Tibetan poet has an excellent comprehension of the English language and an empathic realization of what his heart feels.
To summarize, the English language has an enormous universal role to play in poetry authored by Tibetans, but that role must be entwined with the untainted heart of the Tibetan poet as well as the precision and excellence of the language. Poetry by Tibetans in an universal language has an even more crucial role to play now that the Chinese are forcefully suppressing the Tibetan language.
Brave is the Tibetan poet
Who ventures to pen in English
But write he must from his heart
For readers his poetry to cherish
* Tsoltim N. Shakabpa is the author of eight inspiring books of poems, the last one of which is BEING TIBETAN published by Publish America. He is popularly known as “T.N.”, which he says stands for his initials as well as Tibetan National.
that poem
i wanna write that poem
that shakes nations out of their sleep
that epic piece of work that has everybody talking
i wanna write riveting sentences that speak volumes
resonating through the universe
unforgotten in time
shifting thought patterns
breaking barriers
creating pathways to the heavenlies
i wanna write words that flow like rivers
gracefully cleansing the mind of all debris
washing away old sensibilities
bringing reality back to life in a new awakening
i wanna write that piece
that causes more than just fingers to snap
moving more than just emotions
ripping the blinders off of closed eyes
so they can see
i wanna write that poem
not for anybody else
but for me.
love it, feel it… I want to write that one for me, working on it, living poetics 🙂 don’t stop
Excellent, I hope we all share this sentiment and that we aren’t just writing for ego to be noticed but actually to make a difference!
I wrote these words in 2002, but they belong to you…
This is not tennis, or soccer
but life,
trial, success, failure
and tribulation
Divided Nations
What’s it mean?
“It ain’t easy bein’ green” Kermit said
and in the past
the trees have bled
from sickness, war
natural and industrial disasters
one and the same as our Somalian brother
and your Mother
We are all One
being spun through space
a cosmic race
traveling at a planetary pace
but
put down the telescope
it’s in your face
genetic make up
cellular break up
The time has come to take up this line
feed this rhyme
and see each other
as pieces of a whole
every soul
a unique and sacred part of this tapestry
this blanket was begun
at the start of it all
every jump and fall
it’s there
so take care
to remember
You are Special
You have your own way to exist
a beautiful pattern inside
not just a double helix
but experience
You’re feeling this
so what’s it like?
Do you flee or fight
fly a kite
sing or bite?
Show your might!
And dazzle those around you with
the incredible unknowable that is you!
We’ll all feel it, our vibrations interconnected
as human relations
and as complicated
And My life is fated
by my own will,
this is my soil to till
my beat to fill
can you hear it?
listen carefully
and you will.
Peace.
Message to the Silver Haired Warrior from the Butterfly Queen
by Ethel Mays
Yesterday, we gathered before dawn and flew a straight line into a part of the forest where we are no longer safe. Many changes have transpired since we were last made welcome there, but the mission we would accomplish was not mitigated by patience. We needed to be away before the sun’s first rays betrayed us. In spite of our precautions, my best scout fell beneath the heel of a buck in out-of-season rut, a sign that things truly are not as they should be, but his final breath gave us what we sought: the location of the last red bells of the season, standing tall and proud, patiently awaiting our blades. They, unlike the fickle daisies and cow lace harvested before them, kept their promise to stand with the hardy lavender harvested the night before and to represent, in blood red, the passion flowing in the veins of all true artists. Even the well-meaning foxglove began its slippage before the journey was properly begun. The red bells asked only for a little water to keep them through the night so that they might present themselves for a moment next day at pageantry for the Silver Haired Warrior. A day or two longer, perhaps, they may stand before falling into the arms of the waiting lavender. Know that we see you, we honor you, and we stand beside you in difficult times. If strength is shy and fleeting, take ours. We have much and give it freely without need to wonder why.
September 11 Revisted
(10th Anniversary)
by Chukie Wangdu
The sky was blue and the sun shone bright
Not one angry face was in sight
Or so it seemed…
Monday’s blues were put to bed
Tuesday’s promises lay straight ahead
Or so it seemed…
In the City that never sleeps
A normal day of work, school, and cell-phone beeps
Or so it seemed…
In the nation’s capitol suspecting none
About their ways went everyone
Or so it seemed…
Into the morning sky those four planes flew
Hopes and dreams were to soar, not to bid adieu
Or so it seemed…
Unbeknownst to all
Nineteen angry men heeded a call
Allah taught believers to be kind to one another
As did Abraham, Buddha, Christ and Krishna, brother to brother
It is not a sign of weakness
To practice love and kindness
Instead those nineteen angry men
Heeded the words of Osama bin Laden
With calculated violence in the hearts of this clan
Death and mayhem was their plan
Thousands lost their lives that day
Yet Osama couldn’t hijack our courage away
What you sow is what you reap
Incrementally or in one fell sweep
Sunday, May 1 was D-day for Osama
Hide he could not from his negative Karma
Not only did he bring the wrath of the free world upon him
He caused the vilification of my neighbor — a kind and gentle muslim
On the 10th anniversary of September 11
We remember with love and respect the brave and fallen
A new day is dawning for Allah’s true faithful
Let us join hands to wash away evil
Kindle trust and dignity in your home and elsewhere
Spread respect and fairness everywhere
Be kind and gentle to nature and to each other
Planet earth is at stake …. it’s now or never
copyright: Chukie Wangdu
Hi Acha Chukiela,
Vah vah vah! Kya Shairee hai – hum sab ke dil ko chu liya!
Bohoth shukriya
Ola
TERRORISM
By Tsoltim N. Shakabpa
On the 10th anniversary of September 11
Let us also not forget the others
Who are being intimidated through terrorism
Tibetans by China
Chinese citizens by their autocratic rulers
Foreigners by China’s central intelligence agency
Libyans by Gadhafi
Syrians by Assad
Burmese by a military junta
Somalis by war lords
Afghans by the Taliban
Iraqis by corruption
And the world by ignorance
Rise up! freedom-loving and knowledge-hungry people of the world
You have nothing to lose but your chains and pains
Copyright: Tsoltim N. Shakabpa – 2011
NINE ELEVEN
By Tsoltim N. Shakabpa
Let not nine eleven
Be the seventh heaven
For those who would destroy our freedom
And steal our democracy and kingdom
We may have cut off the head
But the tail is still not dead
Let us make cocksure
The tail wags no more
Though there’s a credible threat
We need not worry or fret
Just stay alert and pray
And go your normal way
Let them not take down our flag
And turn it into a rag
Let them not our way of life harm
Let us cool our heads and rearm
Let not nine eleven
Be our final coffin
Let us make them see their folly
Wave our flag and make them sorry
Let us show that nine eleven
Is to us manna from heaven
That instills in us the fervor
To love our nation and serve her
Copyright: Tsoltim N. Shakabpa – 2011
CHANGE FOR THE BETTER
By Tsoltim N. Shakabpa
As China’s economy has changed
From communism to capitalism
So too China’s autocracy
Will change to democracy
Likewise, Tibet’s position
As an occupied and subjugated country
Will change
To an independent and free nation
So too
Our brothers and sisters in Myanmar
Will change their poor and military-ruled country
Into a rich and democratic nation
Change will and must come
To all, not some
Eventually, change will come for the better
According to all the saints’ words and letter
Wise words from God:
Lycky is the cynic of destiny,
this ras tells me.
Just belive and you will see…
the bad is a warning.
just belive and you will see…
science is NOT wise,
is just a research made by man
voodoo magic
destiny.
God
Psyke:
fundamental psychosis is reli-judge
but on the other hand:
to belive is to be a litle bit crazy
We Will Not Be Silenced
Can we afford to forget
first born words
that clawed within
a virgin larynx,
gasping for breath,
desperately sought
reply to a question
we could not hear,
crueler than Sphynx,
it had no answer,
would not release
from the grasp
of death
came nearer
nearer until
no response
remained
but to scream
into the ear
of the world.
Should we remember
just how the violent
gain of language,
forced upon us
from the first,
appears
in deceit
in pain
in honeyed
training words
practiced again
again
until rapproachment
has been achieved
by stealth, by aggression
we learn to deceive
in turn
and turn
to pretend surprise
that words of love
are so easily betrayed?
That first sighings of accord
so easily collapse into
the savagery of war?
That soothing speech
makes so remarkable
the poignancy of pain?
again and again.
That we will die
in the choke
of our own sounds:
that is assured,
and then, perhaps,
be silent?
I doubt that,
not this vocalized
open-beaked species;
given the chance,
it will scream from
the throat of hell
itself,
given the chance
again
again
beating its wings
against the glass
of silence.
[note: any of my poems posted on this page or at poems4change.org may be read or distributed at 100TPC events without need for further permission provided they are attributed to me or, if printed, bear a “©red slider, 2011; all rights reserved” credit to prevent unauthorized commercial use.
Journey Through Shadows
by Kayla Feenstra
http://www.metamorphire.wordpress.com
I am not a child of the streets,
But I’ve seen the ravaged faces
Of children abandoned, bare feet
In the slop the pigs mucked through,
Both finding their crumbs
Among crushed milk tins
And last week’s torrential rains,
The skinny arms and distended bellies
Starving and hardened
By the sun, by life, reality
Then they pick up their chalk,
Gnawing on the their hunger,
Dreaming of becoming
Someone worth respecting.
I am not a child of death,
But I’ve heard the wailing,
The anger, the deep mourning,
Unexplainable, as the mother
Will never know who or why
Will never see justice
Will never see her son again,
But always remember the smiles,
The laughter, and late nights
That are no more
And she grows old too fast
With no one to care for her,
No one to weep over her body
As she is laid unmarked somewhere
I am not a child of darkness,
But I’ve seen the bones gathered
In the streets, the names scratched
Into the brick wall, cursed.
And I’ve heard the midnight chanting,
The endless mad drumming
As spirits take to the earth
And the sacrifices fearfully offered
Curse; damned to death,
And in trembling hopelessness,
He knows his days are numbered,
And wanders the streets helpless
As his wife prepares his funeral
Before Death takes him somehow.
I am not a child of war,
But I’ve heard the guns
Rattling through the void nights,
Tearing through innocence—
Without prejudice or concern,
Ripping through lives and souls
Until complacency sets in, hard,
And ambivalence scowls as king,
Un-coup-able and faceless,
Bearing anger and bitterness,
Merciless and justice-barren
They crawl through the streets
In the gutters, begging
For something that is not there
I am not a child of joy,
But I’ve seen whispers of hope
Spilling down dark faces
And light possessing black eyes
As love invades and holds
Tears and agony to her chest,
Gently, softly, whispering
Words to hard resolution,
But yet untrusted, love breathes
As voices argue and demand
And speak to hurricane winds
Love pervades and disarms,
Annulling words and promises,
Love does something.
THE SOUND OF SILENCE
By Tsoltim N. Shakabpa
A Japanese nod in silence
Means neither yes nor no
A Chinese wave in silence
Says good riddance to bad rubbish
A Tibetan prayer in silence
Is a plea to wish you well
Nature’s bellow in silence
Means the calm before a storm
The sound of silence
Gives brilliant credence
To what culture and nature speak
In sharp and clear, but silent, tweak
Copyright: Tsoltim N. Shakabpa – 2011
If 100 planes crashed today
And then again tomorrow
The world would surely take notice
Their hearts wrenched with sorrow
But if 26,000 children died
And tomorrow 26,000 more
Due to poverty and disease
They would mostly be ignored
Is it because the need is so great
That we choose to do nothing at all
Or because we’re too busy spending
So much time at the mall
Even a cup of cold water
Given to the least of these
Is something that will be rewarded
By our loving Creator, who sees
The children He made in His image
All precious within His eyes
Your brothers and sisters are waiting
For you to respond to their cries
Excellent.
Keep up the good work.
The people united will emerge victorious.
Love peace and happiness.
Kumbaya.
Explico: Cájar pueblo de 3.500 habitantes – su Santo Patron es SAN FRANCISCO DE ASIS – Las Fiestas comienzan el 1 de Octubre –
POEMA:
No, no estamos solos hermanos.
En las fiestas de San Francisco,
efemérides de nuestro santo,
desde América me encomiendan,
la tarea de un nuevo cambio.
Actitud de hermanos de sangre,
entre amigos y vecinos,
colaborar unos con otros,
con el alma y con las manos.
Sé que es tarea difícil,
ponerse el traje del otro,
pero solo con su piel,
entenderemos este símil.
En esta crisis de valores,
de dineros y sin trabajo,
hay hogares con hambre,
que han perdido sus honores.
Traigo con cariño bajo el brazo,
la palabra “amistad” como hogaza,
aplicarla nuevamente,
esa será nuestra coraza.
Es razón suficiente,
que en nuestro pueblo y nuestra casa,
todos como en familia,
nos ayudemos unos a otros.
Hermanos de San Francisco,
desde San Francisco nos dicen,
que todos somos capaces,
de crear este cambio.
La hermandad entre los pueblos,
la amistad entre vecinos,
aquí estamos amigos,
dejemos de ser extraños.
Habla con tus cercanos,
comunica y comparte,
dejemos los egoísmos,
todos habitamos en Cájar.
Cada uno en su calle y barrio,
puede arar este nuevo campo,
desde la escucha y la palabra,
abramos ventanas y almas.
No, no estamos solos hermanos,
hagamos lo que podamos,
si comenzamos ahora mismo
todo cambiará temprano.
Ivonne Sánchez Barea
IVONNE SÁNCHEZ BAREA
We are not alone
In the festival of San Francisco,
anniversary of our holy
entrusted me from America,
the task of a new change.
Attitude blood brothers,
among friends and neighbors,
collaborate with each other,
with the soul and with the hands.
It is difficult,
to wear the suit of another,
but only with its skin,
understand this simile
In this crisis of values,
of money and no job,
homes are hungry,
and have lost their honor.
Under the arm affectionately,
the word friendship loaf
apply it again
that will be our shield.
It´s reason enough,
for our people and our houses,
all like family,
we help each other.
Brothers of San Francisco,
from San Francisco we are told,
we are all able,
to create this change.
The brotherhood among persons,
friendship between neighbors,
here we are friends,
stop being strangers.
Talk to your nearby
common and shared
let selfishness away,
all live in Cájar.
Everyone in your street and neighborhood,
can plow this new field,
from listening and speech,
we open windows and souls.
No, we are not alone brothers
do what you can,
if we start now
everything will change.
IVONNE SÁNCHEZ BAREA
By Sotère Torregian
(part of a larger work)
On the campaign trail … ( the G. O. P.
Who is there to speak, then
to their lies and traduceries ?
— The Wall of Respect in Chicago
( still stands )
The mother and her child still living in
a cardboard packing crate still on the streets
in San Francisco
(– Ask her
about ” the state of the nation ” )
The worker’s lost hand or finger
severed on the job
calls out “what about me ! ”
( By now too commonplace to be reported on in the news )
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn
calls yet from the speaker’s platform
– Rise up !
It is you who labour
– not the Comprador– who are
the measure
Of History
Henry Winston
blind
prophet of the disinherited
the new caste of untouchables in America
points at the accusers the deniers
the killers of the Dream in our midst!
Á toi le roseau d’ Orphée
— André Breton, Ode à Charles Fourier
Fallen eagle feathers of the elders
of the tribe
discarded tin-cans empty beer-bottles
” fire-water ”
of the young men thrown on
The trash-heap
at the Pine-Ridge Reservation
give testimony to promises made by
the white-man’s ” forked-tongue ”
take up the stumbling block out of the way
( O young Republican Strategist
Ms. Kellyanne Conway, Georgetown U. grad !)
These I call forth as Voices above the fray
copyright: Sotère Torregian
Sept., AD2011
Sharing the word, the ideas, the thoughts and the feelings, we are opening new rows to begin this no way back trip.
Thank you all brothers and sisters of letters, languages are not a limit, the idea is to be one at the same time.
Ivonne Sánchez Barea
Politics
Easily complicated
Arresting, budgeting, debating
Calm decisions;lives ruined
Elected
Peace.
It is not the mere releasing of doves into the open air.
It is the fragrance of the open air itself
And the blue sky beyond.
It is the silence in the inner core of our being…
The silence,
Not of submission or of reticence,
But the silence which sings in a thousand melodies within the soul
And uplifts the spirit into communion with God.
Rare is this kind of peace…
It may be felt momentarily by mortals…
And then it is gone.
The clamour of the mind takes its place.
Let us treasure these moments,
For they are the caress of God’s fingers on our soul.
They come unbidden
As a glistening dewdrop on a rain-washed leaf,
Reflecting the myriad colours of the universe,
Perfect in itself,
Leaving one who sees it,
Fulfilled.
Such moments of peace may come at early dawn,
When the birds are just waking up
And the waft of the cool breeze brings with it the first streaks of pink,
Lightening the sky,
Striking the eyes
And reaching deep within the soul.
Or when the streets are desolate at the dead of night
And the lampposts stand sentinel to the sleeping city,
The peace at such times is immeasurable.
Peace may also steal upon us in the midst of a crowd,
When one is sitting in a darkened auditorium,
And the strings of the heart are vibrating in resonance
To those of the violin held in the hands of a maestro.
One may feel at peace then
And want to prolong the moment till eternity.
For it is then that eternity is held in the palm of the hand.
Peace may be felt when a child looks up with trust
Into your eyes
And clasps your hand.
It may occur
With the gazing at the deep blue sea,
When foaming waves are lashing against the shore.
It may be experienced when the first breath is taken
On waking up on a new day,
Just before opening the eyes.
Let us pray that each of us experiences
More such moments
And learns to savour them.
For peace,
As all good things in life,
Comes in small doses.
© Monika Pant
I want some good news people
No, not that “born again”
Bible humping bullpucky you’ve heard tell of … nope
I want good news … and not just for a minute here or there
Like you get during a KPFA fundraiser
Not what you get on Faux News during a slow day
No, by God I want the real deal
I want a whole workweek stuffed full of it
With each book-ending weekend fit to bursting
I want to know what it’s like turn on the TV and feeeeel good
I wanna feeeeeel good very time I think about … anything I can think of
I want to be double dipped, full up, schmeared, with good news
I tell you I want to look at the sky
And not think about “chem-trail” conspiracies
I want to feel the wind in my hair
Without wondering what kind of toxic crap is being carried along in it
From the sewers of India, China’s deserts or Japan’s nukes
I want to wake up, turn on NPR and hear about wonderful things
Expanding forests, glaciers coming back along with fish populations
Safe cell phones that pay YOU to use them
Free food being given out, rent reductions running rampant
I want to hear Obama talk
About giving back trillions of dollars to the people
Closing Guantanamo, giving up on nuclear power
Bringing troops home from Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Bahrain, Oman Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, Iran, Kazakhstan, Balochistan,Turkmenistan, Nepal, Venezuela, Columbia, Mexico and the other 123
I want to hear him go on about perp walking Bush
And his whole suffering asshole crew
Placing a stay on every act that rim jobbing bunghumper ever made
That prisons are being shuttered
Because millions of people have decided to care of each other
That godless heathen multi-nationals are hiring shit loads of people
Because they’re bringing rock solid, plan your retirement on them
God blessed union jobs back the good old US of A and by the millions
I want to hear about green houses, green cars, green factories,
Green make up, green jobs and a greening self-sustaining world
I want to hear about how every person entering the job market
Says the same ding-dong thing,
“Gee, I don’t know which of all these jobs I want?”
AND “Say, why don’t all you companies take a number for crissakes!”
And, mind you, I want the good news to go on every frickin’day
I want to hear how millions are giving up smoking
Taking up Pilates, volunteering for charity work
That everyone has two chickens in every pot
A good, well-built, American car in every garage
And by that I mean one that gets 500 miles per fuel up
Takes a 50 mile an hour crash with no damage
Or injury to its passengers
Lasts as long as you frickin’ want to keep it
And gets free tune-ups, brake jobs and tires while you own it
I want to hear about scenic passenger trains making a come back
How scientists are being listened to … Hello!!!
Got global warming on the run
Replaced oil, nuclear power and natural gas
Found a way to prevent alcoholism
Using the cure for cancer that we already have
And have begun to terra-form the Earth for god sakes
I want to hear day after day of good news
So that by the time the fourth day dawns
I’ll have some idea of what life is like in a world that makes sense
So that I’ll be looking forward to the next damned day
So that I’ll be glad to wake up
Donate to good causes, of which there’ll be thousands
And every one of them will be doing very well thank you very much
I want all the guns in the world to be turned in
Broken up and melted down to make … anything else!
I want to hear that every soldier, intel wonk, officer
Commando or insurgent
Has renounced violence and are getting busy …
Building shelters, planting trees, cleaning beaches
Counseling hopeless, caring for the needy
Handing out bread, bringing in water
Giving emergency care to the destitute
Rescuing cats from trees and kissing babies
I wanna see them all get busy
Fixing every leaky toilet, broken window, noisy refrigerator
And every god blessed pothole in the known universe
That they are working with farmers to grow more food
Unlocking potential, opening floodgates
Applying bandages, splints and helping, helping helping!
I want to hear about bastard banksters making micro loans and giving grants
That defense departments have been shut down!
That research and development funding
Is going to making better computers
Cars, planes, trains, tractors, shoes, lights, batteries, houses, cities, colleges, schools, basketball and food courts!
I want to hear about better understanding
Between religions, races, politicians, historical enemies
I want to hear about borders being erased, hatreds evaporating
Ignorance giving way … reason running rampant
And every form of love being accepted by everyone everywhere!
By god, I want a week of such good news
As people have never ever, ever, EVER had
So when I go outside
And get my free cup of fair trade, organic, sustainable coffee
And an organic “everything” bagel with a wild caught salmon schmear
Everyone will be walking about more than a bit dazed
More than a bit confused
But each and every one will be happy, happy, happy!
Hallelujah,
Brothers and sisters, but I yearn, dream and pray for such a week
I say I want a week of good news
A flood, an ocean, a sky full of wonders
So that every memory of this time; this horrific, festering butt hole
This stupid-assed, jack shit, fucked up universally acclaimed
And God awful world of unholy, rank, festering, pustulant oozing scabs
Is gone. I say I want a week of good news, my friends
I say, I want a week of such good news
That glory unbounded I know, I say, I just know, we all want to see!
Dear Someone,
Please pull the
cell towers
down in my
neighborhood
so I can
concentrate
enough to
do homework
Please turn off
the Wi-Fi
at my school
so I don’t
have to take
medicine
for my heart
And please change
back our smart
meters to
safer ones
so mom can
stop sleeping
in her car
on the street
Hallo, ich habe Ihre Seite über Google gefunden und muss sagen, dass diese mir sehr gefällt! Schön übersichtlich und informativ 🙂
Es sollte mehr solcher qualitativen Seiten geben!
MFG Peter
A PLEA
What good has the world done today,
what deeds that make it now a better place?
Very little do I feel.
My land, should be our land, for all to share.
Seldom words describe a fair division
Of the wares from land on earth.
Together we should strive
to have a better life, for all men,
all creatures great and small.
Please see the beauty,
not the stain upon the land.
Why must we rush about to make a buck,
to drill for oil and gas and such?
Go underground to hunt for gold.
Greed for oil makes big mistake,
its mine not yours to use for fuel!
Make war so cruel, so wrong,
so greedy to want it all for us.
Why can’t we just sit down,
and wait to see the beauty of it all.
To sit by sea, watch waves,
wash sand upon the shore,
pebbles damp that glint and shine,
so quiet in the sand.
No! Underneath is where we want to go,
to dark places, that have no beauty,
no sun for us to see.
No sense, just blackness,
and maybe just a glint of gold.
Sad, it is this mind of ours
that tells us not to share.
Wicked too this mind
that cannot see,
a hungry child,
that cannot help,
a troubled land.
We are so small upon the earth,
yet feel we own it all, for us.
Treasury this world of ours of plants and trees,
flowers that bloom, fruit that feeds,
and grass so green,
insects small we cannot see,
mountains high and seas so blue.
Who knows, who does know what this is all about, so
Why think to sort it out?
Nature comes naturally, caring for itself in turn.
Seasons come seasons go,
weather changes all the time.
Hot, then cold, next rain, then drought,
now storm, and then a hurricane.
Everything brown and falls to ground.
Spring returns and paints it green.
So light the green that slowly darkens.
So beautiful to watch things grow.
So; why does war go on and on?
In this diverse and magic world,
we love to see the contrasts of,
seas, mountains, deserts, fields, and plains.
They transform, and change with the seasons,
as they come and go.
From pole to pole and east to west,
the changes that illuminate and feed.
Seeds become trees, so big and tall,
their wood burnt, keeps us warm.
Blossoms change to fruit that feeds.
Grasses green, turn golden brown,
seeds then ground to make our bread.
Of this I’m sure, there must become,
another scene, a picture or a vision
to motivate, a sense of love,
not hurt, between the peoples of this earth.
A philosophy that says, we love our contrasts,
shades, beliefs, and different colours.
We tolerate and share; not separate, and keep,
to discriminate against our fellow man.
Then this world becomes our world
for us all to love, and share.
7 March 2006
17 October 2006 edited and revised.
en mi cielo interno nunca hubo una sola estrella
todas mis horas están hechas de jaspe negro
tu mirada es una plaga sin sentido
ser o no ser más nosotros!
repique de sinos para el más allá
qué está descubierto?
deja que te ignore, tu silencio es un abanico
mi conciencia de tener conciencia de ti
es una plegaria
SOY LA HORA
[fernando pessoa, un placer]
[Códices, inédito]
oj rampti ej
basquadé bilu, bajiná
inchalá ando dibum
nihir
inchalá misiajalana
yu nehes sepé ando
retan hue jual guidaí
oj rampti i-jou
ASANGUP
voz charrúa
Poemas al óleo, édito 2009
mi poesía no contempla ninguna regla
mi poesía tiene corazón de rock and roll
y me muevo en el anonimato de la ciudad
donde sólo te tocan mis intenciones
mi poesía es guión de comic
con música de miles en el invierno mvd
mi deseo es conmoverte el corazón
montevideo es divertidísima cuando tenés gracia
porque la gracia de mi poesía
es que yo no estoy
y nos juntamos porque amamos ser amigos
y cantar bailar cocinar escribir
mientras mi poesía circula la ciudad
ELLA ES GRANDE
Y HACE LO QUE QUIERE
YEAH!
[Poemas al óleo, édito, 2009]
a la luz de una brillante luna plateada
vuela una mariposa del rocío
cuando la poesía se hace carne
y una hija dibuja el amor en el alma
con la alegría del desafío
y la constante impermanencia
refleja un destello de infinito
en tus ojos y tu sonrisa
entonces es que he tocado tu corazón
y late tu vida en mis manos
para nutrirte de poesía la razón
con gotas de amor en tus labios
y milenios de sublime pasión
porque me enamora la virtud
y me deslizo en el tiempo para llegar hasta ti
REVELADA
(Códices, inédito)
a mi me interesa la gente que va tocando la vida con la mano
hasta que se la ha escurrido por los dedos
y en ese instante ella da la vuelta
regresa y se queda con nosotros
nos da otra oportunidad
porque nos ha hecho saborearla
saber lo que vale
yo sé por cuál calle ella anda
somos ella y yo y la nieve que no he visto
a mi me interesan los vivos
los despiertos
los que vienen del infierno
y esta tinta se transforma en vida
que se introduce en tus venas
y se convierte en poesía
a mi me interesan los que entienden
los sensibles
TO JIM CARROLL
happy end
Enero 2011
direct experience
from emptiness to you
yearning your ego
reality is before the concept
out of this phenomena world
the true absolute nature
i ´m a momentary appearance
in the time and space
my natural mind
comprehend through experience
when I break into relative reality
and I acquire form
and form is emptiness
I am the infinite possibility for anything
ASUNTOS INTERNOS
cuando baja el sol
me abraza la tristeza
la nostalgia de la luz
enseguida la noche es encantadora
y nos deleitamos iluminando
el sabor de la dualidad aún me conmueve
aunque no tanto
la delicia del desapego
disfruto del jazz y la trompeta
mientras el mundo tiene sus ojos en sudáfrica
siento los aullidos prehistóricos
las bestias están en el circo
y me pregunto ¿qué hace ahora el g8?
mientras la turba se distrae refinan la esclavitud
y me pregunto ¿dónde estás vos?
PODEMOS ENCONTRARNOS
estoy en la playa de los pocitos
un martes al mediodía
la ciudad sigue su rutina a mis espaldas
la música del río me baña de serenidad
me doy una pausa de la civilización
me cuido me amo me ocupo de mi
equilibro mis sentidos y se alegra mi espíritu
me expongo ante la creación
y dibujo en la arena la impermanencia
para algunos soy mariposa y para otros f
para dios soy un aprendiz
y para mi?
yo soy quien espera tu ternura
con los pies en el agua
CUANDO SOLO ME ENVUELVE LA BRISA ANTÁRTICA
civilización post atómica
destino errado
mundo ilusorio que implosiona
revolución industrial cerrada
capitalismo fundido
excelentes noticias para una mente en paz
y amanecemos con aroma a jazmín
el mundo a paso humano
donde somos sólo esclavos de la libertad
y una fragancia exquisita de felicidad
la nota que nos vincula es la virtud
la clave es la conciencia
para desplegar las alas de un vuelo dimensional
la madurez del tiempo del hombre
para acariciar el entendimiento del amor
COMMONWEALTH
Ciekawe życzenia. Ja z reguły korzystam ze stron z życzeniami, chociaż czasem sam wymyślam.
la corona la estoy guardando en mi gaveta
el dia que te decidas mi princesa
para que me des un poquito de ti
Ya van mil noches con un sueno
tener siquiera un poquito de ti
si voy rapido o muy lento
si ando despistado o muy atento
solo dame un poquito de ti
que mas hay que hacer para cruzar nuestros dedos?
para viajar al infinito sin regreso
solo aceptame una cancion y doce rosas
a cambio de un poquito de ti
sera mucho pedir 25 horas al dia?
para analizar tu sonrisa
amborracharme de tu mirada
y disfrutar esa resaca con un poquito de ti
espero no estar pidiendo tanto
solo incluirte en mi destino
de verte siempre en mis recuerdos
ver que tengo ese poquito de ti
breathe in, breathe out,
one lifetime.
breathe in, breathe out,
breathe in, breathe out,
one lifetime.
© Erin Fisher – 2009
The Ego
The Ego
Needs to be broken into tiny little pieces
and fed to billions of people
so that all can be equal and share a common thought
=Compassion
The Ego
Needs to be pierced in the eye
with acupuncture needles and twisted
until the meridian flows of milky nectar
=Love
The Ego
Needs to be melted and smeared across continental lines
and flushed through sewers pouring into the center of the earth
where molten lava can scorch and harden around it like an island
=Hope
The Ego
Needs to be transformed by understanding and acceptance
shared through finger tips, crossing lips and forgiving arms
so that all can live together
=Peace
“earth in the morning”
dear grace, in hands to keep warm by cup,
a garbage truck is coming to take this away,
all the waste of days that should be wings
but they have become a prison.
dear yerba, in mornings to keep you awake,
earthy
well-earthed,
steamed to stay warm and gradually lose flavor,
all the mugs that should be conversation
but they have become an imperfection.
dear rain, has it been so long?
falling
in ponds to capture and keep clean,
I hate the smell of carbon
but I love waking up beside you.
all our intimacies have made us saints
but they have become emissions.
Parfois, mes yeux, blessés des iodeux assauts,
Se délavent aux formes brèves qui m’enclavent.
D’autres vers sont là-haut qui se tordent sans rime :
La lame rose arase à l’huis des nuits l’arête
A la case agrippée sur l’échine pelée
De la colline, au clair de la canne coupée,
Nue dans l’haleine obtuse et crue des vents marins.
Cromb devant l’humble gîte un gnome las s’agite.
« Hé ! Toi, bousier minable où ta fouille t’affaire,
Mineur interminable anémiant les sillons,
Escarbille est ta hutte au grand soufflet du temps
Et brin d’inanité ton frêle édificule ! »
« Granulé sur ce tertre teigneux qui purule
Aux huantes nuées, aux hurleuses gargouilles,
Que tu es passagère, ô coquette coquille
Assurée de pourrir aux débris des abris ! »
Hautes maisons
Fortes cloisons
Larges prisons
Dont les ans ont
Toujours raison
Pourquoi ne sait-on pas qu’il est vain de bâtir
Quand il n’existe pas de muraille qui tienne
Si l’amie veut guérie de nous se départir ?
[file]https://100tpc.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/284R.bmp[/file]
like the sacred stars above,
infinite transgressions –
forming without birth,
fading without death.
© Erin Fisher – 2010
WORDS
Words
Words
Words
By which I am
Ambushed
Assaulted
Assuaged
Wayward
Own way
Words
One word
At a time
Each word
Added to a line
Lines elongate into verses
Verses expand into poems
Poems that sometimes
Morph into rants
Words words words
Sometimes hard to hear
Better left unsaid
Outward expression
Of the happenings in my head
Words to the living
Sometimes about the dead
Words words words
Mumbling
Rumbling
Stumbling
Into being
Words words words
That will not wait
Words words words
seeking sound
seeking solace
seeking soul
seeking
seeking
seeking
© fabian thomas
The Smudge
There is the smudged print of a tip
of a finger on that mirror : It approves not
of love
hatred
presence or absence of either one or
any other story or love or hatred…
Or about both.
There is a smudged print of a tip
of a finger on a mirror:
It was not cleaned,
it is there to stay
till the cleaning day…May be
forever.
For the accompanying presentation please visit: http://euzicasa.wordpress.com/the-smudge/
COMPLETE by Joan Didak
What makes a circle complete, she asks.
Is it the connecting of one end of a line to another on paper?
A story like a prayer told from beginning to end
Alpha to Omega?
A mouth completely open to receive
the circle of love?
Something small, daily or casual?
Easy as slipping a ring on a finger
and keeping it’s promise?
The wheel of life never-ending
in a cycle of birth, death, rebirth?
Building dreams one day at a time
out to the edge of the universe and back?
With all of the hands of all of the people of all of the languages
clasped around the Earth.
c. Joan Didak
9/11/11
I WOKE UP by Joan Didak
I woke up to a revolution
It wasn’t pretty
Blood soaked the dirty streets
Anxious excitement held peace in the heart of a continent
awakened once again
The enlightened ones came out of the pyramids that day
Every soul awakened
filled the streets with a message of Peace
Dignity
Community
Love
The mighty laid down their swords
began the real work
of commitment
I woke up to a revolution
It wasn’t anything
Fear kept us off the streets
locked within our pain
afraid of the madman inside
I woke up to a revolution
There was no one
The earth was still
quietly rumbling
We sat like midwives
waiting for the inevitable
birth of our new world
And it was gorgeous
everything
everyone!
C. Joan Didak, 3/7/11
Creative Visionaries Unite!
I’ve Seen Love
___________
If Ginsberg saw the best and worst
and discussed it extensivly in poetic discourse
through the flow and pattern
like the geometric shape of a DMT
spirit journey
Thn I have seen the dullest and brightest and
I’ve seen love
I’ve seen scholars with minds like a million
-flashbulbs!
Sparking ideas in dusty classrooms
but unable to maintain a steady stream.
I’ve seen highschool drop/burnouts
Throw away scholarships to MIT and Yale
money orders
To pursue shamanic practices in the Gobi
I’ve seen us worshipping a 70’s lizard king who,
long dead
still sends guidance in his words.
I’ve seen riot police like imposing exclamtion marks
trying to silence the outcries of a populace under siege.
I’ve seen everything he’s known get washed away
and still!
He gave his shirt to a stranger.
I’ve seen love.
I’ve seen Heather, beautiful and naked on a bare matress
in a house full of exposed lightbulbs and cigarette filter clippings.
Ive seen her control the whiskey riddled (?) mind
of an un/willing teenage boy.
I’ve seen her head tilted back in ecstasy.
I’ve seen her ex lay with a man.
I’ve seen love.
I’ve seen brilliant minds correded by softly whispered promises
-and the idea of second chances.
I’ve seen grown men run scared from the dark because of
the monsters that live there.
I’ve seen junkies pull a drowning cop from the water
only to be arrested for their habit.
I’ve seen those same get raped and cry out and
be saved by murders.
I’ve seen love.
I’ve seen so much more but
I’ve seen love.
Head less babies
The room was filled with
lost dreams. Music was from
Captured humans in the battle
for humanity!
They are still hopeful that angels
are busy making headless babies
with human hearts.
With the manuscript for pre fabricated
head wrapped in their umbilical cord.
This room is where Adam and Eve based
their first fertile egg and a bird flow
to eternity with broken wings, and two legs
that only walk through a limited plane of a
limited universe.
Let’s dream kindly! While the moon’s still looking
at us…., and our incredible silenced pain,
healed with tuned music of hope.
Let’s stop making headless babies with short hands.
We will make two remote controlled wings.
[file]https://100tpc.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/SpirVessFaulkPoemOnly.doc[/file]
Men lived through every blue sky moment,
Like my mother singing:
“Tiny white chocolate flower gardens”
Like a sea-smell holiday
Having come between language.
Elaborate use may rob ideas,
After we delicately dress
On delirious frost mornings,
Happy together
As they shine their favourite suits.
I have an aim
That some day
The children of the Chinese who raped Tibet
And the children of the Tibetans who suffered under Chinese rule
Will sit down together at the table of friendship
And wine and dance to the music of freedom
T.N.S.
September 23, 2011
09-21-11
Hunters looks for shapes
And sounds that resemble prey
Then sometimes guess
Where the heart might be
Before pulling the trigger:
Survival of the fittest become ritual
In separate darknesses,
both of us resting in the shade,
I listen: Is it limb or antler?
Can I take aim at my imagination?
It is safe enough here isn’t it?:
No one comes, hardly even other hunters:
Like minds, licensed guns.
It is growing dark
And it is a long walk back
I want something to show for a hard day ‘s work.
A small fury and I’ll move to claim my reward
Through wildflowers testifying in silence
Continued good will to the people of the Tohoku region in Japan. Here is an illustrated chapbook to benefit Ashanaga.
Kenji Miyazawa ‘Ame ni mo Makezu
http://www.apapersnowflake.com
[file]https://100tpc.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Anarchist.txt[/file]
Sudo Nym ~ Poet in Motion
1 of 100 Thousand Poets for Change
Speak Up!
I write verse in metered stanzas
Melodic breeze of red organza
Fluttering words tell memory’s tales
Iridescent thoughts on emotion’s sails
Though I am oft misunderstood
By those of different livelihoods
I empathize and comprehend
Yet remain direct and don’t pretend
I speak my thoughts
without refrain
I make inquiries
for understanding’s gain
Yet my directness agitates those
Who’ve yet to understand the prose
In a life worth living true and sure
One realizes pain endures
So suffer not to hold within
An episode of your chagrin
Or feelings felt you can’t deny
Just speak your truth, with head held high
So others know what you’re about
Don’t hold it in and fret or pout
For if you do you can’t expect
That others know what you neglect
Sudo Nym ~ Poet in Motion
Copyright 2/09/11
All Rights Reserved
I Am
I am the pruning during life that redeems and channels forth a better you
I am the forgiven transgression that consents you to move forward
I am the healing of brokenness which renders you clarity of thought
I am, I am, I am
I am the waters of a stream transporting vigor to all that is green
I am the whispering wind that allows an autumn leaf to accomplish its mission
I am the worm who sacrifices its existence so that a bird may continue to sing
I am, I am, I am
I am the trust a baby feels when grasped and fed for the very first time
I am the tranquility a teen employs to heal her first broken heart
I am the smile of papa when all his children assemble for Sunday dinner
I am, I am, I am
I am the peace and serenity that arrives at the threshold of unrest and war
I am the nourishment who desires to terminate the iron grip of hunger and famine
I am the anticipation of hope, equality, and love among all beings on earth
I am, I am, I am
E -mergency Mail
From: Gaia
To: Mankind
I’ll need you in the fall–
When land has leathered
and wind has weathered
every weary wall
of history’s harvest, tired of standing tall–
Will you be there to catch me, in the fall?
Will you promise, as September reigns,
to quench my thirst, to ease my pains?
Rebirth my soul, that I may give
more of myself, that you may live
the life according to the plan,
torn asunder by man’s greedy hand.
Oh, my children, you should know
that I didn’t have to go
this way….if you had paid attention!
But you ignored the warning signs’
productive intervention.
And so, the few of you who hear my voice shall stay
and heal my wounds and plant the seeds
you’ve saved for rainy days….
and I’ll return in spring, with blossoms tall,
if you will catch me, in the fall.
4/10/97, Chrissy Faith
The Iranian Girl
by Laurence Overmire
There’s a hole in the ground
A moving of earth, now made
A sad depression
Where once she played in
Puddle-rain
Splashing with the joy that comes
From child-like feet
The sound is still here
In the air, the breeze yet carrying
The secret laughter
That haunts the waking hours of those
Who’ve lost the way
How vain to think that
Memory can be erased
All will remember
No one escapes
I wonder if she saw it
The moment before
Her hair still flying free
The metal catching that last
Pure glint of sun
Did she hear the explosion
That made no sense
Did she feel
Her body come apart
And fall like dust, too soon
Does anyone ask
Whatever she felt, whatever she dreamed
Her dreaming time is gone
And no lofty word of God or
Glory will ever make it right
Dare to listen and you will
Hear her
Dare to open your eyes and see
The Iranian girl
No different
Like you, like me.
your life,
a series of present tenses,
yesterday good, tomorrow tragic
no matter,
believe, don’t believe
no matter.
22-Sep-11
© Erin Fisher – 2011
FUNDACIÓN PARA LAS ARTES MONTILLA E HIJOS
PINACOTECA DE ARTE CONTEMPORÁNEO DE CHIRIQUÍ
CASA CULTURAL LA GUARICHA
http://www.chiriquicultural.com
Saludos. Adjunto información sobre nuestras actividades
culturales en la Casa cultural La Guaricha (bajada hacia
el Colegio Félix Olivares, por la Estación DAFRON y JAVA
Juice, casa color verde y amarillo antes del puente).
Sábado 24 de septiembre, un evento mundial (se realizan
en simultaneo 600 eventos en 450 ciudades de 95 países)
100 MIL POETAS POR EL CAMBIO, poesía para transformar
el mundo. De 5:00 pm a 10:00 pm ENTRADA LIBRE – TRAE
TUS POEMAS FAVORITOS Y COMPÁRTELOS. PASA LA VOZ.
Visita el sitio oficial del evento: https://www.100tpc.org
o nuestro sitio: http://www.chiriquicultural.com
Miércoles 28 de septiembre, inauguramos MÉXICO –
MIRADA SUR de la fotógrafa argentino –
chiricana Patricia Veron Rivera (en exhibición
hasta el 15 de octubre). 7:00 pm ENTRADA
LIBRE. Extraordinaria visión del país azteca.
FESTIVAL ÍCARO EN CHIRIQUÍ, del 4 al 7
de octubre. Pre-estreno martes 4.
INAUGURACIÓN MIÉRCOLES 5 (con la presencia
del equipo de SERTV que prepara un espectacular
documental sobre el evento).
Hora 7:00 pm (todos los días).
Entrada General B/2.00
3a. edad, estudiantes y niños B/1.00
Todo el vídeo y cine de Centroamérica en
Chiriquí. No te lo puedes perder. Pasa la voz.
(Festival Ícaro es un proyecto de CASA
COMAL de Guatemala, presentado en
Panamá por GECU – Universidad de Panamá,
SERTV y la Fundación Pro Artes Escénicas y
Audiovisuales. Se proyecta en Panamá del
29 de septiembre al 5 de octubre).
INFORMACIÓN:
6687 1607 (Montilla)
6618 2929 (Antonio)
Manuel E. Montilla
(507) 6687 1607
Apartado Postal 0426 – 01137
David, Chiriquí, Panamá
fmontillah@yahoo.com
fmontillah@hotmail.com
I couldn’t make it to Santa Fe or Albuquerque, but I did get to write and read a poem on site at Tewa Women United’s Gathering for Mother Earth in Pojoaque, New Mexico, the pow wow site of Pojoaque Pueblo. Tonight they will have a fire ring and contribute to the reading with Beata Tsosie-Peña and other young poets.
At Gathering for Mother Earth
Tewa Women United, written on site
The corn is singing
all colors of corn are singing
and we are listening
The sun is singing
the sky is blue singing
to all manner of listening
The listening when
we don’t even know
we are listening
The distracted ear.
The earth is listening
are we hearing?
The ground is the best
listener I ever knew
listening to fire and to rain.
All summer I was praying
for gentle gentle rain and soon,
but not soon enough, it came.
The squash I didn’t grow
my children grew,
planted saved seed
watered and now I carry
a large squash home. I guess
the children have been listening.
The grandkids have their fingers
on remote and I-phone.
I am nearly giving up
but I have to believe
that are listening.
The body listens
to the beautiful. It feeds on
the beautiful, a day like today,
a sun baked, heart based
day like today.
Living inside a prayer
given to the great listening.
9.24.11
I listen, I hear. Overjoyed to find this, your words like the wind rustling the leaves in the trees. I tried for months to get word to First Nations and tribes to join the countries index and lend their voices – but to little effect (one white man saying “speak to us” is not much to listen to). But now, reading your words, hope for next year, NAs and indigenous peoples everywhere will come to teach us – will know we are listening.
POPULAR MYTH
Money talks
It speaks in riddles
Tells us that the world’s in a pickle
Money talks
It rants and raves that
“Digging caves should not earn taxes for other factors”
Money talks
Demanding an audience
To listen to reason
“Paying the global poor shouldn’t be treason!”
Money talks
Iicking and screaming
That “This government must be dreaming”
Dreamin of socialist ideology.
“And what is wrong with that?”
“What is wrong with that?”
Money talks
Speaks in tongues
An Abbott aborts
Everything coming to naught
They’re all out to tea!
At the Madhatter’s PARTY
The Big Hat has spoken
Now everything is broken…
Except Except
When money talks
Money walks from every depleted wallet
Into patient waitin bulging pockets.
Money has spoken
Now EVERYTHING is broken
And what’s wrong with that?
What is wrong with that?
Copyright Jean Burgess 23 September 2011
I spent the day posting 24 poems in 24 hours, starting at midnight Eastern time. Each poem was a sonnet. Each took its cue from a news article about climate change, because I combined participation in this event with participation in Moving Planet.
Here is the index, with live links to each poem and each source article:
http://hurricanecountry.blogspot.com/2011/09/climate-change-poems-index.html
Thank you so much, everyone! — Elissa
One more poem for the road. This originally appeared in Encore 2004: prize-winning poems of the National Federation of State Poetry Societies, where it won their “Save Our Earth Award”:
First Things First
(by Elissa Malcohn)
When water’s worth surpasses that of gold
and breathing freely brings the keenest joy,
and all the waste that we have bought and sold
no longer find a place in our employ –
when we have learned that war is over land
and all that nature yields to let us live,
be it savannah, mountainside, or sand –
when we have learned that something’s got to give
and what we’ve got to give becomes our fear,
accustomed to the task of wanting more
and wanting new, discarding every year
the very goods that we had craved before –
when we have given up economies
that run neither to logic nor to scale,
and blue chip stocks are worthless next to trees,
and we must be sustainable or fail –
when we become endangered as the beasts
whose DNA we treasure in our vaults
for times when our plundering will cease,
and finger-pointing, faulting upon faults
will come to rest at last upon us all –
when then we take responsibility
and stop, and listen to our bloodbeat call
and slow the progress of sterility –
then we will learn the wisdom of the grass
that knows the wind that carries every song
that tells of how our nature must surpass
the artifice we thought would make us strong —
when even ants are teachers and we take
the time to hear their sermons on the mound,
and we will walk the long way for the sake
of coaxing one more lake to stay around —
then no one needs to walk the path alone
as bound together, we behold our worth
and come at last to our ancestral home
as creatures nurturing this good, green earth.
Thank you!
on HOPE
Hope is not a slogan.
It is something small and fragile
held in a child’s cupped hands.
It is the `hope against hope’
of the dying
who wake each day
to bathe in a weak sun,
their bodies failing
but their eyes still sharp
as cut diamonds.
It is not owned by one man,
or one nation or one restless generation.
It is never contained in a life, but held
in a hundred thousand prayers or meditations:
that the guns will soon be silenced
and the hungry will be fed;
that those with plenty
stop their too much wanting
and those with far too little
finally have their share.
Hope is not a large thing
it is not an ism
though every ism claims it as their own.
It is the small thing waking
the dying every day
until their day is finally done.
It is the fragile thing
held in a child’s cupped hands
released.
Sara Moss
24/09/2011
for One Hundred Thousand Poets for Change.
Una nueva versión
del Caballo de Troya
con ligeras variaciones
explosivos
semiautomáticas
pistolas y municiones
Muy sencillo
muy antiguo
muy hermoso
muy mortífero
Location: Caracas, Venezuela.
Plaza Altamira (Plaza Francia). Av. Francisco de Miranda, Municipio Chacao-
MATHEMATRIXS
by Hasan Aspahani
stOne plus stOne times stOne minus stOne divided by stOne equals to how many are your amount sheep
stOne plus stOne times stOne minus stOne divided by stOne equals to how many are your shepherd sheep
stOne plus stOne times stOne minus stOne divided by stOne equals to how many years old are you sheep
stOne plus stOne times stOne minus stOne divided by stOne equals to how many are your pastures sheep
stOne plus stOne times stOne minus stOne divided by stOne equals to how many are your suns sheep
stOne plus stOne times stOne minus stOne divided by stOne equals to how many are your cages sheep
stOne plus stOne
stOne times stOne
stOne minus stOne
stOne divided by stOne
sheep
how man y
are
your
necks
how man y
are
your
hamstrungs
how man y
are
your
bloods
(Translated by Gilda Sagrado)
Las calles me son extrañas,
tu voz no conozco, un sueño
respira en tu luz, pequeño
residuo de fuego, engañas
al sol y a la luna, empañas
mi espejo. Tu amor, mi quilla,
Ardor de una pesadilla
que busca en mí de tu tacto
la culpa y un triste pacto,
nadar y ahogarme en la orilla.
El puente conduce al cielo,
la nube perdona pronto,
el agua que lleva al ponto
se traga mi ser y celo.
Detrás del celeste velo,
junto a la olvidada silla
encuentro tu voz, chiquilla,
y es tan solo un sinsentido
aferrarse a lo querido,
nadar y ahogarme en la orilla.
El cenicero depende
de mi garganta reseca,
una marca en la muñeca,
la mordedura de un duende.
Escupo al viento que enciende
de la hoguera la rencilla
y es tu lecho sin mancilla
razón de mi desespero,
talvez es que solo quiero
nadar y ahogarme en la orilla.
Eres ángel virginal,
Tu, la inmaculada estrella
que dejó sin ver la huella
que traspasa el bien y el mal.
Voy, ya llevo a tu quicial
mi llanto y el cielo brilla
mientras devoro la milla
que sobra entre tu y yo,
tu corazón repitió:
nadar y ahogarme en la orilla.
Tu silueta se encapsula
en mi pupila agrisada,
tu ríes y no hago nada
mientras una sombra emula
tu cuna, me voy, la gula
me hace preso, mi rodilla
tiembla tanto, maravilla
que tu temple ha provocado,
Tu, General, yo, soldado,
nadar y ahogarme en la orilla.
Mueca desabrida, errada
de dolor detrás de un labio,
Tu, cometa; yo, resabio
de tu fuego; Tu, alborada;
yo, el ocaso; Tu, la almohada;
yo, la sinrazón sencilla
que nos atrapa, nos pilla
no puedo retroceder
¿Qué me queda por hacer?
nadar y ahogarme en la orilla.
We are 100,000 poets
Mahnaz badihian
We are 100,000 poets
The voice of millions of people
That echo on the earth
The voice of protest
The voice for change
We do not have atomic bombs
We do not own billions of dollars
We do not own oil and diamonds
But we have words
The most powerful weapon
We are 100,000 poets
The voice from Tehran, from Rome,
From Iowa, San Francisco
From Jaypor to Dublin
From Pueblo to Kabul
From Shanghai to Nairobi
From small to big cities around the world
Because the distance between us all is only a click of a mouse
And a few lines of a text
We are 100,000 poets who know well
The devastation of hunger and war
The disaster created by tyrants and dictators
We are 100,000 poets
We spread the wings of our voice towards
The hopeless human beings in search of a voice
We write poetry to talk of the shared misery of all people
The hope we lost.
Words are our weapon
Our scream is our war for freedom.
We are 100,000 poets
Enchanting the bright future for all and celebrating hope and unity
We are here to say goodbye to racism
To poverty
To hunger
And to the loneliness of people every where
And to the walls separating countries
We are here to celebrate the unity of all the people
Regardless of color
Race and wealth,
Through poetry
…
Multi-Breed: Past, Present or Future
(Realizing there was no box for multicultural persons on American Census)
What if one day you look in the mirror
and you are nothing like the person
you have portrayed yourself to be in society?
That you are
A multi-breed of a human being with
No country
No ethnicity
You embody a culmination of heritage from many different
Continents
Bloodlines
The lines of who you are now have blurred so
Clear
Transparent
A culture that no one can
Tag
Label
Because nothing like you has ever existed
Oh, the people’s fear of mixing liquids is so great
Although, many have fought to do so quietly in their
Beds
Homes
Blending silken woven eggs in warm shells of womb
Not Permitted
Taboo
Yet all of these creations passed down through
Genes
Generations
The one that was believed to be damned for sins committed for not
“staying with your own kind”
Doctrines
Beliefs
If you look close enough in the mirror
Look deeply into you own eye
Around the pupil
Into the various colors streaming from the
seamless circular line that forms the globe
You will see that you are
All
One
Past sacrifices for love given in a single moment created
You
My breath finally reached the depth it’s needed for months, maybe years…when I read this poem. The passion of purpose…freed from nuances, nuisances, and numbskulls, made room for me…the indignant, the lovely, the elite. The one who remembers tomorrow with the hope of yesterdays only partially known. (Blessed:)
Chenae lives in Guernville, CA. a dear friend and good soul. She asked me to post this for her.
Chenae Meneely
Gone to an important wedding today, can’t make Big Bridge link work, poem entrusted to you:
There will come a Brilliant
Morning unannounced by shouting
A deep dawn silence will precede
We will reach in new knowing
Mirror minds jumping
Whales will sing
Children will play unafraid
Old ones will eat fruit carefully
Sharing old stories
It will come this justice
We will birth it in
Unison dream
Myriad futures bright
We birth as one
Chenae 9-22-11
Poem I read at the 100 TPC World Poetry Festival during Susan Hayden’s segment:
FREEDOM TO DRIVE
a ton of steel and glass and plastic and rubber
on asphalt and concrete and metal road to reach
a windowed and tabled restaurant to gorge on
cow and pig and chicken and fish to fill belly and
get in car again to arrive at mall steel and glass
and rubber and stucco buildings of opportunity
to try on and plastic card or paper bill purchase
yards of cotton and polyester and rayon and
spandex then plant ass on leather and vinyl
once more to park wheels and chrome near a
convenience store of plastic and chrome counters
to buy a bunch of plastic and paper packages bags
and bottles easily tossed in either receptacle or
ground and subsequently re-enter a stucco and
rubber and glass and steel building wherein clothes
and food and electronics are stored in wood and on
carpet made to outlast flesh and bone occupants
FROM DIFFERENT ENDS MINN BNADI DIFFERENTI
From different ends we started
to sail each other’s ocean
on liners of emotion we hoped
would meet but never crash
somewhere in time’s mish-mash.
Yet our sterns were struck, jolted
dislodged from their foundations
our moon in lacerations
dispersed broken illusions
in fragments of delusions.
We roll our sleeves in earnest
to pick the shards gone broken
retrieve them as life’s token
and fix them back with glue
love’s shards of me and you.
Therese Pace
http://www.theresepace.com
http://www.freewebs.com/theresepace
So happy to have been part of this event. Seeing the involvement of the world makes this so much more real, and makes me feel that I really am a part of something larger than me, my city, my state, my “world”. I want to reach out to all of you and shake your hand.
Poetry brothers and sisters.
for change!
WANGARI MAATHAI
(Founder of the Green Belt Movement and Nobel Peace Prize winner, 2004)
Wangari Maathai
slowly bent down
And planted seven seedlings,
In the dry Kenyan ground.
They said, “Women can’t!”
She said, “Anyone can!”
She planted seven seedlings,
So it began.
Wangari Maathai
started going round,
Teaching girls and women
To plant trees in the ground.
“Who says women can’t?”
She said. “Anyone can.”
They planted seeds and seedlings
In the dry Kenyan land.
Village by village those seedlings grew,
And the branches spread, and green leaves too.
And there were more and more trees, more nuts and fruits,
More soil in the shelter of more and more roots.
And the water that would’ve run away stayed.
And the tree frogs chattered, and the children played.
While the trees stretched out their cool green shade
From village to village in one decade.
What a belt Wangari and her women made:,
All across Kenya and then way beyond –
All round the world people carried it on.
Wangari Maathai,
we’re down on our knees.
The best way to thank you,
Is planting more trees.
Green belts of forest
Across every land,
If they say, “People can’t,”
We’ll say, “People can!”
Women of Kenya,
You lift your gaze high
To green leaves a waving,
Way up in the sky.
Young girls of Kenya,
We sing praise to you.
If they say, “People can’t,”
We’ll say, “Look – People do!”
—-Robert Priest
_they bring a knife, you bring a pen;
they send one of yours to the hospital,
you send six of yours to the New York Times._
100 Thousand Poets for Change
A shield for those who have the courage to take the risk,
a crowbar for those put in cages, persecuted and tortured,
a megaphone for those who have been silenced,
a memory that will not forget, no matter how stealthy the lies,
how remote the dungeon or how weak the muted voice
speaking truth to power from behind thick walls.
Who would dare to defile the sacrament of word?
Try to silence one of us and a hundred will speak out.
Try to Lock one of us up and a thousand keys appear.
Murder one and 100 Thousand Poets will expose you
in permanent ink, at open mic, on the stage of the world
where we resurrect the souls of fallen comrades
and lay tyranny bare on the open page for all to see.
Make war, and we’ll be there. Refuse food or care to the sick or hungry,
we’ll be there; exploit the poor or the vulnerable or the meek,
we’ll be there. Try to silence the truth and you’ll never hear the end of it.
We will prop open your ears and force you to listen while your lies
confess of their own accord the crimes that swallow your tongue,
unable to scream from within the pain of silence you created for yourself.
No one will bother to listen to tyrants begging for their own death.
– rs, september, 2011
[file]https://100tpc.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/LookingForAngels.docx[/file]
Revolution Cool Place
“We are in the middle of a bloody, heartrending revolution”
~Diane Di Prima
We are the bloody revolution
Called America
Called Beautiful
Called Brave and free
money
paper
plastic
diplomacy
in the hands of no one
who remembers an original concept
of agrarian myth because
agrarian myth is built on selfhood
peasantry
yeoman and rebels
who just want to be left alone
We are the bloody revolution
Called America
Called Wall Street
Called Hollywood
conspicuous
consumed
incandescent
callomaniac carnivores we
the people
dine too often
on someone else’s sweat
and wear our lovers in the open
for the sweet sacrifice of appearance
and malcontent
We are the bloody revolution
Called America
Called Dominant
Called Evil
mongers of war
democracy
god
peace
fully complacent in our brightest
tanks and shelters
beautiful youth and gas gear
for Peace
by Patricia Goodwin
I do not believe in Peace
unless we find it for a fleeting moment
say, in the exit music of a film,
when all drama breathes out
in Mozart
or in the fluttering eyelashes of a sleeping child
even then
I hear approaching scrape of boots and rhythmic jangle of weaponry
I do not believe in Peace
lest man decide to bow to worms
as monks do and carry with awe-stretched palms
the delicate life of a helpmate
to another part of the garden
I do not believe in Peace
unless it be in the breath of a falling blossom petal
so brief
our hearts break to breathe the perfume of its dying
God, I miss you.
Yet, I see you everywhere.
I see you.
There! As I toggle the channels by pressing one button for
Life! the white men in uniforms heavy with metal
smile at the Committee of Committing Money to another button
Death! where men who once stood proudly in uniform
squirm helplessly brain damaged on the hospital floor
I do not believe in Peace
lest in be there! in the Senator’s doubtful eye!
I saw her for a second! He does not believe the liars
He is from Hawaii and he knows the Earth is alive!
I do not believe in Peace
lest it be in the peaceful heavenly blue of the Holy Mother’s robe
symbolic of her mission on earth
when, in disgust, she tore the sun from the sky and hurled it
toward cowering reporters who are our greatest freedom everywhere
I do not believe in Peace
except in God given glimpses of God
And, I do not believe in Hate
because all Hate is really Love of something else.
‘Art’
Ink and paint
Fused by desire –
Sunlit tango of two.
I sketched rainbows under your eyelashes
You sprinkled my heart with verses.
Kisses echoed the lake:
Art is a vortex of desire
swirling the Universe into nothingness.
Dear mother ocean:
We
Plundered
Ya’
Deeds
of
Pleasure
Apathetic questionnaire…
To measure ya’?
I think, I crossed over here…
Present: beautiful feet.
But umm, momma lives in a bottle…
Lands: plastic repair.
Well to do, straws demand cleanliness…
They themselves deride.
Love,
Tomorrow’s nigh…
ON EMPATHY and how it can seed the world for Compassionate Action
The crisis we are facing, we face as a species locked into the paradigm that civilization, in order to placate itself, must act through selfish means. We govern by selfishness. Business is selfish, corporations are selfish. The whole world operates as if the sole principle was in gaining more. While we are busy gaining, the world is crashing to a halt because it cannot sustain the brutal ravaging it experiences at the hands of over-populated humanity.
I propose that we learn to function by embodying Empathy; that we govern through Empathy; that we measure all our affairs through how empathic we are being for all people and all life around us. Selfishness is traditionally on top and Empathy is trivialized, misunderstood and put last. This must be reversed. That is the Apocalypse in a nut shell. That is the crux of the choice. Empathy must be placed on top, and selfishness put last. As a species it is time to learn to govern for the greater good and not otherwise. Perhaps then humanity will arrive outside of its narcissistic terminal disease of violence and greed.
Often people refer to the opposite of Selfishness as Generosity. Be that as it may, the true functional opposite is not being generous, except in the most general terms, it is being Empathic. When a person becomes empathic they can no longer act selfishly, because selfishness becomes abhorrent to them and is seen as a pathology, not as a practical behavior. Acting through empathy may become not merely a guideline for all future behavior; it may by necessity become the very foundation of a new form of civilization.
It means we have to understand that selfish action is violence and that violence does not have to be our norm, and that it opposes living fruitfully. If someone says that we are violent by our very nature, it is because they exist within and are blinded by a four thousand year old preconception, in which this state of violence is perceived as normal, whereas it may not be normal for human beings in the long run. Violence emerges when people feel threatened due to scarcity, when they feel that others are taking from them, or not respecting their autonomy, or they are fooled into hating others because those others appear different even though they may not represent a true threat. Thus it becomes a psychological problem, and ends up in violence. Violence becomes more than a standard; it becomes a stranglehold, due to its brain chemistry of adrenalin rushes. In this way, reliance on angry, forceful paradigms is actually a chemical addiction.
Masses addicted to the chemistry of anger have caused untold havoc to the Earth, to other human beings, and to the Planet, because part of the addiction to anger is lack of the ability to care in general. Caring in general means one must feel empathy, what others feel, and the pathology of violence obstructs this process.
Which ever way it is viewed it is still a pretext, and that pretext must be discarded. I believe that when we can finally become, if not fully compassionate, but begin the rooting of our perception to Empathy we will gain understanding into how to be truly psychic, how to be in harmony with everything on Earth, how to reach out spiritually to others on Earth and in other worlds, and other realms — the so-called spiritual which the selfish paradigm also summarily dismisses.
How can an ego-centric paradigm ever embrace something so foreign to itself as the idea of a universe which manifests itself in greater harmony and which operates through both spiritual and natural laws, of which empathy for all else is paramount?
Empathy means that one embraces not only a friendly view toward all life and its suffering state, but to spiritual understanding which comes from the kind of spiritual contact as described in mediumship, shamanism, tribalism, the paranormal experiments since William James and the Societies for Psychic Investigation. The denial of this part of
human history is part of the rigid paradigm of denial which pervades the culture of selfishness. It means embracing our fullness, instead of always inferring that we, as beings, are simply icing on the cake of physical bodies in the endless seas of random chemical interactions. It means that the shift in the way we view what we are comes to pass, and that new technologies extend from the inclusion of that awareness, once that awareness becomes our norm.
If religion is rooted to anything, that anything would be Empathy. Christ’s, Buddha’s, Mohammed’s teachings can all be reduced down to that one thought, to feel what others feel so that you act in ways which do not bring pain upon them.
This means embracing what is in another’s heart, body, mind and soul. That lesson precedes cosmic contact in real, nuts and bolts time. If and when it is forced upon us or achieved, it will not necessarily bring us into relationship with occupants of UFOs, but with our own spirits. If one imagines how a world of spirits governs itself, then we must find that in order to exist in finer and finer vibrations, we must govern by dint of our nature, and in the spiritual realms — that nature is empathic.
All the psychic gifts are forms of Empathy. All the most heartfelt and enduring books of wisdom are so, because they are empathic, reaching into the core of each who reads them, and signaling there that sense of well-being and connection which are the earmarks of Compassion and Empathy. For us who must exist in a selfish world, we are made to feel like slaves to a paradigm which simply does not fit. We are not comfortable inside it, and like butterflies wishing to escape the cocoon which confines them, we sense that our escape is immanent. If we discover that death is such an escape, not into oblivion, but into unobstructed beauty, then we can die knowing an adventure awaits, and that in doing so, we will come into a world governed by Empathy and Compassion.
If we die into a realm, adamantly asserting that it will be the same as this, with every spirit for themselves, and the rule of causing pain to continue, then that delusional state won’t be anyone’s achievement, but the foolish extension of the world of the violent and the selfish.
So I will remain among those who envision a world of greater harmony and Empathy than on Earth — and that will be my heaven, nothing less. No one can say what the world of UFOs is really like, but we can say what the world of Spirits is like, because we can empathize with them and know their hearts. Their hearts are our hearts.
This to me is the central issue symbolized by the rude awakening or destruction of humanity at its own hands. Either we continue for a short while longer on the path of violence and greed and selfish action toward ourselves and life in general, and most likely perish, or we embrace something different.
Since there is only one thing which is the other side of greed, that is the answer we are looking for: Empathy. That is what is needed to guide us back to our own hearts, to open them up and keep them open, so that we can reinvent our civilization based on it, and be connected to everything alive and everything which supports life on Earth.
This dream of mine must come to pass. It has to be believed in as an edict of Spirit and ultimatum of Life. The truth of the matter is that it comes off as a pipe-dream. This is due to the nature of the corporate mentality of ruthless betrayal of everything but profit motive. Whether we are speaking of organized drug lords whose spirituality is basically Patrist, or governments that appear on their surface to be liberal, but who in fact impose a scenario upon its masses which benefits the few and denies the security which wealth could bring to the masses.
We must believe in ourselves as a species which deserves the security of health, home, education and arriving outside of the four thousand plus years of angry, violent, power hungry government and religious thinking. In the name of God no violence and only understanding should be meted out. When it is not, then it is a false perception, which does not include the knowledge gained directly from spiritual sources, but only from the fattened and blinded ego of the power elite. The conflict of the right and left, the church and synagogue and Islam, the enslavement of women and children around the world, the extreme poverty of the multitudes which remains invisible, the brutal resource of endless weapons from ones held in the hand to those triggered from the comfort of computers and cushioned in safe havens of the military, and all such symptoms of the modern dilemma are not new. They are the same symptoms of a world which is so used to behaving in this way that it has succeeded in ruling out all other modes of behavior for itself.
So where to begin? Begin with yourself, ourselves, myself, and the children. There we replace violence with problem solving skills. Simple child psychology. The tools exist but we need to teach ourselves to reach for them. On a societal level we may need to rebel, but keep in mind that violent rebellion always yields exactly the same society which the rebellion attempts to overthrow. Why? Because we have yet to fully examine the nature of our emotionality, and the real reason why the culture of violence has been allowed to exist for over four thousand years, and as if that is acceptable.
It is said that to live life fully we must live in every moment. Be there intentionally in each waking moment. The more clever among us revel in their dreams, becoming lucid and exercising control while they sleep, transmuting their inner being to untangle the knots of binding neurosis, and old habits. We are complex and our waking minds, although it is the focus of our identity is not the total self. In some of the more profound spiritual philosophies we are told that we are One with the Universe. Indeed. But that is not the sense of self we experience daily in work, or as a human being through whatever the experience of life. What is happening, you say, is happening to me, not some Universal field of identity or connection with Life, or of the Planet.
In the subconscious fabric of selves operating distinctly, such as in waking and in dreaming, we can see the plurality of being unfold. Yet the cultivation of a sense of universality seems superfluous. Who wishes to bother in a civilization composed almost entirely of exterior stimulation? From the moment we awake from sleep, to the moment we return to it, we are occupied, completely exteriorized into whatever it is we behold.
In the rich countries that exteriorization takes place as endless object fascination. Among the helpless third and fourth world peoples that occupation is in the deep agony of suffering states brought about by the antithesis of the worlds of bounty. Our contentment, our fatness results in the destruction of those people who go without. Only an unfeeling fool would argue that their state of being is their choice. That is a rationalization so that no caring is justified in the conscious minds of the society of bounty. Call any effort to redress, to rebalance this horrific inequity Socialism, which is demonized to mean the new Communist threat — while the actual new Fascist threat, the only fascist threat, is ourselves, as we consume everything to keep ourselves selfishly placated. Why is it we don’t hang our heads in guilt and shame? Instead we find that the majority vote is pro-selfish and anti-humanity. However, the process of rationalization covers this in direct assertions as sleep covers the conscious mind.
Our escapism is in supporting the troops, which is good. It shows the limitation of our caring. That it is nationalized, that we cannot reach any further than what the media shows us and instills in us. That is why we need Empathy, because empathy extends us beyond the parameters justified by media and the ego it is in service to. Empathy takes us beyond the shell of self into another’s heart. Empathy moves through us as a breath of connection to that which is outside of our bodies. Sympathy is contained within the self, as a reflection of sadness for another’s pain, but through Empathy we not only can walk a mile in another’s moccasins but feel what they feel.
Telepathy is a step even further out into the unknown vagueness which empaths know. Here the hint of someone else’s thoughts can be clearly understood. You can receive their message and respond in kind. This is not something human beings have yet to achieve. Instead it is commonplace practice among many ancient cultures, aboriginal, Maori, tribes all over the world who know how to communicate in this way.
Believe or deny, the fact is plain: telepathic communication happens; shit happens. Clairvoyance is yet another deepening aspect of Empathy. Instead of just hearing, one is also seeing, and perhaps, as in Clairsentience, feeling what others see and feel as well. The selfish cannot comprehend these possibilities which bring us closer to others, and also to all things. But this is the path we each inevitably take at death.
There, in dying we feel, see and hear spiritually, and the weight of our suffering is either lifted as we move on, or that same weight grows heavy upon the soul to drag us down and pin us to the place of our self-created illusions. Those rooted to the physical cannot glimpse the fleeting nature of the soul’s journey. Those who would concretize this process of becoming spirits say it is not possible and therefore cannot be. Like Scrooge before the ghosts who come to aid his transformation, the Scrooges yell, “Bah! Humbug!” They refuse to acknowledge what has been told and retold throughout millennia, calling it old wives tales, urban legends, delusional thinking, a dream, a downright, blatant lie. But then, let them define Empathy and make it work for us all!
The Key: Peace, Love and Joy
Across the glass
Orange letters proclaim
“Peace, Love and Joy”
We are drawn into the restaurant
Seated by a smiley pleasant man
who brings us water and menus
I tell him how much I enjoy seeing these words on his window
I ask him which one he thinks comes first
He answers
“Peace of course—
Because one has to become silent enough
to recognize the feeling of Love
then true Joy can be experienced”
I had never thought in this way before
He told me that he and hundreds
thousand, millions, maybe even billions
of others around the globe
meet daily
Meditating, praying and wishing for
“Peace, Love and Joy”
In hopes that the world
Will find a new way
Without war or hate
Through this quiet look inward
Finding compassion in their hearts
Peace will come
Love will reign
Joy will be
“Love is the poetry of the senses.” ~ Honore de Balzac
Other poems you would like to see on your Web site, thank you from Adana okullari.
slider, nana and magdeline…
first I laughed. then I thought. then I related (somewhat). I needed the first (medicine). I am blessed by the second (thanks). I appreciate the third (corrections, ahhh.)
we lobby for change
yet we contribute little
we despise achievement
as we wallow in our own mediocrity
what is offered to all
we obliquely refuse
and yet we anoint ourselves
to be arbiters of truths
our relevance is dwarfed
by our insufferable egos
THIS LIFE
By Tsoltim N. Shakabpa
This life, this life
This changing life
Taking us on a journey
On the mercurial river of life
Gently and pleasantly at times
Lifting us to heavenly heights
Roughly and irascibly at other times
Smothering us in its waters
Passing through lush green fields of joy and glory
Ensnaring us in precipitous gorges of toil and trouble
Churning out lustrous successes to celebrate
And hurling fated failures to bemoan
Twisting and turning
The river dispenses healthy doses of euphoric feeling
Which make us jump for joy
Then injects painful fluids of sorry sickness
Which ensconce us on beds of virulent thorns
O what a life!
This journey on the river of life
That ineluctably ends in the ocean of death
Which envelopes us in its depth and vastness
And delivers us on the fertile shores of waiting wombs
To be reborn once more to ride the waves of the capricious river
Copyright: Tsoltim N. Shakabpa – 2011
“Memories that Stain”
Like Pontius Pilate
washing his hands
imagining himself innocent
while a Jew hung nailed ruined
we too wish to wash
our hands and say
we are not responsible.
As you clean
make sure you scrub well.
Iraqi blood has
left your knuckles stained.
There is Afghan skin under
your nails, a girl who
was twelve – only twelve
my god.
A fragment of Palestinian
skull has lodged itself in
the tracks of your shoe.
See there in your boot !
fragments of his skull
how you fell on him – remember ?
in front of his young
brother – remember how you crushed him.
The dust of
one
no one-thousand
sheep-herders’ skulls has
covered your knee.
There are scars
from 150 years ago
that are festering
and beginning to show.
Clean well, really scrub.
A thousand brutal memories
have left a strange
grit between your teeth.
By Alexander Holmes-Brown
[file]https://100tpc.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/SomethingforWiesenthalTheSunflower.doc[/file]
Two nestled lovers
Hand in hand and cheek to cheek
Texting other lovers
LA SOCIEDAD DE POETAS ESTÁ DE FIESTA
FELICIDADES PREMIO NOBEL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
7 poemas de Tomas Tranströmer
APUNTES DE FUEGO
Durante los meses tristes, centelleó mi vida sólo cuando hice el amor contigo.
Como la luciérnaga se enciende y se apaga, se enciende y se apaga- a medias puede uno seguir su camino
en la noche oscura del olivar.
Durante los meses tristes, estaba el alma desesperada y sin vida
pero el cuerpo caminó directo hacia ti.
El cielo de la noche rugió.
Sigilosamente ordeñábamos cosmos y sobrevivimos.
C-MAYOR
Cuando bajó a la calle tras la cita de amor
Soplaba la nieve en el aire.
El invierno había llegado
Mientras hacían el amor.
La noche brilló blanca.
Él caminó rápido y alegre.
Toda la ciudad inclinada.
Transeúntes sonrientes-
Todos reían tras los cuellos alzados.
¡¡Era libre!!
Y todos los signos de interrogación cantaron la existencia de Dios
Eso creía él.
Una música estalló
Y cruzó en la nieve arremolinada
Con largos pasos.
Todo en camino del tono C
Un tembloroso compás dirigido a C.
Una hora sobre las heridas.
¡Era fácil!
Todos reían tras los cuellos alzados.
Con regocijo, mdr
~ Please take a few minutes and read ~Tashi Delek!
The Chinese government has s…entenced Tashi Rabten to a 4-year prison term, following a closed-door trial. His crime? Writing poetry and being the editor of a literary magazine known as “Shar Dungri” (Eastern Snow Mountain). Below are some poems by Tashi Rabten (pen name: Theurang) published in his book “Written in Blood,” translated from the Tibetan by Bhuchung D. Sonam.
1: My Tibet
Is it you, the flame that burns in the middle of a storm?
Is it you, the boat that rocks in the sea?
Is it also you, who offers the torch of life in the darkness of night?
Is it you, where there is no freedom?
Is it also you, who is chained and shackled?
Is it you, who writes history in blood?
Are you a warrior?
Where are your battlefield and the weapons?
Are you a prisoner?
What crimes have you committed?
Is it your sky that the sun shies away from?
Is it your vow to let yourself be silent?
Are these your border guards, the long guns surrounding you?
Freedom is different from restrictions
Because of which you move,
Because of which they tie and bind you, isn’t it?
Isn’t it you who is being murdered?
Isn’t it you who is being arrested?
Isn’t it you who is being tortured?
Why is it that you still want to move?
Do you want to move amidst shadows of guns?
No.
Isn’t it you who can never be cowed down?
Isn’t it you who fiercely burns with passion?
Isn’t it you who marches ahead into history?
Don’t you need to move even more?
Don’t you need to move till the time runs out and the life ends?
2: Lhasa-Gormo Railway
This is a road
A recently-completed road
A road that is well traveled
A road of rock mixed with steel, men with demons
A road connecting Beijing and Lhasa
Holy Lhasa is at one end of the road having old dreams
At the other end is Beijing, reading an incomplete plan of action
Between Lhasa and Beijing, this road
Runs like a tongue of a poisonous snake
On this road
The life-soul of Lhasa and its wealth
Is being transported, day and night
Nearby this road
Are terrified wild animals of Tibet
Running, running, dying, dying
This road, like the butcher’s knife,
Drills through the hearts of the mountains
This road, like an axe in the robber’s hand,
Cuts across the chest of Tibet’s grassland
On this road they come, the guests with greedy minds
On this road they run away with the hosts’ wealth
At the end of this road are the satisfied faces of the bosses in Beijing
At the other end are dusty faces of the people of Lhasa
In the night this road kills my quiet dreams and my sleep
In the daytime it murders my thoughts and drives me restless
Every so often this road boils my heart with anger
Suddenly I Remembered Lhasa
The sound and the vibration of the train
Suddenly shakes the computer
And the fingers do not have control over the words
At such times I suddenly, suddenly
At the end of the railway track
With a moving train
I remember Lhasa
The statues and butter lamps of Tsuglakhang
The golden roofs of the Potala Palace
Even the faces of the old women on the road
Flashes like the computer facing me
Anyone remembers them
With sounds of trains coming and going
Ah how remembering Lhasa suddenly
Is like remembering to get up
And shout out in freedom.
3: A Secret Petition to the Government Penned in a Computer
One dead body, ten dead bodies, one hundred dead bodies, one thousand dead bodies
One news, ten news, one hundred news, one thousand news
truth – 0, false – 9, truth – 20, false – 900
Red hands that take out the innards
If you are not on our side punish us
Black boots that crush heads
If you don’t understand then just imprison
freedom, harmony, equality, democracy
open the door, open the constitution and look inside
freedom? harmony? equality? democracy?
My government, if you suspect that your faces will burn with brightness
Accuse me of everything and punish me
Because I am your citizen,
Like a bird that flocks to the cliffs
I am a loyal citizen who will say ‘yes’ to everything you say.
4: Monologue In Hell
First
Today, if the radiant hands scratch the face of darkness
Tomorrow, will the world of dawn lift from amidst the darkness
Two
If a few ready-to-gallop horses
Went missing along with their saddles and reins
Is there any horse owner who is ready to point at the thief?
Three
If a well-planned wolf jumps onto the shepherd’s dog
The unarmed shepherd, of course, can loudly shout out everywhere
Four
Don’t lie when the ears are listening to the truth
When the able eyes are watching do not create disharmony
The people are watching you, even the natural world is sighing at you
Fifth
Even though I do not own the five physical senses
And the five meanings and six vessels are stolen
I permanently own the five pure visions of the senses
Sixth
Long live freedom, long live nationality
Long live truth, love live democracy
Long live the blood that runs in my veins
Long live! Long live!
5: Prisoner in Hell
Hell is a fortress made from iron and steel
A doorless fortress of shackles and handcuffs
Freedom-loving people are the prisoners of this fortress
Or they are criminals seeing the darkness of the hell
These people have fallen to the darkness of hell wanting to see freedom
They are the ones who blew vapour from their mouths outside the door
They are the ones who raised their fists up in the air
However, according to the decree from the hell
Each of them are considered criminals in prison shackled and handcuffed
The crime they are accused of is ‘love for freedom’
Mother says amongst the prisoners is
A very young kid brother of mine
The youngest prisoner in the world
If the crime that this kid has committed is not made
When he was piling stones to play with
Then this kid is truly an innocent kid
Freedom, equality, democracy, livelihood
One prisoner, two prisoners, three prisoners, four prisoners
Hell is really a hell
Freedom, equality, democracy, livelihood
Will there come a time when everyone will be free from the fortress of hell
6: News from Hell
Because of intense cold wind in hell
Those in hell experience disturbance in the temperature
Many in hell suffer from diseases
Yet, the news from hell is always fine and good
The news from hell is a newspaper
A newspaper that has lost the word ‘democracy’
A newspaper filled with secret numbers and —
Under the volatile weather of the hell
The hell’s news comes as a medical prescription to those who are suffering from cold
Prescription that charges money but gives no medicine
A prescription with stamp of approval from the authorities
News from the hell is contagious
That is transmitted through people’s mouths and ears
Those who suffer from this disease are servants in the hell
The hell is basically a sick person carrying his shit in his pants
Isn’t the newspaper in hell that paper which one uses to wipe one’s bottom?
RANGZEN BOY : Free all Tibetans political prisoners
Demand China respects human rights and no more suffering in Tibet!!
Free Tibet!!
The Earth and the Sand
the wind and the trees
the beings that be
the things we can’t see
are all connected
through you and through me
by inner love and harmony
you must first close your eyes
and then you can see
the forces of loves energy
open up. awareness. listen. be
NEANDERTHAL ZOMBIES IN AMERIKA INC.
Dale Johnson, Sept. 2011. troporg@racsa.co.cr
Human evolution took a wrong turn.
The Neanderthals are back!
They call themselves Republicans,
But they are Zombies,
Risen from the grave of history
Now chasing Homo Sapiens
With their big sticks
Clubbing every social advance of human kind,
Torturing and killing non-white peoples in distant lands
Jailing and deporting those considered aliens in their heartland.
The Zombie Machos party with tea spiced with Texas bourbon,
Cooled with Alaska ice and served by a stylish Haus Frau.
Through their control of yellow journalism
They force those with residues of tolerance and humanity
To swallow the piss and bile of once defeated anachronisms.
The Zombies, bankrolled by their friends in corporate board rooms
Prepare to remove the Nation´s heart
And replace it with a Made-in-China machine.
They coerce and blackmail the reasonable yet complaint politicians
To appoint the plutocrats and murderous Generals to controlling government bureaucracies
And to follow their dictates to roll back social progress.
The bankers succeed in reversing the American Dream,
Immiserating the masses.
Big Money inspires economic suicide
While Fox News glorifies the perverse
And CNN presents Big Lies as balanced journalism,
Most all the media offering Pentagon programmed militarism
To torture reason, degrade the noble, imprison the valiant
And strain to devour what remains of civilization.
The Zombies, their mental substance mummified,
Have no human sensibility
But yes one modern vice in gross excess, Greed.
Greed requires obfuscation to dress it up,
Inspires viciousness and requires forceful pursuit.
Greed, obfuscation, and force infuse the mentality of the Rich and Powerful
Everywhere the stirrings of the Many frighten the Few
Everywhere the social gains of people´s struggles are vulnerable.
The social pathologies fostered
Infect the consciousness of the petty-privileged–
The tea toasters partying the death of decency,
The white-skinned Machos reviving the vileness of racism,
The Homophiles bashing gays,
The Xenophobic waving flags, spreading fear, spouting hate and torturing victims,
Those so morally confused that they believe that a fertilized egg is sacred life
But celebrate killing a million people in Holy Oil Wars,
Those who thump the Bible and make doublethink of the term Christian.
The germ of these social pathologies?
The substance of work and life that the Few appropriate from the Many
And yields the power that corrupts absolutely.
Exploitation denies justice, buys social privilege, incites reaction, requires oppression
And eventually impels rebellion.
The pathologies are embedded in a panoply of institutional forms that facilitate thievery,
Oppress and suppress the victims.
With televised lies, printed distortions, and subliminal messages of the culture of domination
The social pathologies feed on subverted consciousness and obliterated humanity.
We are witnessing the death agony of a system that has lived out its time.
The Neanderthal Zombies espousing the latest fashions of fascism need be buried
In the grave of history to be mummified for eternity.
Not by driving a golden stake through their cold hearts,
Violence is their way not ours,
But by reasoned decency, the reclaiming of the notions of the common good,
Social justice and human progress,
Taking energetically and massively to the streets that lead to a better world.
Actung Herr Comander-in-Chief Georg Werner von Bush
You are going up for War Crimes.
Pentagon Brass pursuing empire with deadly force,
Contractors manufacturing instruments of death,
CIA chiefs rendering torture,
Lawyers subverting the rule of law—
Zombies all, guilty of Crimes against Humanity.
Listen up plutocrats the flood of bailouts and bonuses will drown you.
Hear this Hypocrite-in-Chief Obama
The age of false promise and dirty deeds are numbered.
We don’t want politicians who prostrate themselves
Toward the Mecca of Wall Street,
Pray to the Idols of War,
And coddle aid and abet the Zombies.
This is from Dee Allen
San Francisco, CA
CLEAR-CUT
__________
Clear-cut
Land improvement
To selfish minds – – – –
“Development”
Clear-cut
Introduction of the strange
To the woodland expanse- – – –
Profit in the short range
Enter the longtrucks
Enter the cranes
Loggers activate saw
Roaring throughout the terrain
Ancient wood meets spinning steel
Guided by human hands
Stumps & brambles shall remain
Of the green cathedral that stands
Clear-cut
Concentration
Upon long-range
Devastation
Clear-cut
Disrespect
To the wild that made us – – – –
Behold, the greenhouse effect
Sing a soft requiem
To the disappearing forest
Its replacement:
A credit to “progress”
Downfall
Of wood & leaf
Grounded timber
In favor of concrete
The land is fallow
And then what?
Whether trees return
Isn’t so clear-cut
Give or take another
Hundreds of years
Steady warming of the earth
Confirms our darkest fears
Clear-cut
Concentration
Upon long-range
Devastation
Clear-cut
Ambuscades
Unless we take to the wilderness
And block the sawblades
————————————————————————————————————–
W. 5.17.09
[for Steve Jacobson
Our beautiful sister Awilda just slipped through the hole in the ozone. Our most heroic poet! RIP
Your Name
When I say your name,
I want to say memory,
I want to say tenderness,
a smooth blanket in sleep time,
tired eyes but always alert.
When I pronounce your name I evoke
coffee “recién colao” recently brewed,
rice with green pigeons peas,
savory vegetables in the stew,
pork legs with chick peas,
the cake married with the cold milk,
the orange candies stuck in your teeth and gums,
the movie that gave you nightmares and the usual insistence
to sleep with you after.
When I say your name,
I smell Maja powder, pond cream, final touch softener, Avon perfume, Dove soap,
I smell cilantro, cilantrillo, garlic, onion
I smell “sofrito”.
When I say your name I think in your black eyes almost blind,
of your white hair without dye,
of your wrinkles,
of your big ears, of your falling butt,
and your long eyebrows,
of your legs full of varicose veins,
in the time you used to say they were fat and beautiful legs,
and I think of your tailored dresses
made with the fabrics of la Tienda Paco,
of your black shoes polished with griffin.
I think about you,
happy with a clear mind again,
with organized memories,
with your whispers to calm my tears,
with the saying “what matter is that I love you”
I think of you without insanity, curses, and bad words,
in the time when we had innocence already,
I think about you with eternal love,
eternal like memories.
I think about you as the most beautiful thing in my life.
when I say tenderness, love, support, feelings, memories and bonds,
I want to say grandmother,
I want to say Mercedes.
—- Awilda Ivette Castro Suarez
Soneto de Julio Augusto Zachrisson (Panamá, 1930)
Japonería
Atravesó la estancia triste y quedo,
de su kimono entre los pliegues rojos,
fingiendo con sus pies el dulce enredo
de lirios que anduvieran entre abrojos.
El verde claro de un farol de Yedo
besaba con su luz llena de antojos
las negras cuentas que entornaba el miedo
entre la roja ojiva de sus ojos.
Pasó cerca de mí, pálida y sola;
besé con ansias su coturno viola
para quedar entre misterio y sombra,
porque los pasos de sus pies traviesos
se fueron apagando como besos
sobre las flores grises de la alfombra.
[img]https://100tpc.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/MANUELMONTILLA-ARTE-NYADE1.jpg[/img]
Soneto de Julio Augusto Zachrisson (Panamá, 1930)
Melancolía de un fauno
Se presiente un anhelo de senos angustiosos,
de labios agitados por una fiebre loca,
y de las fondas salen los sones amorosos
del sistro de una virgen que a la caricia invoca.
Recorre la espesura con pasos temblorosos
un sátiro doliente: el vino lo sofoca;
y entre las linfas claras, dos flancos armoniosos
disipan la tristeza que su mirada evoca.
Deslízase la luna trepando por las lomas;
y besa de los cerros que parecen palomas,
los perfiles plateados cual fundidos en yeso;
y el sátiro, caduco, se queda oyendo, mudo
cómo la última nota de su instrumento rudo
se apagó en el silencio como si fuera un beso.
[img]https://100tpc.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/MANUELMONTILLA-ARTE-NYADE3.jpg[/img]
Poema de José de Jesús Martínez (Panamá)
Tú no eres….
Tú no eres lo más bello que hay en el mundo.
Existe Grecia dentro del mismo género,
pero tú le sigues de bien cerca.
Cuando caminas, cuando fumas,
tú no eres la que tienes el estilo más aristocrático del mundo.
Existe el vuelo de las gaviotas que es aún más ligero,
pero tú le sigues de bien cerca.
Tú no eres la cosa más real que hay en el mundo
aunque para mí seas su luz y casi su pretexto.
Existe la cuchara del pobre, sus necesidades y sus botas,
pero tú le sigues de bien cerca.
Tú no eres la cosa que me ama menos en el mundo
y que puede herirme, avergonzarme, humillarme.
Voy a morir….Existe la muerte.
Pero tú le sigues de bien cerca.
[img]https://100tpc.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/MANUELMONTILLA-ARTE-NYADE5.jpg[/img]
David Madgalene
Academy of the Undead
You who raise yourself up as professor
You who proclaim yourself harbinger
You who cast out the messenger
Your victim assumes the role of perpetrator
Joins you now to feast upon the blood
Of our next generation…
You who have taught him so well.
There’s not a one among us who
Can afford your fees, teacher.
You who preach nonviolence
(Making allowance for women and children)
You who sought to emasculate the God
And claim for yourself the Goddess
Inviting us to serve as Chorus
As you mock your own irreverence
Your own irrelevance.
You who sold Euterpe into bondage
You who pontificate before no audience
Save yourselves and your minions
You who ignore the fire, the flood,
The earthquake, the plague, the war…
Since nothing exists and therefore
Nothing matters except for your own
Solipistic narcissisms, or so you say,
You skeletal clown!
Your reformers are corrupted!
Your champions mercenary!
Your avant-garde now cowers
In the benighted rear of graveyards
Run amok with grave robbers
And body snatchers!
Jackals and vultures are your legacy
Amid your desolated ruins haunted
By the scandal of your humiliation
Having fed upon your own heart
In your all-devouring rapacity,
You self-immolating Vandal!
You who have forsaken hope
Of renaissance having
Sucked your acolytes dry,
Leaving us bloodless to
Proclaim your bloodless creed.
You who desecrated Apollo
In the name of Pan
And desecrate Pan
In the name of Orpheus
And desecrate Orpheus
In the name of the Muses
And desecrate the Muses
In the name of Sappho…
You who thought you’d control
The coterie
You who debase your effendis
Into a menagerie
Your triumph is a theft
You who were never more than pretenders
You who drink from a poisoned well
And feast upon carrion and offal
Like the scavengers who you are.
Our gods and demigods are dead
For you have killed them
And yet in their absence
You have erected nothing.
You who dishonored your forefathers for blood money
You who are hypocrites demanding tribute
From your own descendents
Despised by all save yourselves
Our contempt is no badge of honor.
You who have disinherited your children
It is you who covet their spoil.
You who gave preferment to your lapdogs
And sinecures to your toadies
As you die you who grasp
For more fame, gold and glory
You who spat upon your lineage
With your diseased effluence
Better oblivion for you
than that you’d remain
Remembered forevermore for your
Indecorous and inglorious infamies!
You who entombed your lovers alive
As you sucked the living marrow from their bones
You who closed your gates to the true bard
Fearful less he tell your story.
On poetry.
Poetry is the purest form of art.
Poetry alone gives the beholder an ability
To find the exactness of a place
In the artist’s heart.
SALUTATIONS AND PROSTRATIONS
Glossary of Names
Shakpana-Destructive God of Dahomey (Duh-how-may) Mythology
Abbadon—Hebrew Archangel of Armageddon
Nenaunir—African God of Storms
Shigidi—A Yoruba deified nightmare
A black wind desaturates our once-
colorful land. Now our homeland quakes
in gray and white images.
Soldiers again,
missiles again.
Black blood flows over our sickened land.
You can hear the rush and tink of it
in your ears. See it at the back of your eyes.
President Shakpana—Pox Bringer –
give us back our children!
Secretary of Defense Abbadon—Angel of Hell,–
give us back our husbands and lovers and wives!
Secretary of State Nanaunir—Rainbow Snake—
give us back our mouths to say against you!
Attorney General Of Justice, Shigidi—God of Hate,
master Torturer—
give us back our animal radiance.
A black wind whips our skirts, hair, scarves, trees.
We parody smiling at you from
our noir deserts. We don’t have the courage
to be unruly.
How can we overcome
what we are not permitted to see?
Touch me, hear me, world on fire,
world drowning, world with windows closed.
Turn up the damn radio and send
this out—this fucking rage, this fucking
lack of respect, this fucking—our just fucking.
Eshu, do not undo me,
Do not falsify the words of my mouth
Do not misguide the movements of my feet.
You who translate yesterday’s words
Into novel utterances,
Do not undo me.*
A black wind desaturates our once-
colorful land. Now our homeland quakes
in gray and white images. How to valorize this…
Now we are all third world—everyone born common
is third world—and this spiritual blackmail
Makes it late afternoon no matter what time
Of day it is.
* a Yoruba prayer
UNTIL DARK
for Saul Landau
I see through the open window, the trees are trying to avoid the gray sky.
To their embarrassment, there’s no getting away from it.
Those trees are in it until dark when everything will relax.
Until then, they must whisper to each other
as conspirators will do from separate phone booths.
My friend weeps at night. It is the way he relaxes in the dark—crying over the lost revolutions and the lost soldiers and the lost farmers and the lost families.
My friend has declared an allegiance to humanity that upsets the governments—present and past. He is apt to vomit at hearing too much foolishness.
His anger is hypnotic, but he waits for dark to weep. Who has been dragged off to prison, he wonders; who has been beaten until dead; how many junkies can dance on the head of a needle?
He knows that everything built in the desert soon becomes sand—another reason he weeps.
Blessed are those who give away kind words. Blessed are those who do not take academia seriously.
Blessed are those who know that Hitler and Nixon and Al Fatah live in the bathrooms of their neighbors’ houses (and they still hold back their tears until dark).
Cry for the CIA,
cry for the prisoners,
cry for the DEA and the police—secret and public,
cry for the gang lords and children of the gang lords,
cry for Korea and Vietnam and Iraq and Palestine and Chile.
Cry because Castro is getting old,
because buying has replaced learning,
because the last drink and the bar’s closing is so fucking final.
Blessed are you, friend, writing letters to those who have forgotten how to read, pleading for Nirvana to find the young and for Transcendence to embrace the old.
In a dream, I saw you slog through Chiapas to get to Xbalba, then returned and wept.
The sky is gray and tired. It recognizes you, understands that, whether it offers ink or water, you will swallow the world.