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The BeZine, Vol. 7, Issue 1, March 2020, Waging Peace

“. . . I don’t understand why our propaganda machines are always trying to teach us, to persuade us, to hate and fear other people in the same little world that we live in.” Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire

My Aunt Julie once said that it is easier to love than hate. She was a good woman, a diamond in the rough and I believe her. I believe it takes less energy to love (respect) others than it does to hate them and that honest appreciation of differences is actually our own best protection: today the hate is directed at “those people” and tomorrow it is directed at me and you. This is the way the world turns in the hands of the spin-meisters. They love nothing so much as pitting us against one another for their own gain and it is ALWAYS for their gain, not ours, make no mistake.

The BeZine is devoted to featuring the commonalities within the diversities. Our contributors and our core team of writers, artists, photographers, activists, philosophers and clerics represent a wealth of countries, cultures, religions, and first languages. We may not agree on the exact path or paths to peace but we agree that violence and hate are not the ways.  We see no reason to be threatened because someone speaks another language, enjoys a different cuisine, celebrates different holy days, dresses differently, or is seeking safe haven in our countries. We have no desire to further victimize the victims. Our hearts are open to civil discourse and our hands ready to embrace and support. I am not writing this from a position of moral superiority but from a practical position of self-concern and regard. There are profound lessons in the trauma of the 2020 pandemic. It highlights just how unified we are in our vulnerabilities and how we are only as strong as the weakest among us. This crisis also points to the fundamental amorality of many among our politicians, governments, and businesses, lest here-to-fore you’ve been inclined not to judge.

Δ

In February 2011, I started this site and we now celebrate nine years of contributing to the Peace in our small but earnest way. The BeZine is possible thanks to the support of our core team and our contributors and readers, now approaching 7,000.

Beginning on April 1, 2020, American-Israeli poet, Michael Dickel (Meta/ Phor(e) /Play), will move from the position of contributing editor to co-managing editor with me. I am pleased and appreciate Michael’s prodigious talent, support, enthusiasm, and many contributions to the success of this effort.

We are opening the Zine blog to poetry for the entire month of April, officially Poetry Month. Womawords Literary Press, the heart-child of Zimbabwean poet in exhile, Mbizo Chirasha (Mbizo, The Black Poet), is the sponsor. Watch our Calls for Submission on The Poet by Day and The BeZine for details and our new submission email address. While we cannot compensate contributors, neither do we charge submission or subscription fees. This is labor of love.

We continue in 2020 with our quarterly publications:

  • June 15, SustainABILITY;
  • September 15, Social Justice; and
  • December 15, A Life of the Spirit.

As is our tradition, on the fourth Saturday of September we will host Virtual 100,000 Poets (and friends) for Change (100TPC) with Michael Dickel as master of ceremonies. As the year continues to unfold, we may host other events or special issues. Meanwhile, please enjoy this edition of The BeZine and don’t forget to share links on social media and to like and comment in support of our valued contributors.

In the spirit of love (respect) and community
and on behalf of The Bardo Group Beguines,
Jamie Dedes
Founding and Managing Editor

Table of Contents

To read this edition of The BeZine, link HERE to scroll through or click on the links below to view individual contributions.

BeATTITUDES

Elusive Peace, Tamam Tracy Moncur
A Palace of Bird Beaks, Naomi Baltuck
Strange Fire, Michael Dickel

“I wasn’t born for an age like this.” George Orwell

A Little Poem, George Orwell
Translations, Mbizo Chirasha

FLASH FICTION

“Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth.”  Albert Camus

1919 – A Story of Peacetime, Joe Hesch

WRITING PEACE

“Poetry. It’s better than war!” Michael Rothenberg, cofounder of 100TPC

To Write A Peace Poem, Michael Dickel

POETRY

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.” Martin Luther King Jr., A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches

Together, J J Aitken
No More Numbing, J J Aitken

Big Mama Is Dancing on the Purple Tide, Mendes Biondo

Wars Whirling, Worsening World, Anjum Wasim Dar
Make a Vow, Remember, Anjum Wasim Dar
Hope and Wishes, Anjum Wasim Dar

Paper Boat, Judy DeCroce
This is not Paradise nor a Place to be Lost, Judy DeCroce
Before, Judy DeCroce

through the ache of time, Jamie Dedes
pulsing peace, Jamie Dedes
At a Peace Reading, Jamie Dedes

Another Protest Song, Michael Dickel

Drear, Anita East

Bizarre, Mike Gallagher

Search, Kakali Das Ghosh

Reprieve, Robert Gluck

the full moon’s light, Ed Higgins
refugees, Ed Higgins
Epistemology, Ed Higgins

Good Vibrations, Linda Imbler

By what right?, Magdalena Juskiewicz

The Path of Empathy, Antonia Alexandra Klimenko
Out of Sight, Antonia Alexandra Klimenko

Waging Peace, Charles W. Martin

Let Peace Be the Journey, Neelam Shah

Global Forest, Ankh Spice

“When I say it’s you I like, I’m talking about that part of you that knows that life is far more than anything you can ever see or hear or touch. That deep part of you that allows you to stand for those things without which humankind cannot survive. Love that conquers hate, peace that rises triumphant over war, and justice that proves more powerful than greed.”  Fred Rogers

 

The BeZine: Be Inspired, Be Creative, Be Peace, Be 

Daily Spiritual Practice: Beguine Again, a community of Like-Minded People

Facebook

Twitter, The Bardo Group Beguines

SUBMISSIONS:

Read Info/Mission Statement, Submission Guidelines, and at least one issue before you submit. Updates on Calls for Submissions and other activities are posted on the Zine blog and The Poet by Day.

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Another Jumping Off Point for This Week’s Prompt: Threat to Arrest Those Who Spread Disinformation About Coronavirus

“There is nothing so patient, in this world or any other, as a virus searching for a host.” Mira Grant, Countdown

Whatever your view, this news will perhaps give another jumping off point for those participating in this week’s Writing Prompt. You still have time to respond.  It doesn’t close until Monday.

This past Tuesday, the public safety director of Newark, New Jersey warned that people who spread disinformation about the coronavirus could be criminally prosecuted. PEN America’s Nora Benavidez, director of U.S. free expression programs, issued the following statement:

“Advising people to take care in sharing reliable and fact-based information about coronavirus makes good sense. Threatening criminal prosecution for spreading misinformation in a time of great confusion, on the other hand, is both wrongheaded and likely unconstitutional. Local leaders must prioritize protecting public health and providing credible information, but they can do that without threatening to tread on the public’s rights.”

This post is courtesy of Twitter, Newark NJ, and PEN America.

PEN America stands at the intersection of literature and human rights to protect open expression in the United States and worldwide. It champions the freedom to write, recognizing the power of the word to transform the world. Its mission is to unite writers and their allies to celebrate creative expression and defend the liberties that make it possible.

Jamie Dedes:

Your donation HERE helps to fund the ongoing mission of The Poet by Day in support of poets and writers, freedom of artistic expression, and human rights.

Poetry rocks the world!

FEEL THE BERN

For Peace, Sustainability, Social Justice

The Poet by Day officially endorses Bernie Sanders for President.

The New New Deal

Link HERE for Bernie’s schedule of events around the country.

“Democracy is not a spectator sport.” Bernie Sanders

“Every pair of eyes facing you has probably experienced something you could not endure.”  Lucille Clifton

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At the Beginning of a Pandemic* … your next Wednesday Writing Prompt, hosted this week by Michael Dickel

Lymphoma Meditation-1 ©2019 Michael Dickel

“…the ailing body points to culture, pain points to philosophy, language points to consciousness, and all point to what is still to be learned about our fragility, our mortality, and how to live a meaningful life.” Ann Jurecic, Illness as Narrative (Composition, Literacy, and Culture), p. 131

Unnameable

Large B-cell lymphoma with T cell-rich…
Damn, how do I slip that mouthful in.
To my life. My thought. This poem?

The tumor breached my spine, pressed
its attack onto nerves. A tactic to cut
communication channels. Painful alarum.

Yet here we arrive. The first day of Spring—
Shushan Purim. We walk in Jerusalem’s
Botanical Garden. The first chemical attack

on the tumor, the lymphoma, my body—
this day—dispensation given to fight back
against this pogrom in my very bones.

The red anemones, pink cyclamen,
something purple I cannot name,
shine with indifference to the wars

within my body and surrounding us.

Here we met a friend, just declared
cancer-free. Here we quietly held hands.

Here I felt something I cannot name.

—Michael Dickel

Winston Churchill in Uniform

“The boy, who as a man would later go on to lead the nation in WWII, was obviously affected by the pandemic known then as the Russian Flu in 1890.” B. H. Fraser, Poetry and the Flu, City Poems

COVID-19, the novel coronavirus (another mouthful) occupying our media and minds, spreads toward pandemic. Our responses, as societies and cultures across the globe, likely reveal much about us, as humans. If “the ailing body points to culture,” as Jurecic writes, what do thousands—or millions—of ailing bodies point toward?

Winston Churchill, as a teenager, wrote about the late 19th Century Russian Flu:

The Influenza, 1890

Oh how shall I its deeds recount
Or measure the untold amount
Of ills that it has done?
From China’s bright celestial land
E’en to Arabia’s thirsty sand
It journeyed with the sun.…

And now Europa groans aloud,
And ‘neath the heavy thunder-cloud
Hushed is both song and dance;
The germs of illness wend their way
To westward each succeeding day…

—Winston Churchill (age 15) Excerpts: Stanzas 1 and 7 of 12, emphasis added. Full poem

The poem ends with with very imperialistic overtones extolling Britain, especially in the last stanza:

God shield our Empire from the might
Of war or famine, plague or blight
And all the power of Hell,
And keep it ever in the hands
Of those who fought ‘gainst other lands,
Who fought and conquered well.

This could indeed voice the culture of late 19th C. Great Britain, couldn’t it?

Patients from the Influenza Pandemic of 1918–1919

The Influenza Pandemic of 1918–1919 killed more than three times as many people as the World War that preceded it (US National Archives). Yet not much was written about it. Here are extracts from two poems reprinted in a medical journal special issue on influenza, one from 1918, in the midst of the pandemic, and one from a century later:

The Influenza

Influenza, labeled Spanish,
came and beat me to my knees;
even doctors couldn’t banish
from my form that punk disease;
for it’s not among the quitters;
vainly doctors pour their bitters
into ailing human critters;
they just sneeze and swear and sneeze.

Said my doctor, “I have tackled
every sort of ill there is
(I have cured up people shackled
by the gout and rheumatiz);
with the itch and mumps I’ve battled,
in my triumphs have been tattled,
but this ‘flu’ stuff has me rattled,
so I pause to say G. Whiz.”

I am burning, I am freezing,
in my little truckle bed;
I am cussing, I am sneezing,
with a poultice on my head;
and the doctors and the nurses
say the patient growing worse is,
and they hint’ around of hearses,
and of folks who should be dead.…

—Walt May (1918)

The 1918 Spanish Flu Pandemic

…It affected the lungs and caused their skin to turn blue
Comfort was given it was all they could do
In effect it caused people to suffocate
And it continued to spread at an alarming rate.

People kept away from large crowds and were told to wear masks
And they struggled to perform their daily tasks
Remote areas in the world were affected too
By this airborne killer virus, the great Spanish flu.

Efforts were made to slow down this disease
But slowly and surely was bringing the world to its knees
Shops opening times were staggered all over the lands
And people were encouraged not to shake hands.…

They closed many schools, services were hit too
With workers struck down by this merciless flu…

—Tom Cunningham (2018)

Both poems from: “Tres Poemas Sobre la Pandemia de Gripe de 1918.” Virología: Publicación Oficial de la Sociedad Española de Virología, 21:1 pp.68–72 (PDF of the journal, with full versions of these poems and another) Note: Walt May, a humorist / poet, wrote for newspapers, with his poems formatted as prose in newspaper columns. I have taken the liberty to adjust the line breaks from the source article.

Do these examples point to differences in culture over that century? What would our own poems point to, written now, at the beginning of a potential pandemic?

Jurecic points out that “despite the [1918–1919] flu’s ferocity, for much of the twentieth century this pandemic nearly vanished from popular consciousness.…the pandemic is virtually absent from American and British literature of its era” (p.1). After citing a few literary examples that do exist from the 1918 influenza pandemic in narrative prose literature (so not the 1918 poem above), Jurecic asks this: “How to bring the pandemic and the narrative form together? It is as if the project were unimaginable in the early twentieth century” (p. 1). Is it imaginable in ours?

“In stark contrast”, she points out, much has been written about HIV / AIDS (once we acknowledged it): “Journalists, playwrights, novelists, poets, memoirists, and diarists joined artists from other media in an effort to document the [AIDS] pandemic, create memorial art, and make meaning of suffering and loss on scales ranging from individual to global” (Jurecic 1–2). She gives many reasons for this, but this is a writing prompt, so…

WEDNESDAY WRITING PROMPT

* Editor’s Note: Twelve hours after this post went up, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the virus crisis a pandemic.  Link HERE. for details. 

This prompt emerges from musing about Jurecic’s questions and the quote at the top of the page: How to bring illness (personal or pandemic) of the ailing body, pain, and language to point to culture, philosophy, and consciousness in poetry that also points “…to what is still to be learned about our fragility, our mortality, and how to live a meaningful life”? Especially at this cultural-historical moment of an emerging pandemic?

Start your writing, from the midst of this emerging COVID-19 pandemic.

Write what is unnameable.

Good health to you.

—Michael Dickel
Lecturer, David Yellin
Contributing Editor of The BeZine

 Share your poem/s and …

  • please submit your poem/s by pasting them into the comments section and not by sharing a link
  • please submit poems only, no photos, illustrations, essays, stories, or other prose

PLEASE NOTE:

Poems submitted through email or Facebook will not be published.

Deadline:  Monday, March by 16 pm Pacific Time. If you are unsure when that would be in your time zone, check The Time Zone Converter.

Anyone may take part Wednesday Writing Prompt, no matter the status of your career: novice, emerging or pro.  It’s about exercising the poetic muscle, showcasing your work, and getting to know other poets who might be new to you.

You are welcome – encouraged – to share your poems in a language other than English but please accompany it with a translation into English.

Source: Wikimedia Commons Public Domain

Postscript

“By the flash-light of her fevered vision, Plath leads us into an apocalyptic wasteland. Then, like a hypnotist, she brings us back from it…She [becomes] the master of her feverish animal, all-powerful and entirely autonomous, self-made, and self-regenerating…”

—Kary Wayson, The incinerating vision of this Plath classic. Poem Guide, The Poetry Foundation

An extract from the Sylvia Plath poem Wayson analyzes, to serve as further inspiration:

Fever 103°

Pure? What does it mean?
The tongues of hell
Are dull, dull as the triple

Tongues of dull, fat Cerberus
Who wheezes at the gate. Incapable
Of licking clean

The aguey tendon, the sin, the sin.
The tinder cries.
The indelible smell

Of a snuffed candle!
Love, love, the low smokes roll
From me like Isadora’s scarves, I’m in a fright

One scarf will catch and anchor in the wheel,
Such yellow sullen smokes
Make their own element. They will not rise,

But trundle round the globe
Choking the aged and the meek,
The weak…

—Sylvia Plath ©1993 Ted Hughes used under fair-use provisions
Full poem for fuller inspiration.

Further readings…

  • Dickinson, Emily. “Pain—has an Element of Blank.” The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. Ed. Thomas H. Johnson. Boston: Little Brown, 1960. 323–24.
  • Fadiman, Anne. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Cultures. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997.
  • Jurecic, Ann. Illness as Narrative (Composition, Literacy, and Culture). Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh Pr, 2012.
    Lorde, Audre. The Cancer Journals. 2nd ed. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1980.
  • McKim, A. Elizabeth. “Making Poetry of Pain: The Headache Poems of Jane Cave Winscom.” Literature and Medicine. 24.1 (2005): 93–108.
  • Oates, Joyce Carol. “Confronting Head-On the Face of the Afflicted.” New York Times. 19 Feb. 1995. 3 Nov. 2008
  • Sontag, Susan. Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors. New York: Anchor/ Doubleday, 1978, 1988.
  • Sontag, Susan. Regarding the Pain of Others. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003.
  • U.S. National Archives. “The Deadly Virus: The Influenza of 1918–1919.” Web Page.

MICHAEL DICKEL (Meta /Phor (e) /Play) has won international awards and been translated into several languages. His latest poetry collection, Nothing Remembers (Finishing Line Press, 2019). A poetry chapbook, Breakfast at the End of Capitalism, came out in 2017 (free PDF ). His flash fiction collection, The Palm Reading after The Toad’s Garden, came out in 2016. Previous books include: War Surrounds Us, Midwest / Mid-East, and The World Behind It, Chaos…(archived free PDF ). He co-edited Voices Israel Volume 36, was managing editor for arc-23 and 24, and is a past-chair of the Israel Association of Writers in English. He publishes and edits Meta/ Phor(e) /Play and is a contributing editor of The BeZine. He grew up in the US Midwest and now lives in Jerusalem, Israel.

Jamie Dedes:

Your donation HERE helps to fund the ongoing mission of The Poet by Day in support of poets and writers, freedom of artistic expression, and human rights.

Poetry rocks the world!

FEEL THE BERN

For Peace, Sustainability, Social Justice

The Poet by Day officially endorses Bernie Sanders for President.

The New New Deal

Link HERE for Bernie’s schedule of events around the country.

“Democracy is not a spectator sport.” Bernie Sanders

“Every pair of eyes facing you has probably experienced something you could not endure.”  Lucille Clifton

Posted on

Warlord . . . and other poems in response to the last Wednesday Writing Prompt

Courtesy of Sunyum, Unsplash

“Preventing war is much better than protesting against the war. Protesting the war is too late.” Thich Nhat Hanh, Being Peace

Nine poems this Tuesday in response to the last Wednesday Writing Prompt, pulsing peace, March 4, which encouraged poets to write about abstaining from war and conflict while committing to compromise and to unity with and respect for nature into perpetuity. There is great depth of feeling here in the distain for the ruthless insanity war and the love of an abiding and sensible peace, a peace in which we all must collaboratively invest if it is to happen.

This week we warmly welcome Adrian Slonaker, new to these pages. This collection also includes the works of poets Paul Brookes, Anjum Wasim Dar, Irma Do, Sonja Benskin Mesher, Nancy Ndeke, and Jane SpokenWord.

Join us tomorrow for the next Wednesday Writing Prompt.  Michael Dickel (Meta/ Poor(3) /Play) is guest host this week.  All are welcome to come out and play: beginning, emerging, and pro poets.

Warlord

loves to be entertained.
After a battle where skulls are blown apart
he loves to sit and laugh at Anthem For Doomed Youth.

After a skirmish in which men are screaming
With half a leg or arm bone shattered
By shrapnel, he guffaws at Dulce Decorum Est.

The more graphic, the more comic to him.
He says if you don’t laugh you’ll cry.
Laughter is healthy. Laughter is human.

Laughter affirms life, essential before
a fight amidst bullets, stabs and snipers.

“Oh What A Lovely War”, is his favourite film.
“All Quiet On The Western Front” a comic classic.

He knows we laugh at what we fear most.
War is like great stand up when you can barely

Breathe for laughter, your sides hurt
as if they need stiches. War is medicinal.

From port of souls (Alien Buddha Press, 2018)

© 2020, Paul Brookes

We Live
in a fake peace between world wars,
shop and shop to stay reasonable.

Families are killed elsewhere.
We see their relatives tears on plasma screens.

Sometimes tears drop closer to home,
and we are reminded of our fake comfort,

that is preferable, a faux fur covered blade
sometimes bleeds and we are keen.

© 2020, Paul Brookes

  • Paul’s Amazon Page U.S. HERE
  • Paul’s Amazon Page U.K. HERE

More poems by Paul at Michael Dickel’s Meta/ Phore(e) /Play

Come let us be, then in ….those

Warm sunny carefree mornings,
lazing on the mat , building castles in the air, as
soft gurgles of transparent streams make music
in the spheres, ripples of surging receding waves
play as Beethoven’s overture’s pauses, interlude’s
quietude engulfs the skies, being one with the golden
horizon where love reigns supreme-

Come let us waltz to Johann Strauss melodies,

And hold tender souls, breathe in pure peace, let the ocean
breeze caress the spirit for moments uncounted, evenings
may chase the nights, twinkles may keep bright the nights
emerging into holy day breaks, then in gratitude we bow to
find the gift of life, no more fear, no more strife, just poems
of love and tranquility, sweet soothing notes of flutes and pipes
and murmuring bleats of lambs innocent.

Come let us walk in forests safe, no Robin Hoods to play,

And sit with the squirrels, sing with the twittering birds, eat the
raw berries and lie on pine needles dry, let the animals freely roam,
the monkeys swing from branch to branch, flowers wild bloom around,
rest in shades and against the trunks as they brace the furious storms,
firmly rooted , no fear, no cuts, no brutal sawing of the elegant pines
no habitats destroyed, no homeless to die, no clearing no fines. Growing
on for invisible insects, purity and equality.

Come let us give up, then ………..for perpetual peace

Give up anger give up greed, give up deception and be free
give up hatred give up fights, give up conflicts give up wars
abstain from frowns to start wearing smiles, stop all conflicts for
miles and miles, give up force and corrupt power, and take up
tenderness as soft as butterflies, give up the guns and weapons and
work and sing with the bees, let us make life as sweet as honey and give
up once and for all the lust for money.

Come this is the time , let us then pray

May peace be high in perpetuity, the world may become,
as gentle as a butterfly
Amen.

© 2020, Anjum Wasim Dar

Envisioning Peace on Earth

Ages ago right guidance was ordained
can we revert to the simple times again?

The Earth is alive below, beneath
shaking disturbed cracking, still-
yet in revolution,moaning,
rumbling protesting, death sprawling

O’ pale moon, bear witness
O’ sometimes silent sometimes chirping birds
take notes to the skies, fly, as nature holds the
wings-from darkness to dawn.

Speak not of the blood
that flows like rivers from wounds
that oozes from cruel cuts by sticks and pellets
that drops from splinters showered by blasts
that is visible on clothes tattered and shrouds

O’ Moon
see the other side and send
a sign of peace
a bird of song
a light of love
a tree of enlightenment

Find, find a harbinger of truth
justice and salvation.
The Earth is alive below, yearning,
to heal -hoping, anticipating,

II

The decision is made, now
let us pause and reflect,withdraw
into a state of tranquility and calm
think about right and wrong

withdraw into simplicity like
the desert plain and warm
think of joy love and peace
comfort sympathy and not harm

of trees plants fresh and green
of buds flowers bright and colorful
of streams and rivers pure and clean
of seas oceans calm and serene.

so we all abstain from abuse
hatred jealousy and refuse
hasty greed and grabbing spree
and being content, with all agree

Hope be our constant company
one fine day, peace will dawn
all shall live in harmony
a dream it is, a vision new

together we all, can make it come true.

© 2020, Anjum Wasim Dar

Anjum-ji’s sites are:

“POETRY PEACE and REFORM Go Together -Let Us All Strive for PEACE on EARTH for ALL -Let Us Make a Better World -WRITE To Make PEACE PREVAIL.” Anjum Wasim Dar

The Path

The straight and narrow path calls to me
Stay strong, be brave, keep eyes ahead
Gluttonous green surrounds me
Lusciously tempting me
It can be all mine
Lumber, water
Resources
I will
Take

And
Share them
The path says
You have enough
Abstain from conflict
Caused by fear, greed, hurt, hate
Bridge ignorance with knowledge
Each slat a step to love and peace
Generosity widens the path

© 2020, Irma Do

Irma’ site is: I Do Run, And I do a few other things too …

.resistance to war.

:: this is a new story ::

where.

where does collaboration work? here.

with you, you, you and you, i have named you

before.

with tags and capitals, links and other stable

placings.

i was only stitching. a steady hand. it was an offer,

happily accepted.

i was only drawing. so we drew together. here

& another place.

i was only writing a, yet there are many of

us who came together.

we are alone, until we start working

together.

it comes a wider space, with mistakes and misgivings.

nothing in this world is perfect. it is raining today. the

washing is out.

neighbours help.

writers help, drawers

line our walls with

notes & labels. a few

of us

work together.

and do not fight.

© 2020, Sonja Benskin Mesher

Sonja’s sites are:

REACH FOR THAT CHILD, S/HE IS THE EMBODIMENT OF LOVE AND PURITY.

In us all, big, small and distance,
Is a child,
Regailing in the wonders of Nature,
Driven by appreciation of a stranger,
He watches the canterpillar, and Marvel’s at a blade of grass,
His play is pure, devoid of gender, even of color,
Humanity is one,
Divisions are selfishness driven by greed,
Our needs tell our oneness,
Not the relics of your worship,
Our pains inform our feelings,
Not boundaries and nationalitys,
Aren’t we all of a mystical source,
A river of interconnected beads,
Aren’t we dust, coming and going back?
We build monuments,
That stand in the way of truth,
Empasis being a stumbling block,
Lenses to discount and disclaim another,
We build economies,
That draw blood to stay afloat,
Trust has been eroded with the force of ideology,
History has been faked,
To mis- teach and misdirect our thoughts,
Away from the sameness of life,
Into the fabled divides that keeps us condemning,
O sons of men !
Why won’t we remember our days of childhood,
The bliss of spontaneous songs with fellow creatures,
When worship was praise of good will like kindergarten kids,
See how we build walls ,
Not to keep disease and wild life away,
But anyone deemed other by our spitting egos,
See how armed we are,
Not against alien invasion,
Or castrophes of nature,
But against fellow men,
From references of false teachings,
That has us,
Screaming obsecinities at who we are directed to hate,
We watch beasts marching in herds in the forests,
Fish swimming in choreograpged schools in the oceans,
As for bees, they work in uniform and focused synchrony,
Yet, US,
With capacity to think and make decisions,
Ours is a house so divided we are lost at home,
Wonder of wonders our humble beginnings are no secret,
Neither our sad ends,
We are for sure the danger that harms the innocent,
Yet , we do so with minimal remorse,
And maximum force under guise of ‘self protection’
Who is self if not fellow flesh,
Who is the other if not a mirror of your own,
We are at that time of year,
When over a billion hearts deny themselves to reach out to the sky,
Traditions of Faith’s talks of self denial to reach out to the light,
But pray tell,
Is the light we seek not within us and other?
Within each creature is the universe complete,
And for it to enjoy this space that life came to experience for a while,
Peace is Paramount,
And love of other is the foundation of good will,
Without which, our deeds come short,
Awake O men of flesh and dust to your moral campus,
Seek within the true nature of why our earth is in such agony,
Stand tall with the message of wholeness,
For wholeness is the path that allows life to thrive,
Not surviving from one calamity to the next,
A fact of the world we are currently living on.
Stand and be counted as an ambassador of Peace.
Reclaim who you were before misdeeds came to rule your concious.

© 2020, Nancy Ndeke.

Nancy’s Amazon Page is HERE.

March Respite

On the way from
winter’s weather delays and icy
lashings to the exuberance of
excursions into splashes of
spring sunshine,
let us pause and ponder
and sacrifice the coveted asset of
busyness embraced by those who
clutter and choke their calendars with commitments
because idleness is undesirable and
“rest” really is a four-letter word. Let us
resist the temptation to burden and bully our
beautiful existence with over-toil and instead be still and
gaze at grackles hopping over grass drenched
by dew and chipmunks flashing their chubby cheeks
while honoring the early-bird boldness of crocuses
chasing away snow and the curling blossoms of
blue hyacinths mimicking Marge Simpson’s beehive hairdo.
Let us smile as sincerely and as gently at others partaking in
this pursuit of
peace and paz and salaam and shalom and shaanti and mir as
at our rushed brothers and sisters who are
abstaining as we strive to listen to the longings and
needs of our planet and of each other.

© 2020, Adrian Slonaker

I am cosmic
magnetic energy
hallucinating alternate dimensions
mask unveiled
I am in sympathetic vibration with the multiversal force
bridging time and space
creatively contemplated
coding time and consciousness
attempting to measure moments
waiting for resurrection
fusing conformity and dissention
through elevation
I am breathing in the cosmos
creationing and becoming
transform into music
feeling blue
’round midnight
I dance

© 2020, Jane SpokenWord

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