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THE EVOLUTION Shall Be Written in Poetry

Face the Monster

When we marched,
Slithered
Through slimy mud past riot-shielded cops in Alexander
(This is the ghetto.)
While children peered wild-eyed from dark windows,
For some of us these were re-runs of earlier apartheid-burdened days.
But, then, it was defiant resolution that drove our hearts and braced our feet.
Now, sadness at betrayal sat sadly on our hearts.
Our shouted slogans hung heavy over us in grimy air.
We winced at familiar oft-repeated lies
Oft-repeated lies.

Dennis Brutus, South African Poet/Activist (1924 – 2009), in Leafdrift

There are people for whom poetry exists almost exclusively as an aid to social change, to political discourse– not as some sort of didacticism – but as a discussion, a wake up call (consciousness raising), a way of approaching some truth, finding some meaning, encouraging resolution. A horrific war photo, a terrorist act, a homeless person outside the grocery, a friend in pain that can be traced to a social injustice, and the words start to flow. There’s the urge to respond, to do something …. even if that something is simply the passion to express the moment in poetry. Perhaps righteous passion is the strongest form of resistance and poetry the conscience of the collective soul.

In Dennis Brutus’ poem above, he points to the world we now live in. Having survived Robben Island with Nelson Mandela, he was freed only to find that while racial apartheid ended in South Africa it had become world-pervasive,, expressing itself as economic inequality. The few haves vs. the masses of have-nots.

I can’t help but think that the revolutionary peace, justice and sustainability so many of us seek is rooted in the slow transformation of values. Hence, it is more evolutionary than revolutionary. As such, perhaps that change is as gradual as the pervasiveness of our desires.

Perhaps it is evident in our blogosphere and the heart-born prose and poems of simple folk like you and me with nary a pundit or politician among us. Perhaps it’s a bottom-up thing, more likely to be blogged than broadcast, often rising from homespun poetry – outsider art – sometimes rudimentary and awkward, but always quiet and true and slow like a secret whispered from one person to the next. It is perhaps something stewing even as we write, read, and encourage one another. Perhaps there is some bone and muscle in what we do. Individually we have miniscule “audiences.” Collectively we speak to enormous and geographically diverse populations.

So let some impact from my words echo resonance
lend impulse to the bright looming dawn

Dennis Brutus

Poem on, my friends, and keep your ideals.  They are real …

… and to my country-folk today …

Happy Fourth of July!

In the confusion of these days, let’s not abandon the highest, most ethical and sensible of our aspirations.

© 2016, Jamie Dedes, All rights reserved; illustration courtesy of Frits Ahlefeldt, Public Domain Pictures.net.

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the seeds of awakening, a poem

rebbleoh! simple the beginnings,
the apple of amazement,
the core of an idea, and
out slips the memories,
the injustices on which
the child-mind puzzled,
processing in adolescence,
then big girl, grown woman,
chasten the world, plant
the seeds of awakening

courage in slender frame, high
thoughts in rounded forehead,
the long expressive hands,
the sweeping circumstances,
Africa, Arabia, Europe, U.S.,
first the suffering and tears,
then the work, work, work ~
courage in the face of tyranny,
voices of the voiceless: the Justias!
the Prudentias! of our modern day

© 2016, poem and illustration, Jamie Dedes, All rights reserved

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A Chance for Peace …

DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER (1890-1969)

34TH PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

In office 1953 -1961

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed … “ Dwight D. Eisenhower

Note: I wrote this piece on December 13, 2011 after I learned of the first 100,000 Poets for Change. Seemed appropriate to pull it out, dust it off and share it once again since our theme for this year is “poverty.” 

The quote above is from Eisenhower’s speech, A Chance for Peace, delivered in 1953 three months after he took office and on the occasion of the death of Joseph Stalin, Premier of the Soviet Union (1941 to 1953). The “just peace” that the world hoped for in 1945 at the end of World War II had not materialized. While the Korean War was coming to a close, the Cold War-era military conflicts in Indochina (Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia) were slowly escalating. The United States would have advisory troops in Vietnam in 1954. The armed conflict in that region of the world would continue long past Eisenhower’s administration with U.S. involvement escalating in the 1960s and continuing until the Fall of Saigon in 1975.

Since the end of the Second World War and the Korean War, violent conflict continues unabated with thirteen wars (defined as 1,000 or more deaths per year) currently, including the War in Afghanistan and the Yemeni and Syrian uprisings of 2011. Smaller scale conflicts resulting in fewer than 1,000 deaths per year have been rife and in 2011 include the Sudan-SPLM-N conflict, the Yemeni al-Qaeda crackdown, and the 2011 clashes in Southern Sudan. (And now in 2015, we have to add among the world’s many current conflicts the war in Syria, which is displacing more people than any war since WWII. According to an recent and comprehensive article, How Syrians Are Dying (worth your attention) in The New York Times, 200,000 have been killed over the past four-and-a-half years.)

Genocides didn’t end either. We’ve had eight genocides since the Holocaust of WWII, including that which is ongoing in Palestine. The number of rebel groups is now over one-hundred, which probably errs on the light side. Conflicts rise from economic and social instability and what amounts to vigilante “justice,” most of which could be addressed if our governments invested in butter, not guns; if they included rather than marginalized; if they listened and responded rather than disenfranchised.

Even in 1953, Eisenhower pointed out that war isn’t sustainable:

This world in arms is not spending money alone.

It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.

The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities.

It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals.

It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement.

We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat.

We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.

If governments don’t recognize that Earth and her people cannot be sustained by war, many of their citizens do. One modern peaceful protest for a sustainable world is of interest to all of us who read, write, and love both poetry and peace. It is 100 Thousand Poets for Change, which held its first world-wide rally on September 24, 2011 with 700 events in 550 cities representing 95 participating countries united to support peaceful environmental, social, and political change.

Poets, writers, artists, musicians, and photographers the world over demonstrated in solidarity. The next global event is scheduled for September 29, 2012. Throughout the year small, local events are delivered at a various venues. By invitation, 100 Thousand Poets for Change was at the Sharjah (an Arab Emirate) International Book Fair, which ran through November 27.  Mujeeb Jaihoon reports,

“From time immemorial, poetry has built better bridges between people than those with bricks and stones. And these bridges do not get old or obsolete…” (Change Is Born in the Womb of Poetry)

In A Chance for Peace Eisenhower pointed out,

“No people on earth can be held, as a people, to be an enemy, for all humanity shares the common hunger for peace and fellowship and justice.”

We do hunger, individually and collectively. Perhaps our chance for peace starts with you and me. Poem on …

… and join us this year at The BeZine blog on 26 September 2015 and add your voice to ours for our (yours and mine) 100TPC, poets and friends virtual event for a peaceful, sustainable and just world.  

© 2011, essay, Jamie Dedes All rights reserved; The photograph of Eisenhower is in the public domain.