Category: Jamie Dedes

Posted in Jamie Dedes, Perspectives on Cancer

PERSPECTIVES IN CANCER #16: Parvathy

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PARVATHY

by

Jamie Dedes

You are the one I most hoped would make it

You of the vibrant colors, the valiant heart

You young with laughter, wise in sadness

Winging your way past the river of forgetfulness

Several years ago a brave and kind man started a local group for those of us with life threatening illness and our caretakers. Through it, it has been an honor and a privilege to meet people who remain heroic and funny and compassionate in the face of life’s great mystery, death.  We want the same things: more life, less pain, less fear. We fear the same things:  the unknown, will it hurt, will I feel cold and lonely, is there something, is there nothing, will I loose my “I”. We suffer remorse for the loss of ourselves and the time we won’t get. We wonder if in the end anyone will remember us. We fear separation from the people we love and of not being able to finish our work. We fear for our children and grandchildren if we are not here. Quite a number in our group have gone into remission or otherwise improved and moved on. Others we have lost to ALS . . . old age . . .Now we have lost Parvathy, the youngest, I believe, to cancer.  I don’t think she made it to thirty-five.

This summer before Parvathy died, I spent a day with her at Filoli Gardens.  The flowers were stunning, but dull beside the glow of Parvathy’s inner grace and enjoyment of the day and its wonders, which are many at Filoli.  We talked of life and of hopes for the future.  She still hoped for a healthy resolution and a future that would include a child with her new, young husband. She had pursued a successful professional career, and there were things she wished to accomplish. We got tea in the cafe and then sat in the gardens to drink it.  We were good company, I think, despite differences in age, culture, and education. We did have a bond, after all.  It is a bond all humans share, but not all of us face up to or are confronted with in the context of terminal illness.

For many of us, death comes slowly.  First we give up a bit of our hearing, then a bit of our sight, then more than a little of our agility, height, and memory. Eventually, we heave a sigh and off we go, shedding the fleshy capsule.  We have time to do things, to say good-bye slowly, to savor, to say to ourselves and others, “Hey, it was a great ride. No regrets.”  Parvathy didn’t have time. It was all much too fast and much too painful.  Her life had its high moments, certainly. She told me about some of them. But she did grow up in a war torn country.  She lost a brother to war.  She suffered from a terrible illness.  She struggled with anger and remorse over these experiences.  She tried to understand them and to understand a God who would do this to her and her family.  In the end, she may have decided that her life had been good. I hope she did. I hope she could focus on the joys and find some peace. I wasn’t there.  I don’t know. I just wished for her nothing less than what she wished for herself: a long life and less painful one.

© Jamie Dedes 2008-2011, all rights reserved

May your soul find peace, our dear, beautiful Parvathy. You are not and will not be forgotten. The warmth of your spirit lives on in our hearts.

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

Jamie Dedes ~ Jamie is a former freelance feature writer and columnist whose topic specialties were employment, vocational training, and business. She finds the blessing of medical retirement to be more time to indulge in her poetry, creative nonfiction, and fiction. She has two novels in progress, one in final edits, and is pulling together a poetry collection. Her primary playground is Musing by Moonlight. She is the founder and editor/administrator of Into the Bardo. Jamie’s mother was diagnosed with cancer the first time at thirty-six. She went three rounds with breast cancer, one with thyroid cancer, and died at seventy-six of breast and colon cancer.

Posted in Essay, Jamie Dedes

PERSPECTIVES ON CANCER #7: The Wisdom and Courage of Roger Ebert

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ROGER EBERT (b. 1942)

film critic, screenwriter, Pulitzer Prize for Criticism

Ebert at the Conference on World Affairs in September 2002,

shortly after his cancer diagnosis

We will go full-tilt New Media: Television, net streaming, cell phone apps, Facebook, Twitter, iPad, the whole enchilada,” he wrote. “The disintegration of the old model creates an opening for us. I’m more excited than I would be if we were trying to do the same old same old. I’ve grown up with the Internet. I came aboard back when MCI Mail was the e-mail of choice. I had a forum on CompuServe when it ruled the web. My website and blog at the Sun-Times site have changed the way I work, and even the way I think. When I lost my speech, I speeded up instead of slowing down.  Roger Ebert [via Biography.com]

THE WISDOM AND COURAGE OF ROGER EBERT

by

Jamie Dedes

Born in Urbana, Illinois, U.S. to parents of modest means who wanted a better life for him then they had, Ebert’s affinity for writing and film were encouraged. He went to Urbana High School, University of Chicago, and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is known for his film column in the Chicago Sun-Times (1967 – Present), his film guide books, and for the television programs he did in collaboration with Gene Siskel and later Richard Roeper. Ebert battled long and hard with alcoholism. He is married to a trial attorney, Charlie “Chaz” Hammel Smith, now Chaz Ebert and VP of Ebert Company. 

In 2002, Ebert was diagnosed with salivary cancer. He has had radiation treatments and multiple surgeries that effected his speech. In 2006, more cancer was found in his jaw bone. He was rushed to the hospital when his carotid artery burst and he “came within a breath of death.”  The jaw bone was removed. Between one thing and another, he suffered through excessive bleeding, loss of muscle mass, deformity, a jaw prosthetic, and the loss of his voice.

The reason I used that quote above on his acceptance of and enthusiasm for technology is because he has been a fearless and spirited user of voice box technology to address communication problems resulting from the cancer and its treatment. In the TED Award video below, he informs us of his – among other things – experiments with different voices. My own experience of various new technologies is improved testing for health maintenance and monitoring, and appropriate treatment. The web with its many blessings – albeit sometimes mixed – provides me with an affordable, home-bound outlet that offers an immediate venue for my work at the same time that it keeps me from being isolated. (I have an interstitial lung disease.)

I have always admired Roger Ebert as a writer, film critic, and the first film critic to win the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. Since he has been living with cancer and then the fallout from cancer, I have come to admire Roger Ebert, the man. He has shown himself to be a world-class role model and a first class human being. As you will see, through it all, he has retained his sense of humor. Write on Roger … 

Roger Ebert still reviews for the Sun Times. You can read the reviews HERE.

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

ROGER EBERT: Remaking My Voice

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Photo credits ~ Ebert at the 2004 Savaanah Film Festival by Rebert under GNU Free Documentation License and Lillian Boutte and Roger Ebert by Jon Hurd under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license. Both photos via Wikipedia.

Video upload to YouTube by . 

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

Jamie Dedes ~ Jamie is a former freelance feature writer and columnist whose topic specialties were employment, vocational training, and business. She finds the blessing of medical retirement to be more time to indulge in her poetry, creative nonfiction, and fiction. She has two novels in progress, one in final edits, and is pulling together a poetry collection. Her primary playground is Musing by Moonlight. She is the founder and editor/administrator of Into the Bardo. Jamie’s mother was diagnosed with cancer the first time at thirty-six. She went three rounds with breast cancer, one with thyroid cancer, and died at seventy-six of breast and colon cancer.

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

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PERSPECTIVE ON CANCER #5: Done and Not Done Yet

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DONE

by

Jamie Dedes

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Click on the post title for the poem to lay out properly.

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I watched it all over my friend’s dear shoulder,

that day of living and dying and celebrating

like a garden snake the shedding of the skin,

the detritus of material man with its hunger and

wild, woody creative soul, sketching ruby-jeweled

memories in sand to be blown like a Tibetan mandala

across Timelessness while he, lone monk, gripped

by systems on systems of hospital wiring, billing,

approvals, and laws around funerals and burials,

estates, plans, and proposals for headstones and

the where, when, and how of a memorial service,

the left-overs of his life to be sorted, stashed, stored

or sent  to the right people in the right places. Done!

… as though there had been nothing. No one.

♥♥♥♥

NOT DONE YET

* Dedicated to my Group for People With Life-Threatening Illness*

A Chinese advertisement based on a true story . . . Sounds strange, but go ahead and give it a chance …

Thanks Laurel! 🙂

Posted to YouTube by .

Photo credit – flowers at Filoli Garden by Parvathy

Jamie Dedes ~ Jamie is a former freelance feature writer and columnist whose topic specialties were employment, vocational training, and business. She finds the blessing of medical retirement to be more time to indulge in her poetry, creative nonfiction, and fiction. She has two novels in progress, one in final edits, and is pulling together a poetry collection. Her primary playground is Musing by Moonlight. She is the founder and editor/administrator of Into the Bardo. Jamie’s mother, Zbaida, was diagnosed with cancer the first time at thirty-six. Zabida went three rounds with breast cancer, one with thyroid cancer, and died at seventy-six of breast and colon cancer.

♥♥♥♥

THE RIVER PAPER

is out today.

The theme is Buddhism.

You’ll find some interesting pieces there including a

short piece that I wrote on Buddhist poets in the West. Jamie

♥♥♥♥

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PROVIDENCE OR FOLLY

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PROVIDENCE OR FOLLY

by

Jamie Dedes

With gullible hazel eyes fringed in black lace

she looked out at the world.

With ears tuned to pulpit and street

she mistook . . .

. . . love for wisdom

. . . suffering for sanctity

. . . sex for intimacy

. . . saccharine for sincerity.

Because she endured,

she thought she was strong.

She took the tarnished confines

of her dark, singular world

for the broad vision of her god.

Living by accident,

she died on purpose.

Photo credit ~ Statue of a Young Nude Woman by Andrew Schmidt, Public Domain Pictures.net.

Posted in Jamie Dedes, Poems/Poetry

IF THE SUN’S TEARS WOULD SING

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Butterfly Boy Bronze Statue unveiled at Jane Bancroft Cook Library (Florida), January 28, 2010

Sculptor, Sidney Fagin.

♥ ♥ ♥

I Never Saw Another Butterfly

by Pavel Freidman

The last, the very last,

So richly, brightly, dazzlingly yellow.

Perhaps if the sun’s tears would sing

against a white stone. . . .

Such, such a yellow

Is carried lightly ‘way up high.

It went away I’m sure because it wished to

kiss the world good-bye.

For seven weeks I’ve lived in here,

Penned up inside this ghetto.

But I have found what I love here.

The dandelions call to me

And the white chestnut branches in the court.

Only I never saw another butterfly.

That butterfly was the last one.

Butterflies don’t live in here,

in the ghetto.

♥ ♥ ♥

Pavel Friedmann was born in Prague on January 7, 1921. He was deported to Terezin on April 26, 1942 and later to Auschwitz, where he died on September 29, 1944. At least 960,000 Jews were killed in Auschwitz. Other victims included approximately 74,000 Poles, 21,000 Roma (Gypsies), and 15,000 Soviet prisoners of war; and 10,000-15,000 members of other nationalities (Soviet civilians, Czechs, Yugoslavs, French, Germans, and Austrians). Women, men, children.

One day, I was engrossed in a writing project, which will probably take more than a few years to complete.  The story  involves some of the great art pieces that were stolen by the Nazis during World War II and how some of those pieces have now been restored to the families from which they came. As I juggle multiple writing projects with higher priority, I usually am only able to devote several hours a week to this particular project.

As I did my research, I came across this poignant poem, made even more so by the circumstances of the young poet’s death. I’d never read it before. I became curious about Pavel and the poem. The poem, sandwiched between Pavel’s birth and murder, tell us most of what we can find out about him. I found the photo of the Butterfly Boy sculpture pictured above with its creator. The statue was inspired by the poem. I also found that a book was published, . . . I Never Saw Another Butterfly . . . , which has children’s’ drawings and poems from theTerezin Concentration Camp 1942-1944. One of the many insults of this camp was that it was set up to make Red Cross inspectors think that prisoners were being treated humanely. In fact, some 200,000 passed through this camp, known as the “waiting room for Auschwitz.” 97,297 died. 15,00o were children.

So, no. No I didn’t stay on task that day, but some detours can be moving and instructive. I think it’s worth sharing this one with you today. I’d like to say it’s posted “lest we forget.” But we have forgotten. Or, maybe we just don’t care. Genocides continue.

Terezin Children’s Cantata has posted nine of the poems from this book.

Book cover, . . . I never saw another butterly . . ., copyrighted, posted under fair use.

♥ ♥ ♥

Posted in Jamie Dedes, Poems/Poetry

POPPING POEMS AT MIDNIGHT

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Poetry is not a profession, it is a destiny. Mikhail Dudan

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POPPING POEMS AT MIDNIGHT

by

Jamie Dedes

There must be something about

the witching hour, magic after all,

when – from sound sleep – I so

suddenly awake to the silent

scratching and rough shaking

·

of a poem dropping in, uninvited

and just about fully formed, from

some unnamed peculiar heaven or

hell to disturb the languid luxury of

this rare blue somnolence. A poem

·

from neither the horn nor ivory

gate that snatches me from the

welcome arms of Morpheus, from

the land of Demos Oneiroi*, where

I long – an elegant ache – to return.

·

I chew on it like a baby chews

new food, trying to define shape

and character, to hold the memory

intact until morning when I can –

perhaps – name it. I … repeat it …

·

repeating, repeating, my mind

wrapping itself around the poem

like my arms the pillow, hugging

the  sensation of it, enjoying the

silk and nub and color of it, not

·

willing to let it go, unable to sleep.

At a chill pre-dawn hour, give

up and get up and taking the laptop

in hand, lay out the poem on a fresh

white page, ready post of the day.

·

* Demos Oneiroi – the land of dreams

Artwork – Morpheus and Iris by Pierre-Narcisse Guérin, 1811

·

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PIGEON PIE

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Pigeon: (informal) a gullible person, especially someone swindled in gambling or the victim of a confidence trick. Oxford English Dictionary

If you are reading this on the home page, you will have to click on the post title with your mouse so that the poem lays out properly. Thank you!

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Lives built on pigeon dreams

structured by Madison Avenue

calculated by Wall Street

beribboned  by Hollywood

We take them: these manufactured dreams

one-size-fits-all, straight off the rack . . .

And damn cheap too!

Mad, cannibal pigeon dreams,

turning good minds and whole hearts

into mince

We pray to false economies,

seek deliverance from Cheap Jack*

We buy one, get one free –

And fetch and fetish youth eternal

from face-lifts, Botox™, and boob-jobs –

Exit here:

drugs, alcohol

sex-a-PEAL

en-ter-TAIN-ment.

Get a house, a car, a jewel –

Be the first on your block.

Buy now. Pay later.

Filling the empty with nothing more,

something less . . .

and warehousing our souls, they gather

dust

in public storage . . .

first month free.

Poems unwritten. Songs unsung.

Chumped. Stumped. Petrified.

An all-American Pigeon Pie,

neatly boxed

and wrapped to go.

·

* Cheap Jack – One who sells cheap and second-rate goods. Cheap jack is a slang term for a person who may also be referred to as a “peddler”, “canvasser”, “monger” or “solicitor”. These terms have been in use in England since the 16th century as a derogatory description of traveling salespeople. Investopedia

Photo credit – Lars Konzack, Public Domain Pictures.net.

·

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EARLY MORNING BLUES

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EARLY MORNING BLUES

by

Jamie Dedes

And far into the night he crooned that tune

The stars went out and so did the moon.

The singer stopped playing and went to bed.

While the weary blues echoed through his head.

The Weary Blues by Langston Hughes

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If you are reading this post on the home page, you will need to click on the post title for the poem to lay out properly.

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Suddenly conscious, remembering, dread.

Before dawn the worst blues of the day,

those dismal black-blues of a battered heart

Gummy, gloomy blues, tangled in cobwebs

Blues – dispirited as a fatherless girl,

a widower man, a betrayed lover

Blues bereft as the loss of an old friend

Bitter-acid blues that rise in the throat of

a wage-slave, dying by slow suffocation

·

Early Morning Blues . . .

The heavy-hearted blue sludge

that weighs upon the mother with her pink slip

the father with his account overdrawn

The deep, murky sea of blue that swallows up

the homeless man begging, living on the margin

Or the homeless woman sleeping on the street,

crying her cancer pain deep into the night

The sword-in-the-heart blues

of  a family living on trash-bin dinners

The dark, churning brackish blue

of a child’s empty stomach, no food in sight

·

Early Morning Blues . . .

The helpless, hopeless, remorse-filled blues

that come as Time runs out and Eternity beckons

That darkest of hues with shivering slivers

of pewter blue, muting to grey, muting to black

Muting to light fractures in a surface

permeable and permissible, heavenly light

Or so “they” tell me . . .

·

But lost in a sea of light

will “I’ still be?

will “you” still be?

Answer me that.

What is the character of this light?

Matter or myth?

Ah, then, after all, pondering further

I find I really don’t care

I’ll poem the blues and poem my light

until all that’s left of me is what

I’ve left behind . . .

and you?

Will you leave your unwritten

blue poem hanging in the air to be

heard by those few who can?

Or, will you, like Africans of old, paint

yourself blue and boiling tears

dance around the fire and give

birth to the soul of a new art

·

Photo credit ~ Wilfredo R. Rodriguez H. via Wikipedia

♥ ♥ ♥

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MERELY HUMAN

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What is staying alive? To possess

A great hall inside a cell.

What is it to be human? by Waldo Williams, Poetry  – April 2008

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MERELY HUMAN

by

Jamie Dedes

·

finding strength and meaning as we go along,

though often caught in a swirl, dizzy spinning

of our mortality; our gender, time and place –

rash precipitation of preposterous events

and disgraceful cruelty, and the over-heated

flowing of crazy lives and loves, gritty and

grim, yet somehow grace-filled and dauntless –

like weeds pushing up pebbled concrete slabs,

bearing our path’s weight, reaching for the sun

·

Photo credit ~ Jess Norman, Public Domain Pictures.net.

 ·

Posted in Jamie Dedes, Poems/Poetry

I WOULD BE

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However, nothing is just what it seems to be.

My objects dream and wear new costumes,

compelled to, it seems, by  all the words in my  hands

and the sea that bangs in my throat.

The Room of My Life by Anne Sexton in The Complete Poems of Anne Sexton

I WOULD BE

by

Jamie Dedes

I would be that ancient red rosebush

sitting in meditation beside the creek

that flows near the home-place and

a belt of vacant land, wide-awake wood

·

I would be a thorn-and-thistle-free me,

a cool, soothing fog, a silken river-stone,

or a whiff of magnolia traveling through

dark night on an aquamarine breeze

·

An old hunger rises in me to rest calm

beside the safe harbor of rambling rill,

days writ in gently cautious calligraphy,

mind as empty and conscious as a forest

·

But rosebush and wood endure winter

and the creek its dry-spell, river-stone’s

silken finish is born of the chaffing wave,

the magnolia was felled by the gardener

·

Photo credit ~ Christine Vincent, Public Domain Pictures.net.

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Posted in Essay, Jamie Dedes

DISABLED, NOT UNABLE: No Arms, No Legs, No Worries

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Video posted to YouTube by .

When the going gets tough, the tough get going. Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., former U.S. Ambassador to the U.K. and father of John F. and Robert F., and Edward.

Motivation gets you through the day, but inspiration last a lifetime. Nick Vuicic, inspirational speaker

I’m sure there are many, many people who are following our limbless-but-nimble Nick, especially in Australia (his homeland) and the United States, where he is now living in California. He’s a great inspiration. He helps put things in perspective. In the light of his challenges, the vast majority of us have nothing to complain about. He makes it darn difficult to make excuses. More than that, he demonstrates that disability is not inability. He follows a work schedule that would exhausted lesser folk.

Attitude Is altitude. Nick Vujicic

If I wanted anyone to get – really get –  one of the underlying messages here, it would be employers. At one time, about a hundred years ago now, I was responsible for hiring and/or hiring recommendations for a retail company. I often advocated – usually unsuccessfully – for people who were bright, talented, and “disabled.” The latter is a term we use lightly and take literally. It can be deceptive.

As you can see from Nick’s video and his life, people who are disabled are not necessarily unable. Often people have disabilities, but are generally healthy. . . . just as healthy as most other working folks. They can be depended upon to maintain a normal work schedule. A high rate of absenteeism may be implicit in those situations that involve illness, but not everyone who is disabled is ill. Those who are not, those who are blind or deaf or have lost limbs or are otherwise disfigured, are not ill. They are all there mentally, have skills, ability, training and education, and have learned to work around their challenges. They have lower risk for workers’ comp because they tend to be more aware and more careful in how they maneuver in the workplace. Often, they need only minimal – if any – real accommodation. There’s no reason not to hire them. In the current economy, they are having a tougher-than-usual time competing for jobs, not because of real barriers to entry but because of perceived barriers harbored by employers. This is an appeal: please give them the same fair chance you’d give anyone else.

For more on Nick – Brave Heart: No Arms, No Legs, No Worries.

Posted in Jamie Dedes, Poems/Poetry

FROM THE BEGINNING

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Family photo subject to copyright.

·

Every year without knowing it I have passed the day

When the last fires will wave to me

And the silence will set out

For the Anniversary of My Death, W.S. Merwin, The Second Four Books of Poems

FROM THE BEGINNING

by

Jamie Dedes

It was yesterday

that I retrieved my soul at last

moved by the placid persuasion of a psalm

reminding me of my rootedness

in the archives of heaven

 ·

In earlier times

life lay ahead, a rhythm of reciting tones

a paced chant before all that somber news

and facing facts and quiet homely work

of peacemaking for your sake

 ·

But this morning

I awoke a fading mendicant nun

reading my own rich requiem Mass

celebrating my heart’s trove

and your constant love

 ·

A few more breaths

and I’m a whisper in your ear

an old story of someone who birthed you

now melting into the great Forever

leaving us only a hallowed cord

 ·

From the beginning, Son

your spirit was to us a joy dancing

a perfect poem finely etched in old gold

holding fast to beauty and grace

faithful to your own gentle spirit

 ·

Listen to the hollows in the wind.

Listen, Son –

how love encircles and

echoes from the small Beginning  ….

into the great Forever

Posted in Jamie Dedes, Music, Poems/Poetry

BACH FOR BUDDHA

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BACH FOR BUDDHA

by

Jamie Dedes

Sunday morning peace

Icy floors, my begging bowl

and Bach for Buddha

If you click on the video twice, you’ll link through to YouTube to watch it. We apologize for the inconvenienc. Thank you!

Video posted to YouTube by .

Photo credit ~ courtesy of The Buddha Gallery, unusual vintage Chinese monk with offering bowl.

Sarabande ~ began as a dance in triple metre in the 14th century in Central America and evolved in 16th century Europe into a slower musical form. J.S. Bach’s Six Suites for Unaccompanied Cello are perhaps the most recognized solos written for cello and remain among Bach’s most popular works.

Posted in Jamie Dedes, Poems/Poetry

ON SUCH DAYS

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Nobody knows who I am or what I do. Not even I.

Don Juan Matus in Journey to Ixtlan by Carlos Castaneda

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ON SUCH DAYS

by

Jamie Dedes

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On such days we come crashing at the rough edges

of narrow channels and wide open oceans till we are

caught between moon-sight and sun-gold distortions,

fickle changelings of dark and light and shadows

pregnant with dream demons and wicked illusions

·

How successfully we manage to precipitate chaos in the

hoary hibernation of our soul’s winter, denying the warmth

of our own voice and the god-awful finiti of our bodies,

So here we are, sleep-walking our rocky, rebel road and

serving our spiny poetry like Don Juan his peyote buttons

·

Posted in Jamie Dedes, Music

PEARLS BEFORE COMMUTERS

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Video posted to YouTube by  .

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What is this life if,  full of care,

We have not time to stand and stare. –

·

No time to stand beneath the boughs,

And stare as long as sheep and cows:

·

No time to see, when woods we pass,

Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass:

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No time to see in broad daylight,

Streams full of stars, like skies at night:

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No time to turn at Beauty’s glance

And watch her feet, how they can dance:

·

No time to wait till her mouth can

Enrich that smile her eyes began?

·

A poor life this if,  full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare.

Leisure by W.H.Davies (1871 – 1940), Welsh poet and writer

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In 2007 the Washington Post posed the question: “Can one of the nation’s great musicians cut through the fog of a Washington, D.C. rush hour? Thus it came to pass that – masquerading as a street musician – the world renown violin virtuoso, chamber musician, and orchestra leader, Joshua Bell,  played his Gibson ex Huberman  (1713, Antonio Stradivari) using a bow made in the eighteenth century by Francois Tourte for the pleasure of DC Metro commuters. He treated them to the sweet strains Chaconne (Bach‘s Partita No.2), AveMaria (Schubert), Estrellita (Ponce), and closed with a Bach gavotte.

Bell concerts are packed to capacity and tickets can run to three figures. During the forty-three minutes he played in the D.C. metro, 1,097 people passed him by and he collected $32.17. Twenty of those dollars were donated by the only commuter to recognize him. Only four-or-five people actually stopped to listen.

The Washington Post’s Gene Weingarten has written the complete sad story of folks too busy and/or unconscious to take note (pun intended) HERE.

Joshua Bell, (b.1960)

Violinist, Classical Musician

If you happen to have time for some music, check out Bell playing Chaconne. Go ahead! I dare you … Make your day …

Video posted to YouTube by .

Photo credit ~ Violinist Joshua Bell following a performance at the San Francisco Symphony in California U.S. courtesy of Alexduff  under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license via Wikipedia.

Posted in Jamie Dedes, Poems/Poetry

POETS AND SAINTS

Posted on by The Bardo Group Beguines

I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity. Edgar Allen Poe (1809 – 1849), American writer and poet

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POETS AND SAINTS

by

Jamie Dedes

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It speaks to them like an old-growth forest

whispering into wise and willing ears.

Or, perhaps it’s cellular memory, ancestors

not silenced by death at all but having their

say along some thread of DNA by which

chaos becomes story becomes chaos again.

Or might it  be some rarely seen insanity.

Check the DSM*, where you’ll find it laid out

grossly defined and oddly diminishing.

No naming stops its quiet ineffable flow, slow

and cool in a fast and overheated world.

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*DSM Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders

Photo credit ~ Białowieski Park Narodowy in Belarus in Poland courtesy of Ralf Lotys under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported. This is one of the last largely intact primeval forests in Central Europe.

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Posted in Essay, Jamie Dedes

THE EVOLUTION

Posted on by The Bardo Group Beguines

 

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

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THE EVOLUTION SHALL BE BLOGGED

by

Jamie Dedes

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, a way of approaching some truth, finding some meaning, encouraging resolution. I’m not one of them. I am as likely to write about the beautiful flowers that have just popped on my orchid – at last – or something my mom said fifty years ago as I am to write a poem on a social issue. But it does happen and quite often:  a horrific war photo, a news report of an injustice, a homeless person outside the grocery, a friend in pain that I can trace to some social issues, and the words start to flow. There’s the urge to respond, to do something – the urge to activism.

As I make my way around the blogosphere, I delight to see how many poets blog for causes – “worthy” causes as my mom would say – and I know that “worthy” is in the eye of the reader. War is big. For those poet-bloggers who are pacifists, this medium offers one means of passive resistance. Perhaps passivism is the strongest form of resistance and poetry the conscience of the collective soul.

In the 70s, the American author, poet, and musician, Gil Scott Heron, wrote The Revolution Shall Not Be Televised (video below). It comes to mind now. For those who remember, this might seem odd. It’s a Nixon-era piece, but we’re still struggling with the trivialities Heron is so beautifully strident about. And the revolution couldn’t be televised. It would be too big for one thing. Though Heron was addressing issues for blacks, I would submit that while we have different histories, we’re all struggling to stay afloat on the same broken-down raft.

In Dennis Brutus’ poem above, he points to the world we now live in. Having survived Robben Island with Nelson Mandella, he was freed only to find that while apartheid ended in South Africa it had become world-pervasive. The issue now he discovered was no longer race but economics: the few haves vs. the masses of  have-nots. And those who have just a bit – enough to feel safe and perhaps a bit smug – are just a hairbreadth away from have-not.

I can’t help but think that the revolution so many of us seek is rooted in transforming values. Hence, it is more evolutionary than revolutionary. As such, perhaps it is too gradual and pervasive to be televised. 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, rising from homespun poetry – outsider literary 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.

I think I hear army boots a-marching, marching across networks everywhere. Or perhaps poetic fancy has caught my spirit today and all is dream …I hope not. Blog on …

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

Dennis Brutus

Video posted to YouTube by .

Illustration: Face the Monster  Frits Ahlefeldt, Public Domain Pictures.net.


Posted in Jamie Dedes, Poems/Poetry

MIND CHATTERED

Posted on by The Bardo Group Beguines

Oh, the mind is eely, slipping

out of its puzzle boxes,

loving its own wit . . . 

Mind/Body by Gregory Djanikian, Poetry Magazine, April 2000

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MIND CHATTERED

by

Jamie Dedes

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mind in chatter mode will do you in

like a car without a driver,

a good tool gone rogue

it will numb you with its burden of

old stories and wishing wells

could have beens, should have beens

crowd pleasers and ego teasers

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it will desecrate your sacred space

with the rotting carcass of old resentments

tired rivalries, rigid renunciations

it will domesticate your dreamscape with

the dreck of times gone by and

tedious, trivial, trumpery thinking

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it will leech and parch your soul garden

which would otherwise shout vivid

with rainbow flowers and the scents

of night-blooming jasmine, fresh morning dew

and a rose quartz blush of air current

for traveling to spring valleys, bright stars

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with mind in chat mode trapped in earthy ken

your most wonderous inner worlds go sadly

unimagined and unexplored and you –

you, fully chattered, shattered, scattered

will never even know

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Illustration ~  Frits Ahlefeldt, Public Domain Pictures.net.