The diaphanous
sheets susurrate against the onyx parchment
As I gently turn the dog-eared pages of our mothballed
album—
The treasured cache of moments and memories of
bygone days
Conserved, before the scythe of Time mows us down.
As I gently turn the dog-eared pages of our mothballed
album
I chance upon ‘him’—self-assured, charismatic,
articulate—
The 2 a.m. buddy and confidant to my nerdy, antsy,
teenaged self.
Cupid struck, but with a slanted dart…and he, forever,
remained unscathed.
The treasured cache of moments and memories of
bygone days
Enshrouds the wringing, wrenching, carmine landscape
of my heart,
Crisscrossed by a breadcrumb trail of wistful longing,
Glossed over by the voguish masquerade of marital bliss!
Conserved, before the scythe of Time mows us down,
These metaphors of yesterday blend with my fragile todays
And gossamer tomorrows; and together, they help
me weave
The warp and weft of my soul’s fractured tapestry.
Flashes of lightning streaking the skies,
Taking the fissured, sapless earth by surprise,
Drops of pure love, thy name is April showers!
Drenched leaves and stems waltz in glee,
Their rustling whispers are music to me,
Tiny prismatic droplets dangle on the bowers!
Purged of dust and grime, terra firma breathes easy again
My parched soul inhales the redolence of summer rain
Glens and vales come alive with fresh, iridescent flowers!
Sometimes I am Hope—
Weaving roseate, virile dreams in hoary, nebulous eyes
And heaving hearts, yearning for a fillip;
I play hide-and-seek with ennui, by the day
At night, I hum a plaintive lullaby of moth-eaten desires
Interred in the caverns of the infecund, impotent mind.
Sometimes I am Light—
Glinting off the Chardonnay in a crystal stein
Held by star-crossed lovers traipsing a parallel universe,
Immured within a prism of perennial passion,
Kissing the full-bodied, carmine lips of eternal youth, today
Only to be eclipsed by the penumbra of transience,
tomorrow.
Sometimes I am a Star—
Tucking my pearly corners into the moire duvet
Of the onyx sky, one spark at a time—
A luminous metaphor for waxing wishes,
Until I explode on the milky way of destiny,
Sprinkling confetti of crushed novalunosis and
half-kept promises.
I am a memory, I am a void,
I am a chuckle, I am a tear,
I am alchemy, I am Kintsugi
I am here, there, everywhere—
A celebration of life, an inventory of scars!
…is a former educator whose articles, stories and poems have found space in national dailies like The Hindu, The Times of India, multiple literary platforms, as well as poetry and fiction anthologies.In 2022, she won the Orange Flower Awards instituted by Women’s Web, the second position in the National Poetry Writing Competition, and several such accolades. Reviewing and editing are other areas she finds engaging
I’m annoyed at how writers of flash fiction, poetry, and flash nonfiction are all howling into the abyss of the internet with very few readers. I’m considering writing some kind of daily critical response to one or two pieces of literary writing that appear in online literary journals, just to prove there is an audience (even if the audience is just me).
Currently, the apparent majority of readers for online literary journals seems to be ChatGPT iterations and other attempts at generative algorithms. And they are under-equipped readers, because they lack intentionality, as demonstrated when GPT conversations go in a loop of “Goodbye!” “See you later!” “Goodbye!” “See you later!” ad infinitum. “Goodbye!” is a word you experience; a word that is defined by the intention to leave; and not definable by whatever explanation is in a dictionary, vocabulary lesson, or lexicon.
Many other examples of writing cannot be read or interpreted by generative algorithms, no matter how many iterations they pop out, because of the embodied intentions. The disembodied superficiality of generative algorithms is deeply inscribed by a human-led corporate culture that devalues literacy, but over values the production of bureaucratic paperwork. By which I mean, our online literary artwork is being turned into fodder that feed generative algorithms, as passive readers, to produce more text for the text’s corporateliability’s sake.
We should think of ourselves before we think of Silicon Valley corporations. We should be active readers for social change, creative conversation, or leisure.
We can’t afford to limit our readership to the data sets of generative algorithms. While AI labs control the legislative power that allows them to use our words without compensation and without critical consideration, we still have the power to be active readers. If we want to exercise power in the sociopolitical changes happening now, then we need to start producing critical and appreciative texts that demonstrate some kind of human reading.
…has poems appearing in The New Quarterly,Carousel, subTerrain, paperplates, The Dalhousie Review, untethered, Quail Bell, The Nashwaak Review, Orbis, Snakeskin Poetry, Literary Yard, Gray Sparrow, CV2, Brittle Star, Bombfire, American Mathematical Monthly, AoHaM, Canadian Woman Studies, The Mathematical Intelligencer, The Canadian Journal of Family and Youth, The Journal of Humanistic Mathematics,The Beatnik Cowboy, Borderless, Literary Veganism, and more. Terry is grateful to the Ontario Arts Council for his first writing grant, and their support of so many other writers during the polycrisis
on a kite string you fly me
then cut me adrift
with your own hand
to float on air
in the passage of seasons
the flight of geese
carried by the breeze
spinning and sailing
ever further and away
keeling when it sags
to sink among trees
snagged by a runner
as spoils of conquest
claimed by strange hands
by right of possession
used willfully then
harnessed and tied
to unfamiliar strings
raised once more to fly
and ripple in the wind
its dance and the surge
could still entrance
but severed in a duel
swept away by the draft
i am seized yet again as bounty
straight out of a fickle sky
so captured and surrendered
in casual repetition
riding ever degraded strings
in the hands of fortune-hunters
my colors fast declining
my garments wearing thin
patched up for tears
dispirited now and dull
flickering but damply
spent and shabby
i fall at last
to a gaggle of street boys
who brawl and bicker
over a patched-up thing
and tear it to pieces
in rivalry and spite
the one most irate
snaps the spine in two
cracks the bow
shreds and crumples what is left
tosses it on the roadside
kicks dust over it
looks about for other game
all broken and torn
i am but scraps
of the paper kite I was
fooled by the fable
of a momentary release
it was just sport for you
but a worn piece of thread
still locked in a knot
you tied with your hand
binding spine and bow
to equip me to fly
remains as a relic
in the wreckage that is left
furnace of galaxies
virtual in cyberspace
a cypher and
a dot
digital breath
waves of sound
no flesh
no bones
cyphers and dots
meeting
cyphers and dots
across riven continents
littered oceans
a wilderness of black ice
phyllium forests abuzz
stir and fuss
of cybernetic insects
hammer and din
over deserts
of white hot sand
over wastelands of burnt rock
whispered vibrations
in virtual ears
cuddles
in virtual arms
qalandar condor
wings thrashing
storms spectral lips
strokes and scours
and shreds
with ghostly talons
tears into phantom
belly and entrails
plop
plop
astral stones bubble
molten in flaming lakes
furnace of galaxies
fizzing endlessly
jets of heat
seethe singing
galactic light
burbling
spilling over
babbling in concentric ripples
scattering
clumsy wares
a cosmic potter’s wheel
churning swirls of stars
crude
suns and moons
comets
and planets fired
glazed and burnished
celestial dregs
candescent debris of eternity
immeasurable space
nothing
purgatory in perpetual dissolution
mutation
trance
trans
cyphers and
dots meeting
cyphers
and dots
splatter in a virtual eye
arsenic
on a virtual tongue
a virtual palm
salted for prayer
a virtual heart
pumping plasma
through cyber thoroughfares
cyphers dots
burning slag
flooding galactic highways
holding back I refuse
that gift of life
toward which I have traveled
all these long years
without knowing
where I was headed
till ready to slip away
without regret or rancor
seeking even fondly
that state of not being
existing without
awareness of existence
without self
or sense of self
and this forbearance
launches us
into orbits
far from each other
where we shall not
cross paths
in dimensions of time
we know
yearning incomplete lost
pulled into another world
into other worlds
until the collapse of time
in the collapse of space
that instant
which allows us
to tear through curtains
of separating life screens
crash through spun glass
of gossamer fancies
hurtling towards a tryst
that is written into our lives
certain beyond doubt
and possible only then
at the very end
when hours are dust
and dust a flash of light
we dream the impossible
long for something
that cannot be
and what is imagined
is rendered probable
all that has ever occurred
all that is happening
all that will transpire
converge and come together
held all at once
in this moment
that must be ours
an instant that unites
and so reunites us
in a transitory gleam
in the glassworks of the imaginary
that seizes the real
and preserves it forever
in the moment
of its obliteration
…has published four collections of poetry,a literary travelogue about his experiences as a fellow of the International Writing Program, University of Iowa, and a couple of edited anthologies of Pakistani literature. He served as translation editor and contributor for Modern Poetry from Pakistan, a Pakistan Academy of Letters project supported by a grant from the National Endowment of the Arts, and is the Ellen Douglass Leyburn Professor of English at Agnes Scott College, where he teaches courses in literature and creative writing.
A back alley glows in apricot and pink
seven trumpets praise the early sun
Crows sit on wires like purple sparks
palm trees worship the wind, their fronds clatter
like plastic blinds in a sparsely furnished bedroom
June gloom stretches into July
A skateboard stumbles over rotten dates
Marine layer is just another term for fog
but the beaches in the west are always open
The hot months I love to greet will arrive
after I have traveled to a summer in decline
My peach garden will be gone when I return
others will harvest what they plant
sit on dunes and squint their eyes
watch the sun set behind mid-century balconies
contemplate desert colors from the snow
Now that the silent neighborhoods light up
again, I must leave
although I still don’t know what happened
to the silver hoops I forgot
pool-side on Shenandoah
next to a pile of cherry pits, another layer of my soul
In the first week, sleep comes any hour, hunger early
when the pillar of dawn climbs up the stone wall
in gray and blue, and the neighbors have sex, again
In the space between jet-lag and transition
exhilaration and exhaustion
water from the shower engulfs my skin
an orange glow
It seems easy to wash away age and memories
longing to emerge
to exhale, to play a wind instrument
With gusto, I eat olives and labneh, warm pita
with za’atar from the Bukharian baker
I can’t write a line but walk far and beyond
in somnambulant serenity
through alleys that smell of fresh detergent
moth powder and worn ceramic tiles
I nod and smile and some smile back
I am not deaf but mute
I see but I don’t know how I am seen
I log my journey of discount and preparation
Carry on
the rhythm
of bubbling air.
Sing with the ocean wind.
Step on jiggling sand
of the magic dunes.
The moments are there
to breath as twinned
with birds,
to fill the eyes with sand
and twisting tunes.
Embrace the streets
full of beats of hearts,
make a wish,
send your ivy thoughts
to the chronicles of the eternal time.
Each glossy belief
will enrich the shine of stars,
the paradigm of life
is to add your miniature
to the giant canvas of space,
if you can, with chime.
Memories
The memories are sailing birds with us.
They make us travelling in time.
The cruise is sometimes sad ash in dust,
but often bright they really shine.
They float as feathers in the lake,
as autumn leaves they dance.
The memories are time for break.
We see ourselves in a glance.
The memories, the bridges of the moments,
I swim with you like surfer grabs the waves,
I travel back if I need some adornments.
Through you I grow and go on to behave.
My orange shining memories,
come when I need you, please!
The souls
Wherever I go,
the birds are right nearby.
Whatever was done,
It's always a moment to fly.
Whoever I meet,
I leave there a smile.
Wherever was taken,
It gives back Devine.
Some people are birds,
they are blessed by the sky.
Some others are shadows
and use other's shine.
Some persons are fishes,
They float into plasma
and reach deep to arteries,
Some others are stones,
They don't make a sign.
But they can build mountains
if needed as high as the Everest,
And back to the species,
I prefer to fly...
To S.
He had a light shadow.
His figure was holding on
to a straight shovel.
When he was walking,
among the beds the weeds disappeared.
The wind was always his way.
Birds ate from his palms ...
As soon as he smiled
to someone
they stopped to look at him ...
A real miracle,
every time,
when
its direction
led to my door.
…is a Bulgarian who writes poems in Bulgarian and in English. She lived in Luxembourg and currently she lives and works in Belgium. Dessy has publications in many Bulgarian magazines and newspapers, also in Romania, Belgium, USA, India, Peru,Philippines.She has 4 books in Bulgarian, 1 in English, and she has also compiled a book as translator from Bulgarian into English, an anthology of Bulgarian top authors.She writes about nature, love and God,and her accent is the positive message at the final.Member of Flemish Party for Poetry.Editor in Homagi international Web literature magazine.
Particularly speaking to this “Covid moment,” Eicha (איכה) comprises 5 videopoems which takes as its jumping off point, the Biblical Eicha, The Book of Lamentations, which laments the destruction of Jerusalem and through reflection, deflection, refraction and the fracturing of language, homophonically re-situates the original text to the horrors and hope of the present moment. Tracking through “the city” as a desolate weeping widow overcome with misery, and moving through desolation, ruin, prayer, and recovery, it explores ways that in rupture, there is rapture.
As transpoesis it acts not only (in General Semanticist terms) as a “time binder” but through a luminous, voluminous threading of light, it highlights how darkness is a form of light, how text itself is, in essence, black light on white light, and thus opens up new ways of seeing and the cyclic nature of meaning and being.
Text written and performed by Karasick and comprises the first section of her forthcoming book, Ærotomania: The Book of Lumenations. The music is composed and performed by world renowned Grammy Award winning composer, trumpet player and Klezmer giant, Frank London. Eicha I includes Vispo by Jim Andrews and Daniel f. Bradley with Titles by Italian filmmaker Igor Imhoff. Eicha II and III, music by Frank London and video by Igor Imhoff. Eicha IV and V are still under construction and will be launched for Tisha B’Av.
Eicha I–III
Text written and performed by Adeena Karasick Music Composed and performed by Frank London
Michael Dickel: Your theoretical frame for this work takes us from The Book of Lamentations to General Semantics developed in the 20th C. to the present moment of pandemic. What intrigues me about this is something I have thought about for some time. Before I heard of Alfred Korzybski, I had begun to think that cultural products—specifically but not only visual arts, music / dance, and writing—formed a sort of socio-cultural DNA. The “stories” or “meanings” they convey shape socio-cultural formations much as DNA shapes life forms, but outside of the body of course. And as such, they are apparently uniquely human. This is how I understand Korzybski’s “time-binding.”
In this framework-metaphor-analogy, would you agree that “reflection, deflection, refraction and the fracturing of language” could resemble RNA / DNA dividing and recombining? Perhaps I’m asking if your work introduces and “recombines” the DNA of light (luminosity, lumen) into the sorrow of loss and darkness (lamentation)? Or is the case completely different?
Adeena Karasick: So many interesting questions, Michael. First, if we think about “time binding as a kind of recognizing of pattern recognition—how cycles emerge in conjunction with the zeitgeist, aesthetic and political and social orders of the day and bound by semantic environments and spacetime contingencies to a past which is ever re-articulated in an ever contemporaneous present; as Korzybski might say, by abstracting nutrients, growing subsystems, which over time re-orient the narrative, language, “meaning” — in this way it is in a sense a recombination (or in Abulafian terms, a permutation and recombination), restaged into something new.
So, yes between the layering, the looming of the lament and the lumen i’m interested in illuminating the way the present re-presented through an ever-shifting past pinned to a future that is ever-fracturing; how darkness and light are always already embedded in one another – and we see this through our very rituals. For example, on Tish B’Av, when we read the Book of Lamentations which mourns the destruction of Jerusalem, it’s followed by the kinnot, the liturgical dirges that lament the loss of the 1st Temple, the 2nd Temple, reminded of all the other major calamities, the murder of the Ten Martyrs, medieval massacres, the Holocaust. Everything gets bound in these cycles of language of time of repetition and reproduction a simulacric spiraling that bleeds into the prescience of this very moment. A moment that itself (due in part to the weight of cultural memory) fractured and re-reflected, deflected, where limerence lamentation and lumenation emanate: When life gives you laments make limnade ; )
MD: A liminal moment. Your discussion of darkness being a form of light, or the light in the dark, reminds me of Carl Jüng and also of Robert Bly’s A Little Book of the Human Shadow. Both of course metaphorically could be seen as responses to the concept of yetzer hara (יצר הרע). However, the quantum optician Arthur Zajonc perhaps more literally addresses this light in the dark idea in his book, Catching the Light: The Entwined History of Light and Mind.
Zajonc points out that the night on Earth is not an absence of light. The sun’s light is still in the sky, as can be seen by its reflection from the moon. He describes a demonstration he uses to show this of a box that has a vacuum inside—no dust, nothing. The inside is all painted flat black that is totally non-reflecting. There is an eyehole on one side to look into. There is also a light that shines from a side 90-degrees to that. And a mirror or flat object inside that is black on the back but can be rotated. The box looks “dark,” that is pitch-black, until the object is revolved and reflects the light. Then it is clear there was light in the box all along.
It seems that what you are doing is showing us that the dark / night / shadow always contains light. That darkness or shadow provide the contrast and form to reflected light. And that the light we see, as Zajonc points out, is only the reflected light. Even the sky reflects dust to become blue.
With this other, different framework-metaphor-analogy, does this seem a reasonable way to understand your hybrid title, “Lumenations”, which of course plays homophonically with illuminations…?
AK: So important particularly in these troubled times to shift the perspective, change the channel, shift the diorama, “peepholes, eyestreams” and recognize the light in the darkness; to revel in the white space, between the letters, the long silences, the emptiness, the shudders / shutters, suspensions and remember that as in the Zohar, the darkness contains the light. Or the absence contains the presence – thinking about maybe Heidegger’s translation of Heraclitus preserved by Hippolytus (which i quote in another section of The Book of Lumenations), that even in the presencing of all things present, itself remains concealed from being present, “not as presence presently absent or an absence absently present but as the absent present that continually withdraws in the spectacle of its present absence”[i] Acknowledging how it’s so important to complicate these dichotomies, uncover its fabrication, and analyze the violence this initiates and sustains.
And like the flash of primordial letters clothed in the nothingness of being enshrouded in the disquiet of dissembling – letters, like desire itself, embodies all that is to come; comes and keeps coming in an ever-arriving future. So yes, it’s both a reflection defection, deflection, confection ; ) playing with ways all is simulacric and thereby produces a kind of co-sanguinity mirroring how like in the 2nd C. Sefer Yetzirah (Book of Creation), primordial creation is ever re-created through the articulation of each letter – which contains all the future within it[ii]
MD: Now, how does all of this fit in your thinking with the Time of Coronavirus / “Covid moment” we find ourselves living in?
AK: Well, we’re living in dark times. And in many ways like the word COVID itself which homophonically can be transliterated in Hebrew as Kavod כבוד, which (as you know), means glory, honor and respect; ie when we congratulate someone we say Kol HaKavod, ‘all the honour’ (Good job!), or close a letter with the word V’Kavod (‘with respect’) Yet — ironically, COVID kaved is also “heavy. And throughout Exodus, the presence of God in the tabernacle is symbolised by the word ‘Kavod’ ((which is also represented by a cloud!)) So, like The Book of Lamentations itself which is mired in darkness, heaviness and cloudiness – a masking of the light, like you mentioned earlier, with reference to Zajonc, it’s so important especially now to recalibrate how we see, what we see; displace our usual systems of spectrality. Through this homophonic translation, this transpoeisis, it displaces a sense of language belonging to a particular moment but marked by chasms, folds, paradoxes, turbulence and desire, highlights the Other in language, coveting and foregrounding its caveats.
[i]. Elliot R. Wolfson, Heidegger and Kabbalah: Hidden Gnosis and the Path of Poiesis, Indiana University Press, 2019, p.5.
[ii]. See Sefer Yetzirah, 2:2. Wesier Edition, Trans. Aryeh Kaplan, San Francisco, 1997.
Aware that M.S. Evans paints and draws, as well as writing poetry, The BeZine invited her to submit artwork to accompany these poems when we accepted this blog post. We asked M.S. Evans for artwork to accompany and complement the words on the screen (we used to say “on the page”), not to “illustrate| the poems. The result is this blog post, which The BeZine presents here as separate yet interconnected works of art by M.S. Evans.
—Michael Dickel, Editor
Spare Guardian Floating
Spare Change
Spare Change
Sidewalk, slouched.
My eyes circle the rim of a crumpled
paper cup.
Puddles cooly stare up;
too sure of an answer.
Strangers offer me
naked cigarettes;
slim-boned solidarity.
My softness wrapped
in copper wire,
I learned to smoke.
Floating Away oil pastel
Guardian of Keepsakes
The weight of boxes ease; released,
forgotten, re-homed.
A guardian of keepsakes,
I carry the irreplaceable,
sentimental.
Not naive enough to trust
my home will last
this time.
Bronx Botanical Garden watercolor and ink
Kicked Out
They gave my room away
when I became pregnant
You’re welcome to pay for the basement;
uneven floodplain.
First trimester: missed period, tender,
insulted.
Backdoor tercolor and ink
—Poetry and Art by M.S. Evans
Artist’s Notes
“Floating Away” is an oil pastel piece I did in the early 2000s, when my housing was very unstable. There is a lot of yearning in this piece: for stability, but generally for a future.
“Bronx Botanical Garden” is a watercolor and ink piece from my time in NY, in the late ’90s. At that time I was doing a work-exchange for a room in the house of an elderly Yiddish poet and artist.
“Backdoor” is a watercolor and ink piece from my current living situation in Butte, Montana. There are signs of decay, but also of continuity and intent.
It is an undeniable fact now:
They have arisen from the bare ground
Like the phoenix flapping its wings out of its
Legendary ashes, where are they going?
Nowhere but high up into a virtual space, a world
That, like history book, is full of black headlines
Big names, & bold details. All transmitted
Into digital forms. Even the most unidentifiable
Has become a star above its dark caws.
Each
Taken for an angel winged with the rainbows
Of tomorrow, while all cranes and swans are lost
In their dances to the tune of death
(R)evolution towards Dataism
More advanced in evolution than their human masters are chickens as they outnumber the stars in the whole universe, and occupy every corner of the entire planet, but as in-dividuals, no chicken can fly higher than a low fence, make love within its confinement or live together with its children. The only thing they do besides laying eggs and growing meat is standing there, day and night, as if meditating about the meaning of evolution:
It took hundreds…of thousands…of years for…homo erectus to evolve…into sapiens and longer…for chimpanzees to…erectus, but…engineering ourselves…by way of biochemistry…cyborg and…AI, we are upgrading…ourselves into…godlings—all it takes…will be just half a century…where science beats gods…and devils, saints and ghosts alike…at only…a fraction of second, when a whim…pops up for a human…to go back…to a wild animal, again…
Now given each organism as a biochemical algorithm, your life is a programmed process proving your consciousness is actually far less valuable than a fucking Frankenstein’s AI
As giant ants march ahead in nightly arrays
Demonstrating against the ruling humans
Along the main street of every major city
Hordes of hordes of vampires flood in, screaming
Aloud, riding on hyenas and
Octopuses, waving skeletons
In their hairy hands, whipping at old werewolves
Or all-eyed aliens standing by
With their blood-dripping tails
Gathering behind the masses are ghosts and spirits
Of all the dead, victims of fatal diseases
Murders, rapes, tortures, wars, starvation, plagues
Led by deformed devils and demons
As if in an uprising, to seek revenge
On every living victor in the human shape
Some smashing walls and fences, others
Barbecuing human hearts like inflated frogs
Still others biting at each other’s soul around black fires
All in a universal storm of ashes and blood
Up above in the sky is a red dragon flying by
With a heart infected by the human virus
Second Departure: for Yeats
Going, going away in an ever retreating bay
The ebb starts below a quickened sun setting
People swarm here, watching, picking, fighting
Over the fishes, shrimps, crabs, shells, weeds
All left stranded, struggling for waters on the beach
They do not care if darkness stalks right behind
Their shadows, rolling like a tide upon their souls
They care only about the benefits they can gather
The sea produce they can trade with one another
Surely some ignorance is still in proper place
Surely the second departing is taking place
The Second Departing! The very idea stirs in the minds
A huge flock of crows beating their darkening wings
Flapping into the narrow sky of the prolonged history
It’s these crows, these very unidentifiable black birds
That are driving the light beyond the horizon, inner or outer
(Where they have found God as a redundant re-creation
Where they believe they are the right gods for themselves)
Epilogue: A Parallel Poem
Just as both God and Devil are man’s incarnation, so are Heaven and Hell both man’s construction.
I
From the front yard of a melodious morning
From the busy road of a sweet Saturday
From the moist corner of a heavy march
From the back lane of pale winter
We have come, here and now, all gathering
In big crowds gathering in big crowds
Gathering in ever-bigger crowds gathering
For the boat to cross the wide wild waters
Before the fairy ferry is fated to fall
Under our feet too heavy with earthy mud
II
You may well hate Charon
But you cannot help feeling envious:
That business of carrying the diseased
Across the River Styx is ever so prosperous
The only monopoly in the entire universe
That has a market share
Larger than the market itself
Daydreaming, on this side
Of the river, how you might wish
To be an entrepreneur like him
A success American dreamer
III
Flying between sea and sky
Between day and night
Amid heavenly or oceanic blue
I lost all my references
To any timed space
Or a localized time
Except the non-stop snorting
Of a stranger neighbor
Then, beyond the snorts rising here
And more looming there
I see tigers, lions, leopards
And other kinds of hunger-throated predators
Darting out of every passenger’s heart
Running amuck around us
As if released from a huge cage
As if in a dreamland
The Bardo Group Beguines, publisher of The BeZine, is pleased to welcome Mbizo Chirasha, Anjum Wasim Dar, and Kella Hanna-Wayne to our team.
MBIZO CHIRASHA (Mbizo, The Black Poet) is a recipient of PEN Deutschland Exiled Writer Grant (2017), Literary Arts Projects Curator, Writer in Residence, Blogs Publisher, Arts for Human Rights/Peace Activism Catalyst, Social Media Publicist and Internationally Anthologized Writer, 2017 African Partner of the International Human Rights Arts Festival Exiled in Africa Program in New York. 2017 Grantee of the EU- Horn of Africa Defend Human Rights Defenders Protection Fund. Resident Curator of 100 Thousand Poets for Peace-Zimbabwe, Originator of Zimbabwe We Want Poetry Movement. He has published a collection of poetry, Good Morning President, and co-created another one Whispering Woes of Ganges and Zembezi with Indian poet Sweta Vikram.
ANJUM WASIM DAR (Poetic Oceans) was born in Srinagar (Indian occupied Kashmir) in 1949. Her family opted for and migrated to Pakistan after the Partition of India and she was educated in St Anne’s Presentation Convent Rawalpindi where she passed the Matriculation Examination in 1964. Anjum ji was a Graduate with Distinction in English in 1968 from the Punjab University, which ended the four years of College with many academic prizes and the All Round Best Student Cup, but she found she had to make extra efforts for the Masters Degree in English Literature/American Studies from the Punjab University of Pakistan since she was at the time also a back-to-college mom with three school-age children.
Her work required further studies, hence a Post Graduate Diploma in Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) from Allama Iqbal Open University Islamabad and a CPE, a proficiency certificate, from Cambridge University UK (LSE – Local Syndicate Examination – British Council) were added to her professional qualifications.
KELLA HANNA-WAYNE (Yopp) is a disabled, chronically/mentally ill freelance writer who is the editor, publisher, and main writer for Yopp, a social justice blog dedicated to civil rights education, elevating voices of marginalized people, and reducing oppression; and for GlutenFreeNom.Com, a resource for learning the basics of gluten-free cooking and baking. Her work has been published in Ms. Magazine blog, Multiamory, Architrave Press and is forthcoming in a chapter of the book Twice Exceptional (2e) Beyond Learning Disabilities: Gifted Persons with Physical Disabilities. For fun, Kella organizes and DJ’s an argentine tango dancing event, bakes gluten-free masterpieces, sings loudly along with pop music, and makes cat noises. You can find her on Facebook, Twitter, Patreon, Medium, and Instagram.
The BeZine thebezine.com
bardogroup@gmail.com
This is a digital publication founded by The Bardo Group Beguines, a virtual arts collective.
The Zine is published regularly each quarter and each Zine is themed:
March – Waging Peace;
June -Environmental Sustainability/Environmental Justice;
September – Social Justice; and
December – Life of the Spirit.
The BeZine communications and submissions go to bardogroup@gmail.com
The call for Zine submissions generally opens for 4-to-6 weeks before publication and closes on the 10th of the month in which the Zine is to be published. The Call for Submissions to the March 15 issue – themed Waging Peace – is currently open and will close on March 10. Submissions for the Zine blog may be sent at any time.
Our 2020 100TPC logo designed by team member Corina Ravenscraft (Dragon’s Dreams)
.
In September we also do 100,000 Poets (and others ) for Change. This is a global event (see 100TPC.org) and at The BeZine we do a virtual event in which everyone may participate from anywhere in the world. A virtual event also facilitates and encourages participation by the homebound. Contributing Editor, Michael Dickel (Meta/ Phor(e) /Play – Words, Images, & More) hosts. 100TPC is held on the fourth Saturday in September. We hold the event open for 24 hours, sometimes longer.
Occasionally, we have a theme for the month on the Zine blog. February 2020 is illness and disability. This may include mental illness. This event is co-hosted by YOPP!, a social justice blog dedicated to civil rights eduction, elevating voices of marginalized people, and reducing oppression, which was founded and is managed by Kella Hanna-Wayne, one of our new Zine team members.
We are not yet firm on doing April as poetry month but that will probably happen. It is likely that in August 2020 – like August 2019 – the blog will focus on Climate Action.
The Bezine also offers two Facebook Discussion Groups:
The BeZine 100TPC IS NOT a place to share poetry or announce publication. Through this group we’re especially interested in filling an information gap by collecting links to pieces on practical initiatives – ideas for taking action – from anywhere in the world, “best practices” so to speak that foster peace, sustainability and social justice, especially those that might be easily picked up and implemented elsewhere. This has been an uphill battle but the dream that people will regularly start using it for that thrives.
. The BeZine Arts and Humanities Page (not just for poetry) is a place to share all your arts activities and accomplishments, not just poetry, in the hope of inspiring one another and encouraging collaborations among the arts and within our community. Through this group you are invited to announce publications, showings, events et al. You are encouraged to share your videos: music, poetry readings, photography, art, film and so forth.
.
The BeZine is an entirely volunteer effort and we are unable to pay contributors but neither do we charge submission or subscription fees.
On behalf of The Bardo Group Beguines and
In the spirit of love (respect) and community, Jamie Dedes
Managing Editor
See a procession of young mothers chattering their way From water fountains in grenade torn sandals And blood laced bras Decade of Bullets, Mbizo Chirasha
Is fading the memory of its son,
Who for words must ride the night
Fleeing ears that hear thunder on a babies purity guggle,
Zvegona, my homestead,
Ancestors are watching
Elders on a scheming mission
Trading lies with more lies
The road to Zvegona
Your Sideroads sigh
Your song is silent
Only hiccups of mothers greet the sun
Yearning for the return of the bearded child
Who lives on the strings of truth
Truth refused a seat at the council of baboons on the lagoons
Goons settling scores on the assumptions that a boy has a price,
Well, the boy true has a price
But not one you can pay with looted coins
The boy has shaved his hair not his brains
The boy has slipped his boots on and truth has raised its flag
And the spirits of truth sing his Achilles heels on,
So Zvegona, the village of the lucky poet,
Grow thistles and thorns
Feed cattle and goats
The boy has shaved his beard
Ready for a walk back, to shave the land of all pretentious shenanigans
Uprooting the weeds and weevils
Repair the kraal too,
Where roosters shall announce light unto the land,
Currently bent double under the gargantuan weight of lying tongues.
Zvegona, you are my yesterday
Zvegona, you are my tomorrow in whatever form, shape or …….
The first New Look Brave Voices Poetry Journal will be out by the 15th of December 2019. It is a Christmas gift. Our deadline for articles [and poetry] is the 10th of December 2019. We look forward to contributions and features with a length of 1500 words. You can send these in the body of mail with photos as attachments. Please include your publishable photos and a fifteen line bio to bravevoicespoetry@gmail.com
We’ve received letters of support to go in Mbizo’s applications for grants and safe harbor, but the Go-Fund-Me effort is still not to goal, which would provide for the immediate need for pantry staples, computer, and so forth. Without predictable computer access, Mbizo has not yet been able to do his interview with the Canadian radio show, though the offer still stands.
International Human Rights Festival, the entity that sponsored Mbizo’s Go-Fund-Me, has attracted $480 and raised the goal to $750. They have cut him some partial funding for now. Meanwhile, folks, I suggest that if enough of us donated the price of one morning latte, we’d make the goal. What do you say? A whole bunch of tidbits would combine for a whole lot of success. You can make your donation anonymously HERE.
If you are able and interested in helping in any way, you can contact Mbizo directly at: girlchildcreativity@gmail.com
– Jamie Dedes
“We remain resilient in the quest for justice, freedom of expression and upholding of human rights through Literary Activism and Artivism. ALUTA CONTINUA.” Mbizo Chirasha
MBIZO CHIRASHA is a recipient of PEN Deutschland Exiled Writer Grant (2017), Literary Arts Projects Curator, Writer in Residence, Blogs Publisher, Arts for Human Rights/Peace Activism Catalyst, Social Media Publicist and Internationally Anthologized Writer, 2017 African Partner of the International Human Rights Arts Festival Exiled in Africa Program in New York. 2017 Grantee of the EU- Horn of Africa Defend Human Rights Defenders Protection Fund. Resident Curator of 100 Thousand Poets for Peace-Zimbabwe, Originator of Zimbabwe We Want Poetry Movement. He has published a collection of poetry, Good Morning President, and co-created another one Whispering Woes of Gangesand Zembezi with Indian poet Sweta Vikram.
A demonstration in London against Robert Mugabe. Protests are discouraged by Zimbabwean police in Zimbabwe. / Photo courtesy of woWings under CC BY-SA 2.5 license.
– Mbizo Chirasha
I was born in this month – the month of bitterness, violence and numbness. In this month the Soweto died in a reckless killing by the apartheid regime. What a fuss , horrible. Yes we live to forgive – with memories haunting peasant iron-hoe skulls. We celebrate the DAY OF AFRICAN CHILD.
In the year of the blood ballot, in my country, a country once the honey hive and the breadbasket of the African continent, blood flooded villages, death rained our valleys, tears dripped the aged and wrinkled of the war tired poor patriots – CODE named the Re-RUN- JUNE 27 2008. Those who were perceived as reckless voters had their not-voting-good hands chopped off. Grief engulfed the land whose belly is pregnant with uranium, gold, diamond, emerald, and copper. The masses are hungry, tired of abuse and corruption. Tired of the MADNESS!
I was born in a sweet – bitter month – June. My mother remembers that the night of my coming to this earth. It was raining. It was after a brutal pungwe, after vanamukoma varova vatengesi namatanda, vanamukoma vamboimba. After a dinner of village goat meat, lashes and songs. What a PARADOX!. Bullets shelled that night resonating with claps of thunder. As war rained, winter rained rained. A Life was born – a booming voice, charcoal black veil, a tight fist clutching talents, hopes, dreams, words. WORDS!
I feel to recollect some of the poems i shared some years ago.
POEMS
DEAR COMMISSAR.
Dear commissar
my poetry is
political baboons puffing wind of vendetta
splashes of sweet flowing buttock valleys of pay less city labourers
rough crackling red clay of sanctions smashing poverty corrupted face of my village
presidential t shirt tearing across bellies of street hustlers
mute bitter laughter of political forests after the falling of political lemon trees
Dear commissar
my poetry is
foot signatures of struggle mothers and green horns
bewitched by one party state cocaine
new slogan hustlers boozing promises after herbal tea of change rhetoric
street nostrils dripping stink and garbage
tears chiseling rocky breasts of mothers who lost wombs
in the charcoal of recount
Dear commissar
my poetry is
rhythm of peasant drums dancing the new gimmick
unknowingly
political jugglers eating voter drumsticks after another ballot loot.
ZIMBABWE
harare tonight you sleep a full sleep, may be
after a sunset of a nationalist and democrat table talk
cactus and roses blooming together
your sunshine eaten by rough talk and hate verbs
pavements designed by banana peels and potholes extended from
robot less highways
that beggar still linger around the freedom corner/julius nyerere avenue
the blind woman grioting around liberation street/herbert chitepo
Bulawayo your sacredness is bound
by bones of mzilikhazi and breath of lobengula
place of killing , dissidents and innocents
died when bullet wind swept your nights
tell me how many times you coughed blood
a place of kings , Ntabazinduna
Kwekwe
your intestines pregnant with gold ,copper , iron and more
heart of the nation
where soils heave with wealth
crocodiles depleted your dignity
leopards stole the color of your rhythm
flex your muscles and claim your heartbeat
Masvingo Ezimbabwe
great zimbabwe,pride robbed
changamire and mutapa turning their in magic stones
inflation eroded your pride
corruption rode your back
blood corroded your dignity
cry for a ceremonial cleansing
land of sacred , land of rituals
land of silence
Mutare
mist of inyanga sneeze glee and laughter in your back
while chimani mani cough out threats and thoughts
lungs of marange choking with diamonds
corrupted fields
defamed wealth
here in the land of the east , i see
the scarred face of the sun
chopped breasts of the moon
villagers tired of toyi toyi
patriots damned by hunger
peasants freezing in propaganda
revolutions eating kindergartens
butcheries of human flesh
winter elections erected poverty.
Gweru
i see uniform less children trudging through
winter corridors, barefooted
you are colder than joburg,though emotions
boiled during elections
cockroaches breeding other cockroaches in
once midlands hotel
emptiness , hunger ,cold and thoughts
city of progress , rewrite your progress
Rushinga
death threatened even the dead and their shadows
when struggle returned back to war
on the road again fighting enemies of the state their sons
perfume of human flesh roasting in charcoal of violence
March was cruel than april
this season was a parody of nazi hitler
Kariba
i like how zambezi vomit fish
crocodiles eating rot and sun
hippos dancing the moonshine
zambia whispering copper in your ears
you are regaining your light.
zimbabwe
let fabrics of madness bleach in acid of reason.
FREEDOM DISCORD
children will not go down with the sinking sun
sacrificed on altars of ambition
crucified buy forces of expediency
tear graffiti scrawling
on debris of their slums of poverty and hovels of crime
we are children born out of the hot sun of Sahara and burning sands of Kalahari
we belong to the semen and condom drunk streets of home
womb of our past explode with souls of martyrs and bones of freedomites choked by ropes of stigmatization
we are morphine -fuelled and marijuana
doped youngsters whose praise
and freedom is robbed by slogan fraudsters
we are dogs breakfasting
from cucumbers and feasting condoms for supper
children of pandemic genocided villages
slaves of sugar and blood
never fondled the breasts of freedom
licked the tears of our mothers
have no dignity to celebrate
we are souls blighted in sufferings
bring us nanobitas of democracy
not shigellas of autocracy.
MBIZO CHIRASHA is a recipient of PEN Deutschland Exiled Writer Grant (2017), Literary Arts Projects Curator, Writer in Residence, Blogs Publisher, Arts for Human Rights/Peace Activism Catalyst, Social Media Publicist and Internationally Anthologized Writer, 2017 African Partner of the International Human Rights Arts Festival Exiled in Africa Program in New York. 2017 Grantee of the EU- Horn of Africa Defend Human Rights Defenders Protection Fund. Resident Curator of 100 Thousand Poets for Peace-Zimbabwe, Originator of Zimbabwe We Want Poetry Movement. He has published a collection of poetry, Good Morning President, and co-created another one Whispering Woes of Gangesand Zembezi with Indian poet Sweta Vikram.
I’ve read Michael’s latest collection and will post a review, interview, and some sample poems shortly on The Poet by Day… Meanwhile NOWIS THE TIME TO PRE-ORDERMichael Dickel’s title, Nothing Remembers.
– Jamie Dedes, Managing Editor, The BeZine
Advanced praise:
.
“He raises the question of whether the past can be preserved in memory, or whether memory is most effective in the face of loss. Either way, what does the past leave us, who are we with or without the past, and if poetry can occasionally fill gaps in our present, what if anything can it give us of our past? Is poetry anything at all — or is it nothing at all, and is the nothing of poetry the best memorialization? Dickel’s sensory, sensual, musical lyric roves across wet and dry landscapes, food and drink, family and friends, darkness and light, sleep and wakefulness, dreams and reality. His words hover between his homes in the Mideast and the American Midwest, conveying the fragility of present and past, enacting a memory at high risk of loss, maintaining faith against staggering odds. Nothing Remembers is a dream of peace, the peace that may come if and when persons and peoples live in a present comfortable with close and distant memory.
–Hassan Melechy, author of Kerouac: Language, Poetics, and Territory (Bloomsbury) and A Modest Apocalypse (Eyewear)
.
Michael Dickel combines powerful imagery and poetic beauty with a reality beneath life’s skin, that will gently shake the reader into an awareness, refreshing and engaging. He will take you through his pages to a ‘resting state’ where possibilities in your mind will feel endless.
–Silva Merjanian, author of Life and Legends
.
Between knowing and dreaming, shattered screams, pulses, shadows and longing, Michael Dickel’s arresting fourth collection, Nothing Remembers, navigates an erotics of re-membrance renegotiating a Proustian ethos of things resonant, prescient, and the ghostly revenance of hope.
–Adeena Karasick, author of Salomé: Woman of Valor
.
“I know so many wildly talented writers. It is one of the great privileges in my life. Michael Dickel is one of them: he uses language like layers of color in a complex painting — you can access experiences that you otherwise wouldn’t have. I’ve just preordered his upcoming collection, Nothing Remembers, from Finishing Line Press; poetry lovers, this is worth having.”
–Ina Roy-Faderman, author of 56 Days of August: an anthology of postcard poems
My mom had her first mastectomy in 1949 when she was pregnant with me. Things were different then. Mom and her contemporaries had no support after mastectomy. They had the surgery, were sent to get fitted for prostheses … and that was that. There were no hospital or clinic classes in art and poetry for healing. There were no support groups, no talk therapy. Perhaps worst of all, there was no privacy about medical records. My mother actually turned down a promising job opportunity because the firm’s board members wanted to review her medical records before hire.
Things have improved since Mom’s day, thank goodness. Privacy and rights are better protected. There’s patient support available before, during and after mastectomy. There are more options after recovery then chosing between having or not having prostheses. I’m artsy enough myself, I guess, that I love – and am touched – that some women choose to cover their scars with gorgeous, colorful and creative designs like the one below, which triggered this post. Allegedly Facebook kept taking this photograph down, seeing it as offensive. Who knows? Maybe they do. Maybe they don’t. I can’t image why they would. This is a brave and beautiful thing. There’s nothing obscene about it.
Tattoos over breast-surgery scars started – as far as I know – with a poet and writer, Deena Metzger:
c photo by Hella Hammid
Deena (b. 1936), the proud Amazon. This photograph of her is iconic and became – with the addition of the verse below – “The Poster,” which was designed by Sheila Levrant de Bretteville.
I am no longer afraid of mirrors where I see the sign of the amazon, the one who shoots arrows. There was a fine red line across my chest where a knife entered, but now a branch winds about the scar and travels from arm to heart. Green leaves cover the branch, grapes hang there and a bird appears. What grows in me now is vital and does not cause me harm. I think the bird is singing. I have relinquished some of the scars. I have designed my chest with the care given to an illuminated manuscript. I am no longer ashamed to make love. Love is a battle I can win. I have the body of a warrior who does not kill or wound. On the book of my body, I have permanently inscribed a tree.
Appropo our upcoming June issue of The BeZine, I particularly appreciate Deena’s essay, The Language and Literature of Restoration.. I think the quotation (below) is relevant to our concerns for our earthly environment, which is the focus of the June issue. Deena is holding us – lovers of nature, writers, poets, and lovers of the arts – accountable for our part in what comes next, extinction or survival.
“Extinction stalks us. Not an act of God, but a consequence of how we have chosen to live our lives. Such choices are handed to us by language and literature. Literature that is reduced to media, obsessed with violence, conflict, sensationalism, nationalism and speciesism. We are each responsible – we participate – no exceptions. The antidote for extinction is restoration. Languages and literatures that lead toward restoration are essential. So we have to try ….” MORE
“THE BeZINE” CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS thebezine.com is open for the upcoming June edition to be published on June 15, deadline June 10. This is an entirely volunteer effort, a mission. We are unable to pay contributors but neither do we charge for submissions or subscriptions. The theme is sustainability. We publish poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, feature articles, art and photography, and music videos and will consider anything that lends itself to online posting. There are no demographic restrictions. We do not publish work that promotes hatred or advocates for violence. All such will be immediately rejected. We’d like to see work that doesn’t just point to problems but that suggests solutions. We are also interested in initiatives happening in your community – no matter where in the world – that might be easily picked up by other communities. Please forward your submissions to bardogroup@gmail.com No odd formatting. Submit work in the body of your email along with a BRIEF bio. Work submitted via Facebook or message will not be considered for publication. We encourage you to submit work in your first language, but it must be accompanied by translation into English.
“Pithy and powerful, poetry is a popular art form at protests and rallies. From the civil rights and women’s liberation movements to Black Lives Matter, poetry is commanding enough to gather crowds in a city square and compact enough to demand attention on social media. Speaking truth to power remains a crucial role of the poet in the face of political and media rhetoric designed to obscure, manipulate, or worse.” MORE, Poetry Foundation
OVER THE NEXT FEW DAYS, I’m inviting all Facebook friends – and this post is an open invitation – whether you are poets or not – to Like 100,000 Poets (and friends) for Change 2018 GLOBAL EVENT. Of course, there’s no obligation to do so, however given the state of the world at this time, it’s important to throw our energy and support behind this effort. It sends a message to those who . . .
use their power to harm people, culture and environment,
to the folks on the run who don’t know we care, and
to each other that we are together – have one another – in support of PEACE, SUSTAINABILITY & SOCIAL JUSTICE.
Really I think we outnumber the bad guys. We just don’t get the press. We have to make our own.
FROM MICHAEL ROTHENBERG:
“Do you want to join other poets, musicians, artists, mimes, dancers, photographers, performing artists, clerics, and friends of the arts around the USA and across the planet in a demonstration/celebration of poetry to promote serious social, environmental, and political change?
“September 29th is the global 100 Thousand Poets for Change Day, 2018!
“This is our 8th year!
“If you would like to organize an event in your community, join us here and write to us directly to register your event at
– Michael Rothenberg, Co-founder of 100TPC with Terri Carrion
UNIQUE EVENT AS PART OF 100,000 POETS (and friends) for Change 2018, Global
American-Israeli Poet, Michael Dickel (Meta/ Phor(e) / Play) and others are organizing a 100TPC event in Jerusalem during Sukkot this year. Sukkot is a harvest holiday celebrated in temporary structures (a sukkah, singular; sukkot, plural) to commemorate the time when the Jews wandered in the wilderness. It is traditional to eat meals and sleep in the sukkot during the week of the holiday. The plan is to offer poetry, shared food, and comfort in one or more sukkah in Jerusalem in the spirit of peace, justice, and sustainability. More details to come. This year Sukkot ends during 100TPC weekend.
Connect with Michael HERE on Facebook for more information if you want to help with and/or attend the Sukkot event. You can also leave a message for Michael Dickel here at The BeZine blog in the comments section below. I’ll make sure he sees it.
Non-Jews living in and near Jerusalem are welcome.
This event in Jerusalem suggests another way to organize around 100TPC, which could be emulated elsewhere. What holy days or feast days are celebrated in your tradition near September 29, 100TPC Global 2018? Or, do as Rev. Terri Stewart (Beguine Again) did one year: 100,000 Peacemakers for Change. Egypt did 100,000 Mimes for Change. There have been 100,000 Drummers for Change … and Musicians and Photographers as well. All these registered their events with 100,000 Poets for Change. Our only limits are a lack of energy, imagination and passion, so rev up your engines and let’s do it …
Let’s do it … and, let’s get the word out with Joy! Gratitude! Caring! Sharing!
If you are organizing a registered 100TPC event in your area, I’m happy to include details about your event on The Poet by Day if you send your announcement to me at thepoetbyday@gmail.com
MICHAEL DICKEL a poet, fiction writer, and photographer, has taught at various colleges and universities in Israel and the United States. Dickel’s writing, art, and photographs appear in print and online. His poetry has won international awards and been translated into several languages. His chapbook, Breakfast at the End of Capitalism came out from Locofo Chaps in 2017. Is a Rose Press released his most recent full-length book (flash fiction), The Palm Reading after The Toad’s Garden, in 2016. Previous books: War Surrounds Us, Midwest / Mid-East, and The World Behind It, Chaos…He co-edited Voices Israel Volume 36(2010). He was managing editor for arc-23 and arc-24. With producer / director David Fisher, he received an NEH grant to write a film script about Yiddish theatre. He is the former chair of the Israel Association of Writers in English. Meta/ Phor(e) /Play is Michael’s blogZine Michael on Social Media: Twitter | FaceBook Page | Instagram | Academia Michael is also an a member of The BeZine core team.
It’s great to get a poem or story published. It’s about income and getting read and for some it’s validation as well. These are all important (even vital), but I was reminded recently that our poetry and other writing is about so much more.
“The title of David Cooper’s book on Kabbalah invites us to re-think the Creator as Creating: God is a Verb. While I don’t want to equate science to God in a religious sense, I want to borrow this re-conception. Science is creative, creating, if you will, knowledge of the world. Science is a verb.”
Jamie Dedes
A friend of mine came to visit and glowed when she told me she’d read Michael’s introduction. God is a Verb and Science is a verb popped out at her. Something she’d been struggling with suddenly fell into place. Other company arrived and I wasn’t able to get further explanation. I’m pleased but not surprise with her reaction to Michael’s piece. It demonstrates the power of words to bring joy, clarification and healing.
My own recent experience: a few people commenting or emailing me saying my post here – not with a bang but a whimper – helped release needed tears.
On another occasion in woman in Scotland wrote to say she’d read my poem – Wabi Sabi – to her wabi sabi group. They found it inspiring. Wow! While I do need my payments, it’s this sort of thing – this human connection – that is satisfying right down to the marrow of my bones.
Poetry is also important as an entry point into sacred space for both artist and audience. This is motivation for everyone to practice their art, whether professionally or as amateur, which is not a pejorative. I’m sure many of you – if not all of you – know what I mean. There’s a shift that happens. Sometimes it feels more like channeling than writing. The experience is illuminating, healing and peaceful. An unexpected insight often arrives just when you need it.
Our job as poets and writers goes even further: we bear witness, we give voice to the voiceless, and we observe and commemorate.
English Poet Myra Schneider at her 80th Birthday celebration and the launch of her 12th collection
Myra Schneider said in an interview HERE, that “I believe the role of the poet is to reflect on human experience and the world we live in and to articulate it for oneself and others. Many people who suffer a loss or go through a trauma feel a need for poetry to give voice to their grief and to support them through a difficult time. When an atrocity is committed poems are a potent way of expressing shock and anger, also of bearing witness. I think that the poet can write forcefully, using a different approach from a journalist, about subjects such as climate change, violence, abuse and mental illness and that this is meaningful to others. I very much believe too that poetry is a way of celebrating life. I think it deserves a central place in our world.”
So, as we celebrate poetry this month, be sure to give yourself time to read and write … for the sake of your spirit and for the rest of us too.
Please join us at The BeZine on April 15th for our special interNational poetry issue. Michael Dickel is the lead editor.
Black limbs with outstretched sleeves full of holes and bloodstained leaves, soughing from groves of tattered trees, blowing mournfully in a lead-filled breeze.
MBIZO CHIRASHA (
ANJUM WASIM DAR (
KELLA HANNA-WAYNE (
The BeZine thebezine.com
Our 2020 100TPC logo designed by team member Corina Ravenscraft (
upholding of human rights through Literary Activism and Artivism. ALUTA CONTINUA.” Mbizo Chirasha
MBIZO CHIRASHA
“THE BeZINE” CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS 
The BeZine 
