Projects – Page 38

One Hundred and Eighty Degrees

until you see it and approach it
the unknown that keeps tugging unexpectedly

you’ve imagined perfection,
and after all the effort
find it ordinary

you try to recapture it
in the most promising light;
then, turn 180°
as with a camera

Voilà!
Perfect!

Hope.

It’s like falling in love.

ANTONI OOTO has and still looks for answers which he shares at times with poetry. He finds pleasure in reading the works of many poets such as WS Merwin, Jane Kenyon, Donald Hall, Elizabeth Bishop, Margret Atwood, and the humor of James Tate.“I read various poet’s first thing in the morning aloud. My wife and I discuss the structure, rhythm and beauty of the lines.” Reading poetry aloud (he feels) allows the voice to find a cadence that the reader might miss when seeing the words on a page. Antoni Ooto is a poet and flash fiction writer. He came to writing late after many years as an abstract expressionist artist. He eventually found his voice in poetry. His works appear in Front Porch Review, Amethyst Review, The Ginger Collect, Soft Cartel, Eldritch Lake, Pilcrow & Dagger, Young Ravens Literary Review, and many others. Antoni works in upstate New York with his wife poet, storyteller Judy DeCroce.

Simply a Song

What if the spiritual world were simply
a song, a song that stripped
away the world yet left us
home and listening

but not home as we knew it,
a deeper home that just kept
getting deeper until we were
no longer big enough to hold it

And we had to – no, wanted to –
let the ever-changing, ever growing
song be what it was
and not constrained by
small lungs and narrow mouths.

Accepting our acceptance
The song grew as we dissolved
and was not heard anymore
because it had replaced hearing
With being,

And then there was only being
And what is the Being is
heard by everyone who listens
but I was not there, anymore
Because

We are here

STEPHEN (STEVE) TANHAM is a mystical writer, poet and prolific photographer. He is one of the founding Directors of the Silent Eye School of Consciousness, a not-for-profit distance-learning organisation that offers a proven path to deepening our internal and external consciousness. Steve lives in the English Lake District with his wife, Bernie and their Rag Doll cat and Collie dog. Prior to founding the Silent Eye, Steve spent a working life in IT, culminating in running his own software company for over twenty years. Throughout his adult life, Steve has worked as a senior field officer (on a voluntary basis) for various mystical schools, including the Rosicrucian Order AMORC and The Servants of the Light.

Steve is the author of several mystical books. They are written as stories rather than more formally. These are available on Amazon in both print and ebook format. Steve’s Amazon Page UK is HERE. Steve’s Amazon Page U.S. is HERE. His WordPress website is suningemini.blog. Steve can be contacted on rivingtide@gmail.com

just sayin’

just mindin’ my businesss
just walkin’ down the street
move along move along
(you lazy loot… get your black ass gone)

just enterin’ my home
in this hood i don’t belong
don t shoot don t shoot!!
(tough luck kid! your color’s all wrong)

i’m just eighteen
the whole rainbow all in one
i was black before my father
i’m as old as the sun
the same DNA
as the moon and the stars
the bloodstains on my pillow
are no different than yours

please Officer PlEASE!
don’t point your gun at me
i’m not the enemy
i wasnt’ born i wasn’t mourned to be
white chalk on asphalt
what ? your murderin’ me is my fault?

you call me the ‘ n’ word
Martin Luther MalcolmX Mandela
you call me the ‘n’ word
and claim you are a brother
while you insult ass-ault
my father sister mother
(you mother!)

beaten in our fields
raped in our beds
the seeds you sow still reek
of oppression and dread
of lead and rubber bullets
of pointy gnarling teeth
you re the Boogeyman from Hell
come to get me in my sleep

you’re darker than night
you’re blinder than blind
i’m the candlelit vigil
of your impoverished mind
the nightmare the daymare of sirens screaming
another brother down !! let freedom ring ??
he died for your american dream!
shrouded in secrecy indecency bigotry
democracy of thee i sing? what a mockery !!
we choke on your hipocracyyyy

i’m talkin bout YOU Mister Evil
oounting blood like money
talkin bout YOU Snake Eyes gamblin away our lives
YOU Ms Fraidy Cat hiding behind your chagrin
tightening the noose with sympathy around our necks
just boys barely men we’re hep to your sins
to the legacy of hate of apathy the shudder of death
the fear of our own footsteps

strange fruit hangin’ from the old oak tree
roots steeped in blood and sorrow
hearts caught in our throats for eternity
who knows who’s next tomorrow

i’m just eighteen
the whole rainbow all in one
i was black before my father
i’m as old as the sun
the same DNA
as the moon and the stars
the bloodstains on my pillow
no different than yours

generations of tears
flow from ancient holy skeyes
mine eyes have seeeeen the glory
the in-justice of our lives
you conceived in love
what are you SO afraid of
the color of my skin
or the darker matter you’re made of
deface me debase me erase me
you can’t replace me
deny me or your own humanityyy
you can shackle my dreams
but the spirit flies free
you can shackle my dreams
but the spirit flies free
and

when i honor you
i honor me
when i honor you
i honor me
when i honor you
i honor me
when i honor you
i honor me

ANTONIA ALEXANDRA KILMENKO is a former San Francisco Poetry Slam Champion and she is widely published. Her work has appeared in (among others) XXI Century World Literature (in which she represents France) and Maintenant : Journal of Contemporary Dada Writing and Art archived at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. and New York’s Museum of Modern Art. She is the recipient of two grants: one from Poets in Need, of which Michael (100 Thousand Poets for Change) Rothenberg is a co-founder; the second—the 2018 Generosity Award bestowed on her by Kathleen Spivack and Josheph Murray for her outstanding service to international writers through SpokenWord Paris where she is Writer/ Poet in Residence.

I Pegasus

lift my hooves for gallop,
rise as my white wings open.
Wind rushes into my pricked ears.
Excitement whinnies from my mouth,
ripples through my flanks, drives me
towards a place that’s always cloudless.
Below me are snow-spattered peaks,
valleys where rivers wander, where trees
are laden with oranges, small suns
which pay homage to the sphere above.
Below me are huge cities with domes,
spires and innumerable buildings,
the tallest invade the blue of sky.
I miss nothing: the glassy stare
of cars stampeding like maddened cattle,
humans fleeing from burning towns,
forests felled like mighty armies,
the sea hurling itself in fury
at the land, barren fields thirsting
for water, skeletons of starved creatures.
I choose a verdant slope when I land,
hoof its milky grass and a spring
bubbles up from earth that’s rich
with squirming worms. Then I rejoice
for I am the breath in and the breath out,
I am the quickening which comes unbidden
to the mind, blossoms into words
that tug the heart, I am sounds which bell
the air and enthral the ear, shapes
and colours which come together
to sing. I counter hatred, destruction.
I will not be stamped out.

from Lifting the Sky (Ward Wood Publishing 2018)

MYRA SCHNEIDER has had eleven full collections of poetry published. Her most recent publications are Lifting the Sky, Ward Wood 2018, The Door to Colour (Enitharmon 2014) and the pamphlets Five Views of Mount Fuji , Fisherrow 2018) and Persephone in Finsbury Park, (Second Light Publications 2016). Other publications include books about personal writing, in particular, Writing My Way through Cancer, Jessica Kingsley 2003 and Writing Your Self (co-written with John Killick), Continuum Books 2008. Myra’s books also include three novels for young people. She was shortlisted for a Forward Prize in 2007 and her poetry has been published in many anthologies and well-known journals, broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in Poetry Please and on Radio 3. She has co-editeD anthologies of poetry by contemporary women poets and is consultant to the Second Light Network for Women Poets. She writes reviews and articles about poetry and co-organizes the local Poetry in Palmers Green programme with poet Katherine Gallagher. She has run one-off poetry workshops in many parts of England, also in Ireland and Normandy and has tutored for The Poetry School since it was started by Mimi Khalvati in 1997. She lives in London UK. She has taken part in many poetry festivals and done readings all over the UK and in Ireland and Trinidad. She has also collaborated with up and coming artist Robert Aldous.

Four Poems by John Sullivan

Our Moments Clang

against each other,
clang & clang & fume
against the goad,
against the pain.
We shake it on up,
we boogie hard, like
end-a’-daze angels,
we boogie down
blind, all night long
despite the looming:
there’s always places
to go, places for being,
there’s always work
songs for singing
& our hearts, too,
need brave music,
as our moments clang
against each other,
clang & clang & fume
down any road, dressed
up to kill, stained
blood-red, always-
always ringing
in our ears.
Wounded shadows
of our singing

Angel of the Landfill

Origin is what this new angel seeks,
clawing through garbage for the
essence of what-hovers-over, the
germ-line of all storms.

Describing nothing, doing only
that action – playing strict to her
life, as chosen, maybe
just ordained.

She stops flat, frozen, smells
reek all around, rubs the faded
nubs just below her shoulders,
and asks the sky:

What have I traded my feet for?
Why?

Bird of Paradise

A Sufi, wigged and stiff inside
his unbroken dream, wakes up one
night and screams: Hey, we’re all
stuck inside this same fat dream.
See?

The world is a chest, we’re
locked down inside. See:
the lid is shut, it’s so dark,
and we give ourselves over
to scuffle, and to tears.
We allow: Go Crazy.

But if we give it over, instead,
to: “be notorious,” to swim against
that hard-chaw stream of plasma
wind whooshing off the sun, to go
peek-a-boo behind the moon, to
scream with joy inside the mad whorl

of a wild-wild river, if we unfurl before
the lid cracks, make a wing grow,
then another, if we groove the way
our first heart works its own pulse,
and same way shatter the grain of
the groove with the hammer of a

prayer of our own attention,
then: when death lifts the lid,
the ones with wings accelerate
and strobe, blow past this Zion
for, yet, at least, another Zion.
See?

The ones without wings stay
locked inside the chest.

First Contact?

point of first contact: a parking garage, well-lit,
clean-to-the-core, so much unlike home, a shiny
zone of creature comforts for whole congregations
of Porsche, BMW, Lexus, Tesla, turbo-this / turbo-that,
(perhaps) an occasional Lamborghini, and more

we don’t belong here but still must slog
through this terra incognita toward
our own low-slung, dogtown car-car.

then, we all hear it: plain and easy roll of rubber wheels
on concrete surface, smooth as frosting – closer
yet, it gets, that sound, until – mirabile dictu! –
it’s on us (perhaps): an R2D2-looking free-range droid
in patrol mode turns a corner, moves on from us
in parallel to us -like an invitation (perhaps) to play
or what?

and so, game on: I approach the droid

ignoring my cobbers and my own
internal self-improvement tape: “don’t you mess” –
I hear it say – “too much with what you do not know.”

the droid stops, its servos whir, its top
gently pivots on its middle

did I snag on a trip wire, tip off its perimeter defense net:
or what?

it moves closer to me, closer yet, then stops, again,
and stands right there: stolid, immobile, inward-looking,
or seeming-so, at least, (perhaps) even scheming-so?

Brother Droid – so I’m calling you –
or are you, indeed, my Sister?
Or both of you, together, all-at-once (perhaps)?
Or even something more I haven’t yet imagined?

Based on a Mullah Nasruddin Sufi tale

JOHN SULLIVAN was an American College Theatre Festival Playwriting regional finalist, received the ‘Jack Kerouac Literary Prize,’ ‘Writers Voice: New Voices of the West’ award, AZ Arts Fellowships (Poetry & Playwriting), Artists Studio Center Fellowship, WESTAF Fellowship, was a featured playwright at Denver’s Changing Scene Summer Play (Changing Scene Theatre), and an Eco-Arts Performance Fellow from Earth Matters On Stage / University of Oregon. He was Artistic/Producing Director of Theater Degree Zero, and directed the Augusto Boal / Theatre of the Oppressed focused applied theatre wing at Seattle Public Theater.

His work has been published in a variety of print and online venues including: Hayden’s Ferry Review, Black Bear Review, Argy-Bargy, Prose Kitchen, California Quarterly, The Lucid Stone, Oddball, OVS, Scarlet Leaf Review, Steel Toe Review, Squawk Back, Razor: a Literary Magazine, The BeZine, Pudding Magazine, Birds Piled Loosely, Madness Muse Press, Harbinger Asylum, Anti-Heroin Chic, Tumblewords: Writers Reading the West. John’s latest book, Bye-Bye No Fly Zone,has just been published by Weasel Press (Houston TX).

Lady Striga & aka “Doc Benway” Do Spirit-Memory Magic & the Object-Monster Explodes

(aka “Doc Benway” stomp-dances under the stars. As dancers go, he’s up there, all alone, on his own gimcrack pedestal. Lady Striga hovers, draped
“like a sofa between tenants.”)

(This dance is not for her benefit.)

(The Object-Monster also hovers somewhere in the space, just below the wavelength requirements of human perception. But this “cloaking” should not be framed as an attempt at stealth or espionage. The Object-Monster merely lives in a separate, parallel dimension. Very objectively, of course! Independent of the Big Bad Who,
or so we can only hope.)

aka “Doc Benway”
I feel like a new
Stretchman Beast
at the bottomeof
Goddes Secrettes

I feel like a seismic rodeo,
that skin between us all:
I want it all back, now, I do
I want it all forever, now, I do, I do

And I walk it all, forever,
like a devil’s orphan walks,
without sin and rolling-rolling,
– across oceans and oceans of serotonin –
And O what a good Phosphene Cascade Commando, am I!

And I’ll sell you fake supernal, unknowing, forever,
and I’ll sell you my spectral, my only bastard buzz
I’ll sell you starry maps to run alive through the wire
to dodge all the traps, to defile the temple fire
I’ll sell you the whole volatile-molotov-tensile-manifest/

(Lady Striga breaks into and enters aka “Doc Benway’s song at /. She shakes her drape with a loud crack and aka “Doc Benway” freezes in place. Lady Striga looms over him
like a “Mother Manta.”)

Lady Striga
Hey, you old Dreamer-Boy-Baby, you.

aka “Doc Benway”
I know …

Lady Striga
Yes. You do.

aka “Doc Benway”
I know that Voice …

Lady Striga
I know you know that.
I know you really do.
I got no eyes, but at least that’s real.
And my Voice means real trouble for you.

(Lady Striga casts her drape over aka “Doc Benway” like a net. She hums and “installs” pictures, photos, symbols, sounds-shards of “other people’s core to die for,” and eyes, lots of eyes – all over the drape like EKG electro-probes, or dermal time-release drug-pumps. In between her humming, she unveils her bricolage / elective affinity theory of memory for aka “Doc Benway’s” future use
while he performs his “mission.”)

(Think: Goody Rigby and her Feather-Topped golem
without any links to Nathaniel Hawthorne.)

Memory’s a made up thing.
That’s what we’re steady doing.
You can dig away at memory, full-bore, like a pit of gold
or copper or yellowcake: that tick, tick, ticks.
You can jig that memory, too, like an itch, and the itch warms up, the warm spreads out, and that old pit gets wider, deeper:
it all goes tick, tick, tick.
Like a clock it makes you dreamy, yes it does,
makes you dream in all four directions, all at once.
Like you walked, fell, jumped, ran
right out of your history into something else
you, maybe, really need to see.
Like an extra chromosome, or secret gene, guards its dire
consequence: like deep pain in a ghost limb you never
earned but, still, must wrap your skin around.
Like “ceaseless, inexhaustible” cold war, forever –
many faces, many voices trapped inside the mire
of their separate fates, the histories of their separate clans
– is, now, the organizing principle.
So now you can watch yourself with many pairs of eyes:
watch you watching you watching you …
then it goes all raw around you.
Then it aches, maybe, like a crushed butterfly aches:
in your very hand that crushed it, now, stigmata bloom.
But, still, you got to jig that itch.
Soon enough, you still outrun your story.

(Lady Striga finishes engineering her Feathertop. She begins a chant to wake all the dead who look like they’re merely sleeping. She also imbeds a command
to move the action into a possible future.
So Who you workin’ this one for, Lady Striga?)

“Nothing left but “Do It” for an old scratchy-man
Crawlin’ like a beetle through the wind-blown sand
Skinny bones a-buggin’ like a hoo-doo tree
Draggin’ back a bacon for baby and me.”

So go get-get-get all the kiddos.
Round up them sonny-boys
and that moon-ish girly-O
“with a dark turn of mind.”

“Wake you up, clang you heels, run you hard, away.”

(aka “Doc Benway” dreams himself back into being.
He “comes to” in fight or flight confusion.)

aka “Doc Benway”
… this blood, new blood …
– Jehoshaphat!-
these memories, new memories.
– Vergangenheitsbewältigung! –
Like my skin’s all crusty with ‘em.
Their past, my past, all stuck together, now,
Ick and ruin, ick and ruin, nothing but ick and ruin, here!
And all so very crusty!

Lady Striga
So Dreamer-Boy, you.
Look outside, look far away long, now: what do you see?

aka “Doc Benway”
I see …
I see … bum and ice and dread.
I see … Where-God-Does-Not-Live.
I see … nothing happening, nothing much going on.
Will I be what I see, forever?

Lady Striga
So Blue-Dreamer. Yes, you.
Look inside, now, look teensy: so what do you see?

aka “Doc Benway”
I see …
I see … gunshots, lightning … fire, more fire …
… I see, maybe … memories, forgeries of memories…
… bad checks, blown warrants, gun-gangs at the border…
I see “the wire’s behind us both, now,
but our feet have turned to wire.”

Lady Storage
Now you got yourself a real quest, you washed-up ghost, you
a true Zanni; now, you got you a duty, now, a gen-u-ine mission.
My own mission so it goes is bringing
this all through, just for you.
And yours is: just go fast, just go faster,
however long it takes: tell ‘em
it’s time to stop that leak and story the stone,
once again, once again.
Flesh or wire, flash or fire: same need’s still the engine.

(Now the Object-Monster senses another presence. Not Lady Striga or aka “Doc Benway,” but some(one or thing) invisible, appearing in the O-M’s field of perception like a dream in flight on furry wings. OK, so we’re anthropomorphizing like your typical dumbass human supremacist here – but – cut us some slack, please. It’s just our temporary heuristic – we’ve got nothing else to go on. To the Object-Monster these beings are all others but this new (invisible?) other is not like the others in its own other-ness. So what will the O-M do? Well probably, wait prudently, of course, for closer reconnaissance and bigger data to prime more nuanced analytics. That’s the default – just like all these other routines we’ve seen unfolding – and the O-M is good with the concept and process of waiting.
The O-M never seems to run out of time.)

(Meanwhile, aka “Doc Benway” wanders like a dazed bug around in a wobbly circle. Beyond these odd arpeggios of gesture and emotion, can he ever
wander again with a purpose?)

aka “Doc Benway”
So where does this leave me? So what, now, should I do?
Don’t want to be a lost man, that’s true enough.
Half-way out of my time into someone’s somewhere’s else:
just ain’t no good no how for me, or you.

(The Object-Monster, sensing a possible paradigm shift in aka “Doc Benway’s” core ontology, quietly “explodes” rather than risk capture and the possibility of humiliation
or even disassembly.
Or so we’ve been lead to think.)

Lady Striga
(Draped again – she does it to herself –
but speaking her own version:
a voice with hot-arc, a voice behind-beyond
the pale of standard protocols.)
You’re buggin’, baby, always buggin’.
You remember yet? You got to go and do.
Ain’t but a few of us left, now, see.
When the bug bites you, no matter where you be,
you’re bit, you’re bit into: you got to go and do.

His work has been published in a variety of print and online venues including: Hayden’s Ferry Review, Black Bear Review, Argy-Bargy, Prose Kitchen, California Quarterly, The Lucid Stone, Oddball, OVS, Scarlet Leaf Review, Steel Toe Review, Squawk Back, Razor: a Literary Magazine, BeZine, Pudding Magazine, Birds Piled Loosely, Madness Muse Press, Harbinger Asylum, Anti-Heroin Chic, Tumblewords: Writers Reading the West. John’s latest book, Bye-Bye No Fly Zone,has just been published by Weasel Press (Houston TX).

On His Way To Damascus aka “Doc Benway” Hits a Big Br(I)ck Wall

(Temporarily abandoning his shambolic career disrespecting the life-force and dodging any bolts of self-awareness aimed in his own direction, aka “Doc Benway” resolves to drop the act and turn himself inside-out to see if there’s really anything in there. As far as protocols or formulas for such a project, aka “Doc Benway” employs a multi-cultural (or neo-Colonial, depending on your POV) strategy of bricolage to kludge together a compass and a viable way-of-working these psychic interiors.)

Miz’ Chan
(Speaks directly to aka “Doc Benway”)
Ghosts (or gods) are not at war with beauty, or life,
or rain and gale-winds, or even the oppression
of so many brains tuned to vibrate, all at once.
They are at war with You.

Right Reverend RSV
(Narrates the ritual, antidotes the poison:
aka “Doc Benway” (and the others) respond in kind.)

Ecce homo, and his own personal “Rip, Rig & Panic”:how this weak and delusional raggedy-man chucks off his baby-skin, strips down to his own fat shadow and sings his wilderness to fight for his life, and atone for dismissing or freezing out
both the almost living and the nearly dead.

See the Brood awakening:how his hubris offends and infuriates all the gods and ghosts – they’re always right on top of us – and every hidden realm projects its own goblins like shadows across a heart. Topu, Sidhe, Duppy, Jumbies, Xapiripe, etc., mobilize in a blink to ensure their covert dominion’s immunity from potential human stain. Eventually, he’s struck down for his defiance by ghost-sickness, blurring space and longing, and left “weak with fright.”

Watch him lock: how he stiffens, young people carry his rigid body on their shoulders around in a “widening gyre.”
They smile while they carry him for his body shines – this fever of remembering transfigures most – and
his luck, or lack of it, rubs off.
They say: his story outruns his life.

(Miz’ Chan, Mr. Rougarou, and the Right Reverend RSV stop gyring and set aka “Doc Benway” down – actually straight up, standing still, stiff as a board. Gradually he loosens up, wiggles his fingers, stretches the rest of his body. The Brood disperses like Oberon’s gang
of anarcho-syndicalist faeries, dissolving into
Max Reinhardt’s iris, in a quick shrink to gone.)

Mr. Rougarou
Look: his lips move …

Aka “Doc Benway”
O-My-O-My, now that there’s the cookies.
Cross my heart and hope to stake my very being:
I just cut right through the blur.
I been strictly out there on my own for days, you know.
(aka “Doc Benway” throws his own self
on the “mercy of the court.”)
AH! So very much: AH!
So very much hard-used Heaven.
For Beauty’s sake alone I stand convicted,
my star in my mouth,
deaf eyes perched up top my spine
like twee standing stones.
O Happy Brain, flash and fervid,
into the Mother of Heavens unfurled, again.

(After the Brood evaporates, the Object-Monster is left to ponder (through enhanced multivariate analysis, presumably) the what’s, why’s and how’s of aka “Doc Benway’s” recent ascent from the ranks of those “who died as men before their bodies died” into a more rarified community of the duly apologized and more or less shriven, waiting on their next assignment.)

(At least that’s a possibility, though the Object-Monster plays her/his/its cards close to the vest and we have no way of knowing the parameters of any “thought process” involved. Another idea: it’s possible aka “Doc Benway” actually saw, was touched by or in some other sense contacted the Object-Monster when the Broodblew through his body. Maybe he thought the O-M was just another form of astral punisher, like the topu, or one of the sidhe. The O-M’s obvious
recon mission notwithstanding,
is the Object-Monster here to answer any of our questions, or primarily to challenge our theories by beaming back and (possibly) distorting the realities they were designed to reflect in a cognitive ricochet effect?)

His work has been published in a variety of print and online venues including: Hayden’s Ferry Review, Black Bear Review, Argy-Bargy, Prose Kitchen, California Quarterly, The Lucid Stone, Oddball, OVS, Scarlet Leaf Review, Steel Toe Review, Squawk Back, Razor: a Literary Magazine, BeZine, Pudding Magazine, Birds Piled Loosely, Madness Muse Press, Harbinger Asylum, Anti-Heroin Chic, Tumblewords: Writers Reading the West. John’s latest book, Bye-Bye No Fly Zone,has just been published by Weasel Press (Houston TX).

A Nun in Training

By the time Hanna gets home from her work at the post office, she’s ready to be a nun. By then, she needs a gentler, more cloistered, even renunciate type of lifestyle.

“Our home should be our sacred retreat,” she said to Darcy, her fifteen year old daughter. “When we come here, we need to feel we’ve reached safe ground, home ground. We need to be welcomed, or at least acknowledged. It’s like we’ve just returned home from the wars.”

“Yea, right,” Darcy said. “Was just watching my shows, mom. So what’s the big deal? That I didn’t call upstairs, hi mom? Welcome home?”

“Yea. I guess that’s it. When you don’t interrupt your media for even a minute, what it means is that Everybody Loves Raymond, or whatever you were watching…”

“Real Killers…”

“Okay, what it means is that you’ve decided that Real Killers is more important than real people. Flesh and blood people.”

“Okay, okay, mom,“ Darcy said. “I admit you’re real. But Real Killers, you yourself have to admit, can be a lot more interesting than a mom you see every day.”

Hanna laughed. “Yes, probably. Though it might depend on how hungry you are.”

“How hungry? What do you mean?“

“Well, let’s pretend you hadn’t eaten in three days, and I just came home with a slab of bacon and a loaf of bread.”

“I was eating a burrito when you came in.”

“Yes, I know, but if you hadn’t been eating a burrito, and you were real hungry, then you’d be happy to see me, right?”

“Okay. I’m happy to see you, mom. Welcome home from the wars. Thanks for bringing home the bacon. Now will you turn the TV back on?”

“Sure. Be happy to.”

“You’re weird, you know that, mom?”
“Yes, child, I do.”

“Ok. Can I get back to my program now?”

“Yes, you can. I will pray for the good guys to win.”

“That’s weird, mom,” Darcy said as she went back down stairs and Hanna went back out to the garage and flipped the breaker switch back to ‘on.’ From that day forward, Darcy yells, “Hi mom. Thanks for being home from the wars. Please don’t flip the breaker switch.”

It makes Hanna smile, just to hear it. Hanna answers Darcy kindly, then goes upstairs and changes into her at home clothes, her habit, pleased with her young nun in training downstairs. Nuns do have their loving, training rituals.

BEAR GEBHARDT is a librarian at the Ne w Buddhist Methodist Church, living in the foothills of northern Colorado, with wife of a hundred years. He’s been a free-lance writer for many decades and published eleven books, two of the latest being: A Wave of Thanks; Other Human Gestures: 31 Quick Stories; and How to Stop Smoking in One Easy Second, A Heart Mountain Monastery Murder Mystery. He’s published hundreds of articles, stories, essays and poems in well-known, somewhat-known and little-known places.

The Waste of It All

The train zoomed past some station with a loud horn. His thoughts, faster than the speed of the train. There was a misunderstanding in his factory and the workers had gone on strike. He kept getting updates from his manager and each call was worse than the other. His anger grew with each passing moment. The inefficient air conditioning didn’t help him cool down either. Another call.

“The workers have left the premises,” his his manager told him from the factory.

“Damn!” He hit the blue seat of the train with a soft thud. Not happy with the sound, he hit the back partition which co-joined two compartments. The sound was loud enough for him and gave him some satisfaction.

He looked out the window. Trying to make some sense out of all this. What was he to do on reaching the factory? How would he solve everything? Who would…?

Someone from the other side of the compartment hit the partition.

His thoughts stopped. Someone had taken away his pleasure. Angrily, he hit the partition again.

Though he felt peace with the sound, it lasted for a few seconds only.

“Bang” hit someone from the other side again.

He grew furious. Why was this happening now? Who could do this to him? He hit the partition, louder and fiercely. His hand, red with pain. Bang came the reply from the other side.

Was this one of his rival’s strategy to irritate him. He looked at his hand. The palm grew crimson and begged for some healing. He looked at his phone. Thoughts of the manager and workers pierced his mind and… Bang Bang, he hit the partition in frustration twice.

Bang Bang came the reply.

Was this really happening or was he dreaming? Unable to bear this intrusion any longer, he decided to go confront this person.

“Will you sit down, why don’t you tell him something?”

“Beta, if you fall down, it might hurt you and it will be difficult to get help. Why don’t you sit down and play with your monkey.”

The 4-year-old sat down, took his favorite soft toy and played with it.

Someone banged the compartment partition and the toddler decided to reply. He hit the monkey to the partition. It made a nice loud sound. Someone on the other end banged back. The kid enjoyed and awaited each bang with eagerness and joy.

The couple was glad that his son had found some playmate to keep him busy. Even if it meant that they were to hear some banging, they were at peace. They sat closer to each other and looked out the window until a man came in their compartment from the other side, holding his left hand with the other, his face almost red with anger, staring at them and then at the boy and then at the child’s soft toy with an expression of anger, surprise, and frustration.

SUNAYNA PAL was born and raised in Mumbai, India, Sunayna Pal and moved to the US after her marriage. With a double postgraduate from XLRI and Annamalai University, she worked in the corporate world for five-plus years before opting out to embark on her heart’s pursuits: raising funds for NGOs by selling quilled art and becoming a certified handwriting analyst. Now, a new mother, Sunayna devotes all her free time to writing and Heartfulness. Dozens of her articles and poems have been published and she is proud contributor to many international anthologies. Her name has recently appeared in Subterranean Blue Poetry, Cecile’s Writers and Poetry Super Highway. She is part of an anthology that is about to break the Guinness world of records. Know more on sunaynapal.com

In Memoriam — Reuben Woolley, Part 2

In memory of a friend, poet, publisher, and activist.

coralled gates the trees no more

Reuben Woolley

for the Great Barrier Reef, officially declared dead after 25 million years

coloured

birds don’t fly here 
not even 
	                & a dry 
time we have

white a forest

moves 
	                no longer

	                no

birds	       no

song

rust & old machines

Reuben Woolley

here we fall

                                 the same

the stories 
of 
strange.their shining 
faces broken 
now / feel

the opening 
the silent doors 
on doors unfold

                                 it’s time 
to haul out 
our lost pieces

our histories 
of shattered shell.come 
to it then 
& in our dreaming

In Memoriam

Reuben Woolley died earlier this month 2019. His poetry, publishing, and support will be missed by readers and fellow poets around the world, and here in The BeZine community. Reuben was an activist-poet, and published other activists on his online magazine, I am not a silent poet. He worked in an experimental and expressive poetics, using typography and visual aesthetics as tools of his poetic craft. He crafted language into poetry, with white space containing silences, space, and questions, among other things. His work will live after him, and continue to be with us to read.

His collection, the king is dead was published in 2014 with Oneiros Books and a chapbook, dying notes, in 2015 with Erbacce Press. Runner-up: Overton Poetry Pamphlet competition and the Erbacce Prize in 2015. A collection on the refugee crisis, skins, was published by Hesterglock Press, 2016. His collection, broken stories, came out in 2017 from 20/20 Vision Publishing, and some time we are heroes was published in 2018 from corrupt press.  He published and, as he wrote in 2017, “pretended to be busy” with the online magazines: I am not a silent poet and The Curly Mind.

The BeZine published many of his poems over the years. The poems here appeared with this artwork on Meta/ Phor(e) /Play in 2017.

In Memoriam: Reuben Woolley, Part 1

In memory of a friend, poet, publisher, and activist.

sewing the bright spaces

Reuben Woolley

stitching up the holes

		                       like

black 
windows where 
the light

leaks 
	       out

see the craters 
the fat 
drops of rain 
in dry dust

		                  spaces 
looking for me

to hollow out this 
white 
skull

tat         tat         tat

                                 "spaces
looking for me"
Michael Dickel
Digital landscape from photos
©2017

these liquid hills

Reuben Woolley

drowning

in my solid earth

		           & how
these mountains grow

listen to grave
rumour
	            they talk
to me now & in
my dying

	            deep
in all their roots

		    pull
me down / they're waiting

patient

like stones always do

“these liquid hills”—
Amalfi Coast Overlay
Michael Dickel
Digital landscape from photos
©2017

a fully moon after all these years

Reuben Woolley

holding myself / still / i am 
dust floating in torch 
light.i am tree 
cutting a sky 
& rain falls newly 		just ask 
for no answer 
		& here’s 
a lost song.unplay 
me now i never listen

this hat wearing a man.oh 
my dear i want 
a new line / bold 
& brightly hiding 
like the wolf 
behind a dark hedge

“this hat wearing a man”
Michael Dickel
Digital landscape from photos
©2017

In Memoriam

The BeZine published many of his poems over the years. These poems appeared with this artwork on Meta/ Phor(e) /Play in 2017.

Three poems on A Life of the Spirit

Poems from
Nothing Remembers
on A Life of the Spirit

Called to faith

A man stands over the culvert on the gravel road onto the farm.
The stone he hefts in his hand—igneous remnants from before time,
bits of crystal cooled across history mingled with impurities beyond memory.
He lofts this shard of the past in a slow arc that ends in the dark pool of standing water.

Sometimes he wishes he could follow, down through the water as surface tension
erases faint traces; he wishes sometimes that he could fall through the cold numbness
to sink into the soft, welcoming mud—to sleep among layers of last year’s rotting leaves
and the year’s before and the year’s before and years’ before—layers of organic memory that,

still,

do not reach the stone’s most recent memory. The stone takes no notice.
And the man does not sink with the stone into murkiness. The morning calls
him to his desire, so he chooses to return to the work at hand. There is a garden
to plow and disk. There is corn to plant and tend. There are nettles to uproot and remove.

Despite the threat of frost or hail or rabbit or deer, he trusts
that in August there will be sweet corn and tomatoes and beans.
He will gather some in and eat. He will gather some in to store. And
he will gather and save the best for next year’s seeds. These make up his act of love.

Napping in a chair

Yesterday seagulls laughed
under the storm clouds caught
in mountains behind the sea.

As I ambled through a plaza,
I heard someone playing piano
stop and start the music over.

People ate lunch, drank coffee.
The rain did not fall on them or
anyone. The ships slid slowly by.

I noticed these things. I did not
notice other things. I thought of
you, I am not sure why. I walked.

I heard sea gulls, a piano, the sea.
I listened for echoes of your voice.
I remembered something you said.

As I neared the wharf, fish swam near me.
Only faint shadows revealed them.
Two lovers sat under trees conversing.

I thought of someone. I don’t recall who.

Somewhere, a whirring fan

“With this beginning, the unknown concealed one created the palace. This palace is called אלוהים (Elohim), God. The secret is: בראשית ברא אלוהים (Bereshit bara Elohim), With beginning, _______ created God (Genesis 1:1).” — Zohar (I:15a)

“…She knows that her beloved is searching for her; so what does she do? She opens the portal to her hidden room [in the palace] slightly and reveals her face for a moment, and then hides it again.” — Zohar (II.99a)

Somewhere, a whirring fan
in an open window spins
possibilities into threads.
I heard a rumor that the
Oleander flowers shed
their pink and white grace
for poisonous reason.
A car slinks down traces
of a melted tar road.

You like to stand by the window,
and want him to see you there,
behind a curtain. He doesn’t
know you or you him. He walks
the span of street, infrequently
catching a glimpse of blue
eyes, a reflection in cracks
of the cotton-hued skies.

The crow calls from a tree.
Another day, green parrots
screech louder than the
traffic flees. The heat lays
like a corpse upon our city.
Bougainvillea bracts spot
gardens with false hope,
colorful arrays of forgotten
pain turned to sweet honey.

He forgets you, though you
never meet. And you, also,
forget—window, curtains,
the desire for a stranger’s
glad glance. Someone wants
this to be autobiography, a
short recollection of moments
actually lived. That person never
dreamed, does not exist anymore.

And I never existed because I
don’t stop dreaming. Poetry, like
a god, provides code for an image,
keying it to suggest a revelation-lode
from your past. You want it to be
my past. Parrots screech.
A crow calls. A beautiful Other
by the window waits. This all
happens to you while I write

these scenes tangled in dreams,
whirring fans—the poem unable
to light any form, your reading,
this page; unable to discover more
than bare wisps of meaning in the
vibrations of words—your song longing
for someone in the infinite void. Wanting
a mortal to read you into this, to see you
alive, you seek a new beginning—genesis.

Note: Zohar refers to The Book of Splendor, one of the main texts of Kabbalah. Translations from the Hebrew are from the work of Daniel Matt.

These three poems come from Nothing Remembers, by Michael Dickel, released September 2019 from Finishing Line Press.

Michael Dickel—Digital Self-Portrait from Photograph — Michael Dickel
Digital Self-Portrait from Photograph
©2019

Michael Dickel is a contributing editor for The BeZine. He writes, creates art, and teaches in Jerusalem, Israel, where he lives with his wife and two young children. The World Behind It, Chaos… (WV? eBookPress, 2009), one of his first books, includes photographs and digital artwork from photos in a free PDF eBook format. His resistance chapbook of poetry, Breakfast at the End of Capitalism (locofo chaps, 2017) can also be downloaded for free as a PDF (or purchased in paper). His latest collection of poetry, Nothing Remembers, came out from Finishing Line Press in September, 2019. Other books include The Palm Reading after The Toad’s Garden, a collection of Flash Fiction (art by Ayelet Cohen), and War Surrounds Us, a collection of poetry, both from Is a Rose Press.

Climate Crisis
Spirit

Iris
Digital art by Michael Dickel ©2019

O God methinks it were a happy life
To be no better than a homely swain;
To sit upon a hill, as I do now,
To carve out dials quaintly, point by point,
Thereby to see the minutes how they run.
—(Shakespeare, William. Henry VI, Act II Scene 5 Lines 21-25)

In a 1972 College English article, Stanford scholar Herbert Lindenberger quotes the above lines from Shakespeare’s Henry VI (Part III). He calls them a “set speech, highly rhetorical, in fact ritualistic in nature…[that call] particular attention to themselves in the way they contrast with the prevailing mode of Shakespeare’s early historical plays” (335). They are Pastoral Poetry, a historical poetic form known to Shakespeare and one of several pastoral versions found in his work.

Pastoral poetry would see a resurgence and renewal in the Romantic Period of literature, much later. Pastoral in this literary sense, and for the Romantics, refers to nature and human dominion over it. A life of spirit, God, Creation, are most fully experienced in Nature. From the view of Transcendentalism (closely associated with Romanticism), this comes when the spirit / soul rises, or connects, to Heaven / Paradise / God through Nature and thus transcends the physical world.

The particular version of the pastoral that Shakespeare employed above, Lindenberger writes, “has a special bearing on the pastoral of Romanticism” (335). What these lines do in particular, Lindenberger explains, is to “…provide a kind of pastoral relief from the bitter realities of the historical world with which the [history] plays are centrally concerned” (335). And how much more do we need this relief than in a time as our own, when life seems more about bitter realities than pleasant sojourns among flowers and trees?

Can we now (re)claim pastoralism / transcendentalism / sublimity in adopting a life of the spirit in our own bitter times? While wars, industry, and bitter politics contribute to the destruction of the “natural world” through habitat destruction, pollution, and global warming—perhaps ultimately destroying life on our planet through the Climate Crisis—can we still find a spiritual connection through nature? Or, as its killers, will we find a Messenger, flaming sword in hand, barring our way?

For Romanticism and Transcendentalism, Nature was not all Pastoral gardens and orchards—aesthetics and philosophy of the movement “divided the natural world into categories: the Pastoral, the Picturesque, and the Sublime,” according to Lauren Rabb, who curated the 2009–2010 University of Arizona Museum of Art exhibit on these themes (19th Century Landscape, unpaginated web page, 2009).

She goes on:

The first two represent Nature as a comforting source of physical and spiritual sustenance. The last, as articulated by Edmund Burke in his Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757), refers to the thrill and danger of confronting untamed Nature and its overwhelming forces, such as thunderstorms and deep chasms. Whereas the Pastoral and Picturesque reference mankind’s ability to control the natural world, the Sublime is a humbling reminder that humanity is not all-powerful.

Pastoral landscapes celebrate the dominion of mankind over nature. The scenes are peaceful, often depicting ripe harvests, lovely gardens, manicured lawns with broad vistas, and fattened livestock. Man has developed and tamed the landscape – it yields the necessities we need to live, as well as beauty and safety. The Picturesque — a category developed in the late 1700s by clergyman and artist William Gilpin — refers to the charm of discovering the landscape in its natural state. Gilpin encouraged his followers to engage in “picturesque travel” – the goal of which was to discover beauty created solely by Nature. The artist and the viewer delight in unspoiled panoramas: sunsets behind majestic mountains, an egret taking off from a quiet marsh, a deer bathed in a shaft of light in the woods. These scenes are uplifting, but not frightening.

Sublime images, on the other hand, show Nature at its most fearsome; in fact, Burke believed that “terror is in all cases… the ruling principle of the sublime.” There is an awe and reverence for the wild that to Burke was akin to violent passion. Humanity is small and impotent in front of raging rivers, dizzying cliffs and canyons, ferocious animals, and violent storms. These works can also be uplifting, but in a deeply spiritual way. The Sublime emphasizes God’s dominion over humanity and considers the possible folly in mankind’s overriding confidence.

These three competing ways of looking at Nature are relevant today. In the 21st century, we still debate humanity’s right to use the planet for only our own good. Global warming, mining rights, wildlife preservation and land use are all controversial issues. As you look at these 19th century landscapes [in the exhibition], think about how artists over time have contributed to our view of the natural world and its significance in our lives. (Rabb 2009)

Our encounters with the sublime in the 21st century come in the forms of unprecedented heat waves, storms, floods, wildfires, and winter storms—made much worse as the result of the Climate Crisis—providing terror. However, this fearsome violence shows that mankind’s domination (“dominion over”) nature is neither “uplifting” nor emphasizing “God’s dominion.” Rather, our encounter with the sublimity of The Climate Crisis reveals all too clearly “the possible folly in mankind’s overriding confidence.” These are the consequences of using “the planet for only our own good.”

domine

[Vocative caste of Latin, domin-us lord, master]; English (obsolete), Lord, Master… (excerpted from The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, Vol. 1 A–O, p. 786)

dominion (n.)

mid-15c., “lordship, sovereign or supreme authority,” from Old French dominion “dominion, rule, power” and directly from Medieval Latin dominionem (nominative dominio), corresponding to Latin dominium “property, ownership,” from dominus “lord, master,” from domus “house” (from PIE root *dem- “house, household”).

In law, “power of control, right of uncontrolled possession, use, and disposal” (1650s). From 1510s as “territory or people subject to a specific government or control.”

British sovereign colonies often were called dominions, hence the Dominion of Canada, the formal title after the 1867 union, Dominion Day, the Canadian national holiday in celebration of the union, and Old Dominion, the popular name for the U.S. state of Virginia, first recorded 1778. (Online Etymology Dictionary)

dominate (v.)

1610s, “to rule over, control by mastery,” a back-formation from domination or else from Latin dominatus, past participle of dominari “to rule, dominate, to govern,” from dominus “lord, master,” from domus “house” (from PIE root *dem- “house, household”).… (Online Etymology Dictionary)

hubris (n.)

1. Excessive pride or self-confidence.

‘the self-assured hubris among economists was shaken in the late 1980s’

2. (in Greek tragedy) excessive pride towards or defiance of the gods, leading to nemesis. (Lexico)

hubris (n.)

1884, a back-formation from hubristic or else from Greek hybris “wanton violence, insolence, outrage,” originally “presumption toward the gods;” the first element probably PIE *ud- “up, out” (see out (adv.)) but the meaning of the second is debated. Spelling hybris is more classically correct and began to appear in English in translations of Nietzsche c. 1911. (Online Etymology Dictionary)

[Emphases in bold-violet added.]

The Climate Crisis results from human hubris (excessive pride, but at its root: “wanton violence, insolence, outrage”; presumption toward the gods” through holding one’s self up as equal to the gods) in trying to dominate nature without acknowledging or fully understanding the effects of our own actions. And, with even greater hubris, now that we do understand what we do, defying Creation in greed and selfishness, we resist changing our course.

We need to acknowledge that The Climate Crisis threatens to destroy all life on Earth. If a life of the spirit emerges from or in nature, then we need to transcend a self-centered human greed to embrace a life of the spirit. Then, possibly, we will treat each other better, and work with all diligence to save our planet.

“Our house is on fire…”
—Greta Thunberg

Transcendental Autumn Moon
Digital Art
©2019 Michael Dickel

Works Cited in the Essay

Lindenberger, Herbert. “The Idyllic Moment: On Pastoral and Romanticism.” College English, Vol. 34, no. 3, 1972, pp. 335–351. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/375139.

Rabb, Lauren, Curator. “19th Century Landscape—The Pastoral, The Picturesque, and the Sublime.” The University of Arizona Museum of Art. Website. artmuseum.arizona.edu/events/event/19th-century-landscape-the-pastoral-the-picturesque-and-the-sublime.

How we eagerly read so many new names 
       (like Rousseau, Robespierre, Marx)
         of social revolution
             in books at Berkeley, 
                  read of feasts of blood
                      and showers of murders through Western times

How it was quickly becoming something more to me than history 
      It was becoming an exploding passion
        as we sat on a mountain on the edge of America over the Bay
          dangling our feet to see how far we could go for pure freedom  
              pushing away the mind’s old dandelion utopias.

How John Muir pulsed in our veins, his steadfast embrace of rampant wildness 
          in his dangerous life, he challenged the just wear a dark suit men
               all my life sick on the edge before, made me more ready to jump
                    into more, all that I didn’t understand 

How to go further, trembling as I was, into Berkeley’s tempting rabbit holes
       hands and feet slither into a green New Age of ecology and equality 
           Into a light that saved trees and food that fed souls
                  how we broke all our molds, wrote over stingy rules 

How we stood together, norm creators envisioning in a blur of newness
       charting new ways with glittering eyes since we knew 
              we were climbing as one into the unchartered
                   without pretense or yesterday’s food

How we felt raw and naked in our bones beginning it all 
        Protected by beautiful Berkeley light
                Secure in our mysterious dreams pushing hard, way beyond
                      The rigid order of Victorian sight

©2019, Linda Chown

Archives: Projects

One Hundred and Eighty Degrees

Simply a Song

just sayin’

I Pegasus

Four Poems by John Sullivan

Lady Striga & aka “Doc Benway” Do Spirit-Memory Magic & the Object-Monster Explodes

On His Way To Damascus aka “Doc Benway” Hits a Big Br(I)ck Wall

A Nun in Training

The Waste of It All

In Memoriam — Reuben Woolley, Part 2

In memory of a friend, poet, publisher, and activist.

coralled gates the trees no more

rust & old machines

In Memoriam

In Memoriam: Reuben Woolley, Part 1

In memory of a friend, poet, publisher, and activist.

sewing the bright spaces

these liquid hills

a fully moon after all these years

In Memoriam

Three poems on A Life of the Spirit

Poems from
Nothing Remembers
on A Life of the Spirit

Called to faith

Napping in a chair

Somewhere, a whirring fan

Climate Crisis
Spirit

domine

dominion (n.)

dominate (v.)

hubris (n.)

hubris (n.)

Works Cited in the Essay

Pastoral—Sublime

Unicorns

Thank you for sharing the beauty and inspiration:

Thank you for sharing the beauty and inspiration:

Thank you for sharing the beauty and inspiration:

Thank you for sharing the beauty and inspiration:

Thank you for sharing the beauty and inspiration:

Thank you for sharing the beauty and inspiration:

Thank you for sharing the beauty and inspiration:

Thank you for sharing the beauty and inspiration:

Thank you for sharing the beauty and inspiration:

In memory of a friend, poet, publisher, and activist.

coralled gates the trees no more

rust & old machines

In Memoriam

Thank you for sharing the beauty and inspiration:

In memory of a friend, poet, publisher, and activist.

sewing the bright spaces

these liquid hills

a fully moon after all these years

In Memoriam

Thank you for sharing the beauty and inspiration:

Poems from Nothing Remembers on A Life of the Spirit

Called to faith

Napping in a chair

Somewhere, a whirring fan

Thank you for sharing the beauty and inspiration:

Climate Crisis Spirit

domine

dominion (n.)

dominate (v.)

hubris (n.)

hubris (n.)

Works Cited in the Essay

Thank you for sharing the beauty and inspiration:

Thank you for sharing the beauty and inspiration:

Lazy afternoon

Is this the same

Traces

Grief

Thank you for sharing the beauty and inspiration:

Thank you for sharing the beauty and inspiration:

Thank you for sharing the beauty and inspiration:

Poems from
Nothing Remembers
on A Life of the Spirit

Climate Crisis
Spirit