Photograph: Waterbird, Michael Dickel ©2017
Photograph: Waterbird, Michael Dickel ©2017
Project Tag: Michael Dickel
Photograph: Waterbird, Michael Dickel ©2017
Poetry
Coffee | Artemis
digital art from photograph
Michael Dickel ©2022
Coffee
I’m sorry, she said. Fuck you, zey said. I made a mistake, she said. You make a lot of mistakes, zey snapped. She hid away under a widow’s veil of tears. Zey hiked the Bahamas and found forgiveness. She tried to contact zem a month later: hope you’re doing well. Apparently, zeir forgiveness only extended so far. It had been two years, three months, eight days. Like planets orbiting the same sun, they once again aligned: they walked into the same coffee shop. They froze, stared. You dyed your hair, zey said. You gained weight, she said. Zey smiled; coffee--on me?
©2022 Artemis
All rights reserved
Artemis…
…is a high school student pursuing writing. Their favorite elements of writing are clever word plays and irony. They have been published in the anthology The Sky’s the Limit as a result of winning a writing competition, and the The Thread, their school’s art and writing anthology, for three years in a row. When they’re not writing, they spend their days creating resin dolls and sewing clothes.
Remember Me and Return | Isadora De La Vega
digital landscape from photographs
Michael Dickel ©2022
Remember Me and Return
Darkness covers me like a blanket Shadows surround my thoughts My arms wrap tightly around me Deserted, no one home You keep me isolated My only friend, just you Smiles ne’er intrude our space With you, I’m safe and whole The thorns of my emotions Keep rising from deep inside Always in your shadows Always in your arms I cannot see the rose Only thorns of pain Madness all around me It keeps me huddled tight Tomorrow won’t be different It will always be the same Fear keeps me shaking My spirit is tattered, worn Darkness gives me comfort Forever, all alone My prayer is you’ll Remember me and return home
©2022 Isadora De La Vega
All rights reserved
Isadora De La Vega…
…biography goes here, with ellipses in front. Link to known social media accounts, website, and / or blog. Delete the words if no links. Edit the Find the The BeZine button link to include the names where it says FirstName and LastName. If there are more than two names, add a plus-sign (+) and additional names, in order. Add Social Media links if we have (do not need to, but can delete the social media block if none). Replace art to the left with a photo. (Use the NO photo block if there isn’t one, not this block).
Photograph: Waterbird, Michael Dickel ©2017
Poetry
Mitosis in the Burial Mounds | Ester Karen Aida
Mitosis in the Burial Mounds
In my body rattle the dead like beads shook-up with longing in Rachel’s ovaries. Oleander, calendula or olive, Only the living sow memory, open their eyes each dawn to scan the fields. I buried a tooth for every kindness I recall. In the days between Yizkor and Yom haZikaron, some being of smoke fills my throat. Is an organ implanted in a body, a tree’s grafted limb? What is your heart’s fruition? Ima from Kafr Qassem, where exactly are you now, Neshama sheli? I think I should ask your home-town Sheikh, who wrote, organ donation will be halal. I ask my heart: do you hold two souls? We’ve cradled one another, not months, but years; should time condense to tissue, This, then? —a culture unfolding, beating its wings, in another. —and we all hold our parents. Do I contain four souls— No, her parents—six? My heart is splitting And living. This heart—what does it mean to you? Shireen’s question like rain pelting earth When that had done rattling in my head, I asked my heart how do you feel? She burst into streaks of water, throat of smoke: my kids— How old are you now? What have the years been for you? Who has cared for you? We used to tell the younger ones, stay together and take care of each other But our children begin by scanning the fields for a few stalks of kindness.
Digital Landscape from photographs
Michael Dickel ©2020
Poem ©2022 Ester Karen Aida
All rights reserved
Ester Karen Aida…
…is a writer, poet, and peace activist residing in Jerusalem, Israel. Her writing and art frequently appear in The BeZine.
letters, gunshots, another dream, and more | Lonnie Monka
I’ve been sending letters to various
areas controlled by the islamic
state
explaining how peaceful & loving ways of life are possible
that to kill in the name of God is mistaken
& that a little dialogue could do wonders
I sent poems describing a future world without war
& inspiring quotes from political & religious leaders
then
one day
I received a reply:
“to the dreamer who mistakes a nightmare for paradise”
it began
“it is beyond us to know if by God you mean Allah
yet let us assure you
a thirsty man lost in the desert may find a pool of pure water
revive himself
& then run off to share his hydrating discovery
until the pool is depleted
such is your state
you call out to God
to control the rain
& to replenish the empty form
which memories & stories claim was filled
with purity
we
by the power of Allah
will move from pool to pool
decimating fraudulent temples erected not to worship
but to control the rain
until the whole world submits to Allah
& our expansion ceases
leaving only a pure motion
dams will not be erected
as people flow across the land
no different than water
across the earth
you speak of love & peace
but
you only want us to pay taxes
to erect more static artifices
& please
from now on
use extra postage
as we grow
our operations carry more overhead”
Michael Dickel ©2022
gunshots in the distance
in distinct intervals
marked by a sloppy unison
of soldiers at the firing range
the odd out-of-sync shots
blossom into a single roaring echo
as I lay in a bush-filled field
surrounded by weeds of varying heights
perched in a weed’s canopy
of white flowers
a white spider
waits
black flies & red beetles
scrummage through the bed of sweets
climbing beside & even over
the still white spider
its body mounted
by little legs
while two longer white legs
extend half bent in the air
till certain sized flies pass
its face
triggering those long thin legs
to swoop down
striking prey dragged
into a hungry face
sometimes when released
those bodies fall motionless
& sometimes they begin
mid-air to fly
Digital Art from Photograph
Michael Dickel ©2022
another dream
of two soldiers in a watchtower
talking through the night
will history judge us poorly?
one asked
& his friend said
yes & no
since history forgives the perpetrators
with a flare
for watching those who suffer most
as those
who inherit evil
so they say
an M-16 in someone's hand asserts: kill or be killed it only argues with adults—whereas children they deafen all arguments into chatter a stray dog doesn't know that it roams about as if it's not a target a tree couldn't care less that it can sustain many bullet wounds a wall must separate sides—no matter its thickness it's fine if we're mistakenly standing on some graveyard it's ok if you can't stop all people from fighting it's nice to take care of a cat that you dislike let all the varied kinds of privileged people tell you what's right let thoughts of distant violence grow more distant let yourself breathe—simple & stupid—grinning like a gorilla it's alright if the news improves its powers of seduction it's alright if one day the sun just burns out it's alright if you desire—deviously—to litter a little even if ambiguous firework-explosions startle you if you move & speak according to what you believe is right it's good if life & death dissolve into some unspeakable truth
veteran field
—for Mr. Visher
both before our lives and before our eyes
upon every death before us we live
thoughtlessly leaping from this height to that
we continue & learn also to love
to continue living as if stable
upon whatever ground beneath our feet:
our subtle world produces fertile soil
like this lush field where children play—knowing not
how they grow upon the dead body parts
of some passing war & of all thought as war:
with ever-shifting translucent pillars
death supports all mortal experience
waning & waiting
bullets whiz
past people’s ears
every day
on city streets
I have shot
the same gun
others have used
for suicide
the stop signs have
no gun holes here
the sun is blocked
from flirting strands
of light—flickering
with the rising
& the setting
of lust-filled days:
maybe tomorrow
I’ll find her
perhaps I will pull
hard on her hair
every day
I wake up
a blinded bird
that craves to fly:
who can resist
the savage pleasure
of pushing hard
against the air?
©2022 Lonnie Monka
All rights reserved
Lonnie Monka…
…founded Jerusalism, a non-profit organization to promote Israeli literature in English. He is a PhD student at Hebrew University, researching the intersection of modernist art and orality through a study of David Antin’s talk-poems, and he is currently an OWL Lab Fellow.
Raining Rubies | Dessy Tsvetkova
Photograph Michael Dickel ©2006
With a sword raised
With a sword raised towards the sun, they used to rule the land for centuries. The sword which looks so much like an elongated cross ... But nowadays the cross is embodied by a dove with outstretched wings. Cross, that flies towards the sun and to God.
05/06/22
Today
Today from the sky it's raining rubies... Red drops of grief... They pour hard, cry for the innocent as a belief... They sprout young stalks... One at a time flower, for each soul...
The memory of peace
Loving fireflies sharing all the joy... Summer nights, splendid tenderness of Eden... Careless sunsets of caressing sky glory, soul enlightened by the heaven... Chanted warming blessings. Crickets symphonies of peace. Travel back in time, enhancing... Feeling of a childhood breeze...
©2022 Dessy Tsvetkova
All rights reserved
Dessy Tsvetkova…
…is 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.
secrets have an audience | Adrian Voss
secrets have an audience
1
while we’re busy romanticizing the softer side of things
well-disguised vibes disregard
the countless beings made into (numb)ers
favoring an unawakened righteous feeling
through a façade that denies inner reality
nurturing the phallic identity of war
2
she is little bits of earth
scattered bits of belonging
an appropriation for those who take
feeling nothing is taken because it is paid for
to feed a selfish desire that places her to burn
underneath a halo of fire
creating the compartmentalized
as we stigmatize in the quiet and unitedly reject her
unconscious—while busy chasing false ideals
searching for pretty in politics
as connoisseurs of fixation with introspection
gingered by the allure, continue to devour her shell
with blades of combative motivation
that takes no accountability, as we all inadvertently fuck her
3
she reads Hello Universe in old bunny slippers
lives in an agricultural area
sits on the porch reading
hears a diminutive echo
it is the year of another great pandemic
and other distractions
from the millions starving
for one reason or another
however, much less critical
than the societal incubator
or the soccer game
as the shadow
in a white van
uses a burner phone
three days, three rooms
a ringing in the ear that means more
as you look away
from the empty swing swaying
4
a temperamental questioning of the self
remembering it grew past two months
a choice sucked into the symbolic
a static feeling remains
refusing to breed
as it parallels a vision
even if it means killing the unborn seed
to not throw away hope for a child
that is already someone
a twelve-year-old
locked inside a small dark apartment
getting used by an endless stream
____,______,________,__________,
as it pours from your daughter in the arms of your son
5
the majority continue connected to the mask
killing a turkey and then sending a card
with a contented one on it
eating a pig and calling it pork
their teeth pulled out
as the mother watches them squeal
buying a stuffed bear for the child
while purchasing its bile; they are bred and tortured
we treat our animals as we treat each other
but this isn’t what we want to hear
most will deny it has meaning—desensitized
it has feelings
nearby, a widowed Arab mother with eight sons
must reveal herself to strange men
in a place where she is no longer a wife
there are no brothers, no uncles
no man to claim her
so she removes her hijab to feed her children
inadvertently teaching her sons about their “brothers”
with this allegory, for most is not as it appears
but it’s not our country, not our home
not our irony, so we willfully swallow it
like “meat” ignoring the rape
of another number—an accepted behavior
as we slumber
instead of reaching beyond the pale
6
diagonal, horizontal, vertical
the lines we hide in
the lines we love between
the lines we point from
these lines play us
clogging internal processes
clinging to us as belief
that keeps us hunting
and hostile regard safe
inside our cumulative womb
trafficking the guns gunning us down
while bound in an addiction town
7
a vignette rotting
a fostered feeling
a male-centric mainstream
a movie she wishes could be unseen
a floret falling apart
petal lips cascading
as we skate through the details
infested with dark limbic thoughts
the egregore overidentifies with form
trapping her in a sea of sharks
disconnecting from impending matters
coded for the untrained eye
lulling inborn wisdom back to sleep
that serves the omniscient streams
bribing the scribe with the felicitous mind
before the eye traverses the den
to make Laureate’s paper words mean nothing
because she doesn’t know she is, too, prey
as another stately white man
uses rubbers on a mattress with one thin, dirty sheet
8
we all want to be in an uplifted state
with a God that makes us feel safe and entertained
while we shoot semi-automatics
to kill the seed, we do not call our own
it is part of cancer’s permeative conditioning
the Dubble Bubble happening around the globe
as we say, “It’s not me, it’s them. It’s there, not here.”
as the lights blink on and off in the small dark apartment in our mind
9
deliberate (u)niverse
we are it pretending to be a _____________
an absent black moon
a carnivore awakening
fromdarknessspringsthelight
(interpretations of the comforts of [personal] space)
the church / the temple / the sanctuary / the synagogue
the mosque / the pagoda / the gate / the abattoir
(words for the same thing): within
psychological death
a surrendered state
creates space
deeper than thought
a sleeping infant in my arms
the win
win
even in trauma and sticky situations
gathering the momentum of the tormented and tormentor
in the house built by metaphor
aligning consequences with reflections of truth
in dimension deeper than possession
entwined in the silence
of secrets that have an audience
Digital Art
Michael Dickel ©2019–2022
Poem ©2022 Adrian Voss
All rights reserved
Adrian Voss…
…lives with her family in Colorado. She is an artist, teacher, and emerging writer with a few published pieces online and a children’s book. The poem submitted is from a full-length collection entitled, The Small Dark Apartment. The work explores uncomfortable aspects within the silence of the collective mainstream. Adrian strives to bring life elements to the surface to push past deceptive illusions and create more light.
Photograph: Kolonit (anemone) in Poriyya, Galilee, Michael Dickel ©2017
Music
Ukraine Peace—sort of an introduction
Again
The world has gone mad. Again. And again voices incite—then hoarse leaders pretend to have been polite. They did not shout fear and hatred to explosive tension, to a thin- wire stretched, first sounding a note then cracking, snapping in two, each piece twisted. The world goes mad. Again. The leaders call for calm, like arsonists who work in the fire department. The fires burn in the streets at night. The checkpoints flow with blood and tears. And most of us just want to go to work, have coffee with friends, teach our children something other than this craziness in a world gone mad. Again. And most of us want to turn away and not see the burning, the smoke, the arsonists lining up toy soldiers at borders ready to pounce, to attack, to burn. Again.
—Michael Dickel ©2014
Analysis of “Again” written in 2015 by Vivian Eden in Haaretz:
Poem of the Week Recycled Violence: The World Has Gone Mad Again.
Ukrainian artist Dariya Marchenko ©2022
Made with 5,000 bullet casings.
Something of an Introduction
I don’t think that I need to explain about Ukraine, and why I titled this Special Section “Ukraine Peace.” There are some who may raise legitimate questions about the focus on Europe, with so many countries at war in Africa, Asia, the Middle East. There are some who raise legitimate questions about supporting the US in battling Russia, given the undeniable history of and current aggressions world wide (and supporting other countries as they invade neighbors). So I will repeat below a version of the blog post that announced this special section and called for submissions.
©2017 Kat Patton
The sunflower is Ukraine’s national flower.
Even with all of the tensions and warnings leading up to it, Russia’s all-out invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, shocked the world. This violation of international law and Ukraine’s sovereignty could easily expand to a broader war. This puts progressives, as I think myself to be, in a position of wondering how do we wage peace? Is there a path to peace?
I don’t know. As I write this, the war continues in its third week. The images of the invasion invade our consciousness and my conscience. How do we wage peace?
Whatever the path to peace may be, the path for social justice would not allow for accepting Russia’s war on Ukraine. However, I also am aware that Western Imperialism has acted just as viciously in its own interests, and that the US and the West continue to promote wars in their interests.
Could a world-wide strike be the path, opposed to all war and demanding peace? Is such a thing possible even? How do we follow Gandhi’s path of non-violence and quickly grow it to a global scale? I can’t imagine that it could be done in time to help the people in Ukraine.
History provides warnings about where this invasion could lead. In fact, Putin followed a playbook used in 1939. One of the demands Hitler presented for negotiation just before the invasion of Poland was “safeguarding the German minority in Poland.” Putin said in his speech announcing the invasion that its “goal is to protect people who have been abused by the genocide of the Kyiv regime for eight years.” By dawn of 24 February 2022, the Russian army attacked Ukraine with a blitzkrieg, aiming for military targets. The blitzkrieg strategy was first used pre-dawn of September 1, 1939, starting the invasion of Poland. The USSR joined Germany in attacking Poland on 17 September of that year.
How do we protect peace and simultaneously prevent further expansion through military force?
And who to stand behind for justice? It is not as though the U.S. does not use military force, directly and indirectly. The shadows of Vietnam, Irag, Libya, and Afghanistan loom over this battle. Can we trust the US and NATO to do the right thing?
CUNY Professor Peter Beinart offers an apt quote from 1943 to frame his argument that this time, we need to support the US, even progressives who rightly attack the US for its hypocrisy and war-mongering:
In 1943, the Hungarian-born journalist Arthur Koestler wrote: “In this war we are fighting against a total lie in the name of a half-truth.” That’s a good motto for American progressives to adopt in the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
CUNY Professor Peter Beinart, “Russia speaks total lies. That doesn’t diminish America’s half-truths” in The Guardian
Beinart acknowledges the lies of the U.S.: Saying the US stands with Ukraine because America is committed to democracy and the “rules-based international order” is at best a half-truth. The US helps dictatorships like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates commit war crimes in Yemen, employs economic sanctions that deny people from Iran to Venezuela to Syria life-saving medicines, rips up international agreements like the Iran nuclear deal and Paris climate accords, and threatens the international criminal court if it investigates the US or Israel.
And then he goes on to explain the connection to the 1943 quote:
But this hypocrisy wouldn’t have fazed Koestler, because it’s nothing new. In 1943, the alliance that fought Hitler was led by a British prime minister who championed imperialism, an American president who presided over racial apartheid, and Joseph Stalin. Koestler’s point wasn’t that the US or Britain, let alone the USSR, were virtuous in general. It was that they were virtuous relative to Nazi Germany in the specific circumstances of the second world war, and that these sinful governments were the only ones with the geopolitical heft to stop a totalitarian takeover of Europe.
These extended quotes give the overall argument. Beinart continues to develop it with a focus on the invasion of Ukraine. He points out that there are times when Russia had been on the relatively virtuous side and the US not, with examples. And times when the US has been relatively virtuous, and Russia not. In the end, for this case, we have to think clearly and make a choice.
As Beinart writes: “But Koestler’s point was that progressives can puncture America’s pretensions to universal virtue while still recognizing that it is sometimes one of the few instruments available to combat evil.”
Peter Beinart’s essay is worth reading in full here.
While I do not support much of what the U.S. does, in this situation, I agree with Beinart that it is, relative to Putin’s invasion, the more virtuous side to support.
However, I still really want to find a non-violent path to peace for all. I recognize that, today, this seems an impossibly distant goal. The non-violent path to peace probably won’t be reached in my lifetime. Sadly, it has been made more distant, seemingly less possible, with this invasion.
And ever more urgent with the use of cluster bombs, vacuum bombs, and threats of chemical weapons or even nuclear weapons.
The creative works in the follow pages of the Special Section, Ukraine Peace, support peace, humanity, and Ukraine in this historical moment. The response to the call that an earlier version of these words made for work came with intensity, sorrow, love, and hope. We have art, poems, prose submissions. We have videos of two powerful readings done on Zoom with poets from the US and from Ukraine reading. We have videos of traditional Ukrainian music.
All of this work supports Ukraine and strives for peace. I encourage you to read and share this outflowing of creativity pouring out to support people and put out into the world declarations for peace.
My heart, thoughts, and good will goes out to the peoples of both Russia and Ukraine who are caught between the anvil and the hammer. May peace return,
May Peace Prevail on Earth.
More reading
Readings updated: 21 March 2022
©2022 Michael Dickel, except for quotes
All rights reserved
Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata. | Michael Dickel
These fragments I have shored against my ruins
Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo's mad againe.
Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.
Shantih shantih shantih
—The Wasteland, T. S. Eliot
Rubble of war hangs from wilted rebar,
a child’s trainer swinging from broken branches,
shredded bits of clothing flagged by the wind,
broken rock, handfuls of dust—alarming Tarot
cards overturned in Gaza, Yemen, Afghanistan,
Iraq, Libya, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sudan, Myanmar,
Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Syria, Chechnya, Crimea,
now all of Ukraine invaded. War, empty and desolate
as the sea, wave upon wave of never-ending beachheads—
a martial canon of cannons, missiles, bombs, machine-
-gun repetition rat-a-tat-tats punctuating a thumping bass
rhythm from dawn to dusk and all night long. In a quiet
moment ghostly shadows slide out from shelters,
from behind brick and debris of smoking burial mounds.
They shuffle through the desolation, remains of their proud
homeland, survivors moving to the defensive periphery
for a final stand—neither living nor dead, they had sought
spring hyacinths, not hellish fires. A patient enemy, death
always triumphs, the king of entropy—slimy-bellied rats,
bloody bodies, and bleached bones its reaped subjects.
The young, once living, now dead. The still living, dying.
At the edge of the wasteland three shacks crumble to dust
under the weight of hope and repeated failures of peace:
A shanty of quiet resignation, a shanty of determination,
a shanty of fear released, once lined up against ruin,
dark lightning, and silent thunder.
This poem points to T. S. Eliot’s The Wasteland and to Eliot’s further sources. Follow the links from Eliot quotes and allusions above to the original lines and to annotations: The Waste Land :: T. S. Eliot Original content from that site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-SA 4.0).
Poem ©2022 Michael Dickel
All rights reserved
Art: Waterbird, Michael Dickel ©2017
Poetry
Art: Kolonit (anemone) in Poriyya, Galilee, Michael Dickel ©2017
Spiritual Ecology
Fast-talking slow-walking | Michael Dickel
I need to write to outrun hungry demons, to build a new me to replace the old. I need to tear down stone walls of resistance, escape anchor blocks dragging in sand of man-entropy, gravity molding me in the murky bottom. Subliminal fractures reshape my structures into a me I schemed to avoid—ruptures of who I came to be ripping through calloused skin. The demons chase this fast-talking slow-walking man, eat the cheesiness of his nightstand. My minds slip out of sight like aces sliding from a sleeve. I need to piece together a paradox, a slipperiness, masked confusion—one person out of many impossibilities. One person with so many masks. One mask for so many personae. I need to write me, to replace as soon as I can demons outrunning my old-man’s soul. Building, building, building, until I understand that humanity lies in the earth below the bull’s bellow—so only my own tongue speaks, no other.
Digital landscape from photographs
©2021 Michael Dickel
©2021 Michael Dickel
All rights reserved
Fall 2021
Volume 8 Social Justice Issue 3
to heal the world | Michael Dickel
I don’t much like reading any more as I’ve read more than enough explanations accusations rationalizations incarnations of old disputations empty words for empty stomachs nothing to sink teeth into for many while exorbitant feasts for a few yes, I’m even tired of these words writing reading listening while wild fires forage famines feast diseases prevail over results of my every action reactions to human infestation rushing toward entropy crisis the turning teshuva the return to healing requires movement (re)direction turning inertia toward tikkun olam
teshuva — to return, usually used in the sense of returning to (the Jewish) faith, from Hosea 14:2–3: “Return, O Israel, to the Lord your God, for you have stumbled in your iniquity. Take words with yourselves and return to the Lord. Say, "You shall forgive all iniquity and teach us good, and let us render bulls our lips.” ——— tikkun olam — the healing (or repair) of the world (or creation), according to Kabbalah, this is our purpose as humans.
Winona, MN, US September 2021 
Mercantile Bank, Winona, MN, US September 2021 
Empty Barge, Mississippi River, Winona, MN, US September 2021 
Exchange 1900–2021 (Created September 2021) 
Wildfire Smoke over Jerusalem, Israel, August 2021
©2021 Michael Dickel
All rights reserved
Art: Winona Railroad Siding, Michael Dickel ©2021
The BeZine 