poem – Page 20 – The BeZine

Moon Child

Once in a while you excel yourself.
Are you blue, because we thought no more of you
as the driving force for life on Earth
or potency behind the waves of bitches and whelps
Thrilling moments … or contemplative
of a thriving, muddy, salty, riverine universe of life
waiting for you to draw the pelagic
covers repeatedly over the fruits of sustenance.

A force of nature, fully formed
yet so much smaller than the mother of your birth,
you hold sway, in countless ways
you touch our lives and drive us through our days.
Humble, unassuming, even unnoticed
by those who hurtle, mindlessly, and make no time
for the wisdom of our insignificance
or feel the difference between our age and yours.

As necessity tramples over truth
most days, we hide in fear of the darkening,
of the madness that ensues.
Does not the hunter choose your waning dark
to spike the nervous memory,
and remind us of the untamed wolf pack?
We may not ever tame you
but your mother is dying a slow and painful death.

Oh super blood blue moon,
does not your God and our God sing the same tune?

Sunday

Walking home from church.

Like seeing the sun rise
over the week ahead,
mind full of penitence,
a righteous child, wrapped
in reverential warmth and
a sense of duty fulfilled.

That place of comfort,
as short lived as chocolate,
such pleasure lies in this;
some selfless, priceless
kind of self-indulgence
in your own kind of God.

Who can resist that path
to an easier peace where,
one day a week, the ad-man
cannot get to you; where
you miss nothing; where
those urges play no part.

Where has Sunday gone?

Obligations

Palestinian heart beats
in an Israeli chest
You, o my brother,
O you, Habibi!

The surgeon holds hearts in his hands
one in his left, one in his right
both drenched in blood

Two hearts weigh exactly the same:
priceless beyond measure: a tangled root,
a debt that cannot be paid

Palestinian heart beats in an Israeli chest
and the Israeli weeps: will he ever be able to
look a Palestinian in the eyes

the same way again?
Will he ever be freed
from the obligation of brotherhood?

Palestinian heart beats
in an Israeli chest
You, o my brother,
O you, Habibi!

A Taste of Honey

It is sweet to take a breath and say yes
and it is sweet to know that children are growing

in the dark and will be brought to light in time
to cancel death’s bitter bite. It is sweet waking up safe

and sure, unafraid of what the day might
bring, such as hunger and no food to be gleaned

or thirst and no clean water. Or three hours
allotted to race the rubbled streets in search of

groceries or news of kinsmen. The icy fear
of not knowing where the next bomb will land,

who is next to be buried. It is sweet to drink gourmet
coffee in the welcomed rain, warm hands

on the cup. When you bite into an apple, it
fills your mouth just as it did your ancestors’

hundreds of years ago when they prayed
for you to come in honor of their vision.

It is sweet to take a breath
and say yes and sweeter still to hear the echo

of that yes in the eyes you meet, the smiles
you pass on the street that keep tugging

on your insides while the world has its
flirtation with pain. It is sweet to stand

in the rain and no longer feel
that there are only tears.

A Poem for Oliver

Rocking next to the Christmas
tree, the child in my arms sleeps.
Colored lights slide over his face, our peace
as reverent as if we knelt in church.

Let his breath come even and soft, let him
fidget, held beyond waking and dreams.
Let his brightness never fade, let him be wild
as the stars slung across the sky.

Let him reap the fruits of love. In his tiny hand
sugar cookies leave a sticky sweet.
I think carefully on this world he has
entered. The TV tells me all

I need to know of grief: shattered homes
from last month’s storm, gunshots ring
out in bloodied streets, foreclosure notices point at
where a family once lived, moved on to some other sorrow.

But snuggled safe, this child knows
neither hunger nor fear. The worst that has
happened is a tumble and a pinched thumb, a brother
leaving him behind a shut door.

I intend to keep it that way but we can’t keep him
from life. His heart will be broken—he will lose
and be lost, cry with rage and pity. But with
his brightness around him I pray it is not too soon,
nor lasts any longer than he can bear.

Finding

“Where can I find peace and happiness?
It’s not where it was last time.”

And

“I found this empty can of loneliness
Buried among the full cans of energy.
Somebody must have supped it
Then put it back.”

And

“I want the fresh bread of life but all you’ve got are out of date.”
“It’s still ok to eat, Sir. This is “best before”.

And

“This crisp packet of comfort just split open.”
“I’ll put that here, love. Go and get another one.”

Luck, Blind and Veiled

with mocking hand,
to danger and doubt
tha sets up the overpraised.

Never have prizes
obtained calm peace,
care on care weighs
them down, an

fresh storms vex their souls.
Great kingdoms drahn
by their own weight,
an luck gives way ‘neath
burden of herself.

Sails preggers with favouring breezes
fear blasts too strongly;
tower which rears its head
in the clouds is brayed by rain.

Whatever Luck raises up,
she lifts but to bring down.
Modest outlook has longer life.

Happy them as is content
with common lot,
with safe breeze
hug shore, and, afeard

to trust their skiff
to bigger sea,
with modest oar

Yon Dream Cross Had

Al tell thee best dream av ad
in any midneet while folk were fast on
a sees a reet cross tree,
a ghoast in plated gold
ringed by shiny moon fascinator,
jewels like worth summat glow worms
rahnd base, five more ont cross beam.
Throngs o’ God’s angels tacked on it. This were no scam artists cross but every heaven spirit and earth folk had peepers on it: a see universe agog

And me, aware of wrong doing,
that native wood-beetle, eyed it too
felt a shiver of glory
from that cross barkskin beaten gold
wi jewels suited a cross a Jesus
and tha knows through all that gold barkskin
rattled folks bloodless yammering
how bleeding as stained crosses rightside.
Harrard an horrored
a that sullied wi leaked blood.

a lay there yonks
in agog sorrow fort Saviourcross
till me lug oyles heard glimmering cross pipe up:
“Ages since, I fetch back I were hacked
dahn at holt-edge, lugged off, hauled
shoulder heaved, squared top on a hill
adsed to a cross to carry wrong doers.
Then I see Christ, his balls ready fort hoisting. For us there’s no flitting, no shirking on God’s mind to: I might a fell on these folks. Then
God himsen, med himsen naked, to naked balls,
laid on us afore throngs of eyes
when saving on folks flitted in his bonce.
A shuddered at his touch, afeard splintering,
A had hold, I were raised as a cross,
hold heaven king high, afeard cracking. They tapped dark iron in us: scars tha still can see,
A cannot bear ’em stroked. They jeered at both on us. A felt his blood seep from his side
as he sighed himsen upards.

Av seen pain on this hill
saw Christ as on vicious rack
then roilin’ storm clouds, death to sunblaze,
covered o’er that blaze on God: a glowering gloom creation’s sorta: Christ on cross tree.
A see folk come forard, a felt splintered
as if added, but gev ne sen.
I were in their dannies, gore-wet, nail gashed.
They laid him art, a dead-weight atter ordeal,
final knackeredness. Then afore
murderers peepers, those folk mrd
a stone oyle and set Christ inside it.
Then late int day flitted knackered : left
Christ by himsen.

Long atter soldier’s lottery natter and cold rigor on Christ’s limbs,
us kept our places, drahned wi blood.
Then they sets to
felling us,
bury us in delved grahned, but disciples, friends fahned us…
put on us barkskin o’ gold an silver.

so nar tha knows, how sorra warped
me flesh, how malice worked with spintering iron. Now it’s time for earth foak and whole marvel on creation to cow eye this sign.
God-son were racked on us, so now ma glimmerin’ haunts heavens, can heal
all who afeard for us. Am honoured
by Christ above all forest trees as God favoured Mary above all women folk.’

Then by mesen, thrilled, me spirit high, let mesen rave that I can seek what a av seen,
saviour-cross: a peace with mesen that yearns a help on earth. Few mates still livin’ nar : most are int manor on heaven, av fetched upards. Now, daily, I listen art
fort cross-tree in my earthly nappin’,
to lead us from this flitting life
into great manor of heaven
where God has set a right feast.

May God-Son and Ghost be mates,
who were nailed to death for folk ages since :
a saviour as gin us life,
that we may put wood int oyle in heaven.

time for the temple whores to sleep with insanity

does it bloom, this horror,
from my nonEuropean roots
from the scent of cinnamon in my blood?
the brown and yellow tinges of my skin?
or is it just your old soul and mine and
this intuition we share on the ground
of one another’s battles, witness the fuming
anger feeding disenchantment in the street
and the acquisitive tendencies of the elite,
cowardly saber-rattling, cut off from authority,
from that innate expressively honest power
of our erotic selves, our instinctive selves,
the non-rational knowing that embodies
strength, nothing weak or pornographic
in its expression, a profound antithesis
to the pornography of war and hate that,
in the end, is about impotence, about the
emboli of narrow minds, grasping oligarchs
fomenting tribal dissents for their own ends
or dropping bombs like a child bangs pots –
to overwhelm the fear of thunder, a game
of chicken, of the hawk-hawk play toward
a mutually assured destruction . . .

just a matter of time

as we stand the ground of one another’s
battles where peace would be revolutionary and
the unholy alliance of wealth and fear-mongering
might burn itself out, find its way into justice,
but here we are, once again, in thrall to the
sociopaths that have us bloodied and bound ~
their eyes are the aged face of clockwork orange,
numb to the obscenities of maim and murder …
where is the will of the cup to overcome
the sword? time for the temple whores to
sleep with insanity and take the war out of it

Peace in the house…

Peace in the house, A–Z
an incomplete guide

Average the
costs
contained in
conflicted—
me;

brave the
challenges
chanced by
characterizing as human—
them;

consider
another
analogy
announcing—
I

decide
altogether
all people could be,
altruistically—
we;

eviscerate
guilt
guile
grand schemes of—
us;

forget
everything
everyone
ever told—
you—

generically and
specifically this, a
species of
spelled out—
our

historically
transfigured
transfixed
transferred—
other,

(those)

ischemic
stories
stuttering to a
stop—
we

join
together
today not
tomorrow to change—
ourselves;

knowing
nothing,
no longer
noting—
I;

lingering
longingly
looking
lost—
we

make
connections
contacting
considerations, again—
we…

nested in:
not us,
not them,
nothing more than
seeing the tear

(in someone
else’s eye).

Opening
crying eyes
almost,
finding—
them;

possibly
possibility
potentiality
probability—
peace;

questions
forming
to know,
not to tear
down;

restoring
connections
lost
to fear;
then

saying
what comes
from hearts
broken
un-broken,

they
offer
a slice
something almost
broken open,

undulating
sweet tastes
of light
promising—
they;

view
us as
we view us
and we view
them

with
similar
intent
to build—
us;

xylophone
bell tones
singing
together—
we;

yearn
for this
peace
to be—
our;

(reality)

zeniths—
like lemon
and orange—
sweet and sour
all together.

Abecedarian
Related to acrostic, a poem in which the first letter of each line or stanza follows sequentially through the alphabet.

—The Poetry Foundation

Peace Conceit

וַיִּנָּ֣חֶם יְהוָ֔ה כִּֽי־עָשָׂ֥ה אֶת־הָֽאָדָ֖ם בָּאָ֑רֶץ וַיִּתְעַצֵּ֖ב אֶל־לִבּֽוֹ׃

And then G-d regretted
that G-d had made man on earth,
and G-d’s heart was saddened.
—Bereishit (Gen.) 6:9–13

…neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain
—Matthew Arnold, Dover Beach

On this dark morn, while we sit by
where gulls are heard, the boats asway,
swells rising high on trembling bay,
I yearn to say— please touch my hand,
caress this old frame, kiss me again.

But no voice stirred. So, in cold storms
two faces cast gazes where form ends.
Masks fly for bait to make hearts sigh.
For conversation, we seek words
that toss olive twigs as bread for birds.

Pleas out of phase— touch me again,
kiss my old shame, caress my hands.
No reply justifies tumbling waves,
foghorn echoes, our souls’ dismay.
No warmth wraps us. The last doves’ve died.

In the positive sense, a conceit originally referred to an extended metaphor with a complex logic that governs a poetic passage or entire poem. By juxtaposing, usurping and manipulating images and ideas in surprising ways, a conceit invites the reader into a more sophisticated understanding of an object of comparison. —Wikipedia

Less conventional, more esoteric associations characterize the metaphysical conceit. John Donne and other so-called metaphysical poets used conceits to fuse the sensory and the abstract, trading on the element of surprise and unlikeness to hold the reader’s attention. —The Poetry Foundation

Sam Hamill: A Friends Speaks of Tibet

You can read the text of this poem HERE.

She Was So Pretty When We Were Young

I knew her when I was younger,
she’d smile at me every morning
when we’d stand up in class and
talk to the flag and the cross.
She was so pretty then, adventurous
and friendly, the Supermodel-in-training.
She helped all the kids, even new ones
transferred in from other neighborhoods.
But some big kids mistook her friendliness,
for weakness, twisting it into some
unspoken promise of a good ol’ time.
They used her in indulgent perversions
of power and possession.

When we got older, those big kids
corrupted her, trotted her around, showed her off,
gave her a new face, new boobs, new persona.
My friend became so addled by all
of their push, prod and promises that,
in the end, she’d do whatever the big guys said,
even nod hollow-eyed when they lied about her.
I barely recognized her in her obit t’other day.
You may have missed it, being so busy
doing what they let you think you want to do.
I’m told they laid her next to her mom,
who men used, debased and scarred until
she was unrecognizable, too.

I wrote most of this poem, originally titled “Liberty Has Fallen,” almost four years ago. I based it on my friend Kellie Elmore’s prompt of a picture called Fall of Liberty, which I think was something like the one illustrating this marginally updated version. In four years, not much has changed. Maybe just the volume’s turned up.

Why Do You Love to Hate Me

My elder brother, why do you love to hate me,
Neither am I a boxer or a punching bag,
Yesterday was just about a mere comment that graduated into a serious conflict,
Must we fight to showcase might,
Why don’t we just sit down and reason like men and not just big boys,
I fighting back from slavery to bring peace home.

Sister, why do quarrel over quagmire questions,
Must we agree on everything for us to live harmoniously together,
Don’t we have to disagree in order to learn from the wiser,
Then why do we fight over opinions and errors that can be corrected,
I am rowing too hard to bring our big brother peace back home.

Dad, I miss mum fulfilling presence,
The ugly squabbles have drowned the beautiful love,
Our age refuses to buy into your exchanges,
Please don’t shout over over our heads,
I can’t stand my parents fighting in the 21st century,
Please go sell all your treasures and buy peace and then sleep in peace,
With tranquility of freshness blowing gently on your home.
Oh, what is sweeter than sweet peace of mind and soul overshadowing the struggles of life.

Rest Now, Rest

Your face is a map
of all the wars
you ever fought,
physical, mental,
against others,
against yourself.

You think those lines
might have softened
when your heart ceased.

You think you might
have had some peace
then, some peace,
you would think,

some peace,
I would hope,
if your splintered life
had not disproved the possibility
of its existence.

The Never Ending Fall

There is no calmness quite like it,
its warmth caressing
your tumultuously tumbling mind,
a damp cloth on a fevered forehead.

All the white noise behind your eyes
suddenly ceases
with the decision made,
the route mapped,
the end in sight,

The end of it all,
an unholy trinity
of pain, noise,
despair,
all done,
gone,
as you will be gone,
nothing of you left
but the body you once inhabited
and the memories
alive in the minds
of those
who didn’t really know you
after all.

We Interrupt Your Regularly Scheduled Programming

Any one of us
could change the world,
simply by turning to the stranger beside us
and saying hello;

a stranger could become a friend,
a silence a sound,
a gesture a levelling
of these walls we build around ourselves,
creating our own narrow worlds
within the greater, wider world.

We, humans,
all of us human,
need only one world,
as big as it needs to be,
while as small as the distance
between us and a stranger,
not these millions of unideal worlds,
noiselessly colliding with each other,
fragments of ourselves
lost forever.