[…] she was standing there,
pouting childishly at the words
aligned in front of her
like some tiny little soldiers
(you know – those plastic figurines
frozen in all sort of battle positions…)
and she was trying to make them fit
in the cherry-flavored muffin patty pan
that she was holding.
to no avail though…
she kept lashing those poor meanings
to force them into pattern – “bad, bad, bad haiku!” –
as if they were a pet
and she – their owner.
but she wasn’t able to see
the harmonics of words
spreading all over the place,
resonating in octaves,
and fifths, and fourths,
and fixing their roots
into the very marrow of god.
words pitied her and her blindness,
and after a while they tried to kiss her fingertips,
hoping to open her
to the infinity beyond her walls.
one word even sat on her shoulder,
caressing her cheek with a dove-ish touch
but all that it encountered
was ice.
eventually, words gave up their hope,
and they cut their limbs
and shoved themselves into the form,
resigned.
triumphant,
she smiled to the small poem in front of her “there, i did it!!”
but in the same second
her smile vanished,
because the poem, now made of limbless words,
was dead…[…]
So today I wrote a poem for you,
because if I didn’t, I’d forget
these words. I’d forget the times
I wondered if you were there,
forget how I once lost my voice
yet still sang for you anyway.
I’d most surely forget my way.
I can’t give much more than this,
and most of it is dust,
some sparkling still.
It illuminates the dark
under my bed, the walls
and even the ceiling
upon which I wrote this.
And it lights the path
back where this journey began.
Or maybe I’m just too old
to understand it never did.
So many things to say so many bargain books,
books online, bookshops
turning into used books,
book store-chic nostalgia
as the textbooks turn
electronic, old books
burn to heat the house.
And no one wants to buy books anymore, so many free books—
a book free of thought
free for all, English poems
in demand among poems
of love, poetry for kids,
a poetry book less desirable
unless it’s a free book.
Poetry out loud only a YouTube search away,
poetry book publishers
self-interested producers
of self-publisher havens.
Yes, I, too, published
myself, songs, words
of myself or not.
Social media poetry, now forms the foundation of the poetry
python code, and poisons
poetry-sale fashion—
those poetry clothes
more wanted than
another book of poems.
Poetry journals for sale on the internet arrive
in email, another poetry
sale item, sales statistics
of rare poetry antique
images of zeros and
ones, sad poetry in those
Poetry, Texas, homes
selling real estate poems
while words rest
in the bedrooms
on tables—piles of
Dante and Morrison,
Creeley and Bishop,
Lennon and Sexton
writhing on the floor
while old poetry book sales, those free books,
fuel a fire hotter than
what we will ever know,
more intense than what
we will ever feel. It is this
that changes and doesn’t
change everything and
nothing all of the time.
This is the real business of poetry, the free poetry
of business mere gold dust.
Honestly, there are times
when the taste of baklava
finds my tongue and speaks to me
in the language of my grandmother’s hands,
when the honey and fresh mint in tea
vitalizes my very being ~
and I remember everything . . . . .everything
even the scent of you, your eyes
the way we lingered over dessert,
tapered candles flaming wisps of hope,
your red roses wilting in a crystal vase,
dropping velvet petals like dreams
on the white damask of our forever
A Man sleeping …
A Butterfly flitting…
Zhuangzi, dreamer of Butterfly,
ponders what joy there might be
in that tiny Butterfly brain, so subtle,
too subtle to be perceived by I or eye Is it dreaming me? he asks.
Imagine the Universe engaged,
he thinks to himself, inside that flutter.
– thunder, a Cosmic Belly Laugh – Ho! Ho!
Then Zhuangzi knows: He is silent,
flitting from flower to flower in eternal spring.
– coming and going, going and coming –
This is called the Transformation of Things.
I love this allegory from The Book of Zhuangzi, one of the two greatest books of the Chinese mystical Tao. (The other book is the I Ching.) The allegory is about chi (qi), the energy of creation, which some might call God.
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.
pink hair, ponytails
outrageous make-up
silicone breasts popping
the buttons of a polyester shirt
rainbow scarf waving in the air
a neon-green mini-skirt
revealing muscled legs
in tattered fishnets
with size 11 feet
in 6 inch heels created
brown hair, styled
like Clark Gable
lightly speckled face
from a long-ago shave
baggy Fitch shirt over a
naturally expanding chest
faded jeans worn at the hips
and a rainbow belt
with size 7 feet
in brown loafers beloved
the bread of life
given for you
to live a life as you were
made and created
loving as you were made to love
the cup of a new covenant
given for you
to create a space
to meet the one
who loves you included
…
In honor of Pride*
Terri Stewart
…
* Just a note about June and Pride.
June 28, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn in New York, police invaded this inn that was known to be inclusive and supportive of those in the LGBTQIA community – especially the poorest and most marginalized. The raid quickly turned into a riot with people being hurt.
“In 1969 Police raids on gay bars occurred regularly. It was illegal to serve Gay people alcohol or for Gays to dance with one another. During a typical raid, the lights were turned on, the customers were lined up and their identification checked. Those without identification or dressed in full drag were arrested.” (here)
For the first time, the LGBTQIA community fought back. And one year later, Pride was born as a remembrance of Stonewall and as a way of looking forward and imagining and fully inclusive world.
A humanitarian ceasefire brought quiet
for a couple of hours, at least, although
a few rockets just flew out of Gaza.
These things happen—unfortunately.
In a few hours the short ceasefire
retires but what happens next depends
on people in separate rooms of a Cairo
hotel and mediators running between.
Like most days, my son went to preschool.
My daughter plays in her daycare. My wife
has gone to work. Papers wait for me
to read them and students wait to hear
their grades. Clouds watch indifferently.
Only my mind seems restless,
impatient, listening for the cracks,
the siren call, the singing voice
that will seduce me with rage, until
I crash against an ideological cliff.
A large half-moon shone in the morning’s
bright-cerulean sky. Yellow roses passed
their prime along the walk, but the crimson
bud—no, perhaps more a claret color—
tightly wraps its future, which is ready to burst
out and declare a moment’s respite
like a five-hour ceasefire, or like a truce
without resolution of all the injustices
on both sides, without grief for all the dead
on both sides, without a care in the world
except to bloom beautifully under a
clear sky and a setting moon.
Perhaps this is a good thing, I don’t know.
Who am I to judge a flower? Perhaps
I should go to the beach and watch waves
to learn about the futility of words and ideas.
Maybe it would be better to rest, take a nap,
dream. Instead, I write this poem, this fantasy
of connecting to you—my enemy, my lover—across
the border, and finding a common ground
where we might plant our gardens together.
Will you hear the boom of this poem
the next time a jet drops a bomb near you?
And your poetry, will I recognize it as it
flies toward me and explodes? Will you
write it gently, so that I might catch it?
I recall how the tiny bits of gravel
on the shingles dug into my bare knees,
leaving them looking like a scraped
old orange with a sample of the
gray or brown grit dug in there
to remind me about the slipperiness
of gravity. About how the higher you climbed,
the greater the fall. About being an Icarus
with denim and flannel wings.
That’s what I most remember, even more
than seeing a larger world from above,
while so much below appeared smaller.
Lying there, the flat of my back to
the pitched drape of decision my climb
to a higher plane offered.
In the morning or evening you had
a choice of staring into that light
or skittering over to the solar leeward side
of the house, where a too-quick move
could leave you scraped and bloody
or sliding with a skipped heartbeat
and then the air-hammer nailing of
that very abridged account of
your existence to the inside of your chest.
Believe me, it is the only time in your life
where you’re happy to end up in the gutter.
they were dying like the blinks of some eyelids
over the black holes of gazes
swallowing all the light around them.
or like some butterflies.
or like some waltz steps
suddenly too tired of music.
and in all this time on our soles grew paths,
with their roots deeply sunk in calculations and statistics,
lowering us into valleys and rising us upon mountains
and bending us from our waist all the way to the ground
making us search for the ant hills in which we were born.
magnolias were dying slowly along the road side
and god was picking their petals one by one
to later make from these
suns and rain and harrowed hearts and tomb stones
and ant hills
for us.
Moments of existence in ice covered wind that presses on our cheeks, making our lips rainbows
‘Cause how do we know that they aren’t rainbows?
We say red and pink and blue from cold – but why not orange and green and yellow?
Life is too colourful to define itself in single handed monochromatic injustices
Time is so indefinable
Broken into bits and pieces here and there, floating about in the micro fraction of the universe that are our golden brains, shining through a light that blinds
Darkness is beautiful
There was a Princess, marching back and forth along her balcony
Fingertips digging into the marble of the railing that is dim
It doesn’t glow the way darkness does
And she makes her way forth to announcements of the utter most importance
Because she is a Princess, and that is what Princesses do
They speak words for their command, explaining the tithes that we give daily
People fighting for their freedom
People working at their long daily jobs
People playing on climbing sky scrapers
People walking down beautiful beaches, rosy in the arms of a friend
And the Princess proclaims this good
This good is the broken nature of being
Fighting for the existence of existing
Breaking for the love of loving
Falling in the joy of playing
Hiding and seeking in some crazy game of cat and mouse that the Princess just has to watch
And she smiles and waves, dances and flows about her ballroom in clothes fit for a Knight and stumbles
So focused on what people see of her that she forgets to just be her
Because sadly things work like that
And I, she, we are sick of things working like that
Darkness surrounds everything, swamping it in valley’s and shadows doubts and beauty
Beauty because we are all so different, and can be observed as different in the purity of darkness in an entirely different way than we can in the light
Darkness enhances differences felt by fingers, heard by ears, experienced through scent
Darkness causes us to keep our balance within our validity being pulled by the magnetic north to wonders of reality
Reality that shapes itself around the reaction, the shadow
Darkness
A young child is playing off by themselves
Not alone, but with others
Throwing around balls of love and life and relationships
Friends dancing around a symmetry caused by everything being timed
Timeouts are punishment
The removal of those who misuse their balls of darkness, of sanctity
And it’s misused all of the time
Flowing from fingertips to screaming words to pain and fear before it translates back into the meditative peace
This child is forced into the spotlight when they’d prefer to be in the darkness because they understand
They understand that darkness is the compromise of fire for self love and worth
Darkness is where one goes to not judge, where one can dance and scream and feel without waiting to be told to
Darkness is loving and thoughtful and surrounding
It’s encompassing
And in a world full of so much light, it’s the bringer of sensation
And fighting against the void
The void and darkness are very different
The void is the loss of everything and the gain of nothing while darkness is the acceptance of everything and the love of nothingness
Nobody is afraid of the dark
They’re afraid of the void
A boy is in his bed, terrified that monsters are under it, going to attack him or take him
And his hands are shaking and he fears the dark, vilifying it to become something it is not
Shoving with his mind to say that all darkness is bad, when darkness is just trying to care
Darkness is the universes caretaker
Loving everything, even when it decides it doesn’t need that love
So remember that the darkness is your caretaker in form of friend, parent, teacher, lover, sibling
And that everything is always loved
No matter what you’ve done
…
By Colin Jon david Stewart
Colin Jon with Glow Stick by Terri Stewart CC (BY-NC-ND)
Sunshine scrapes rust of rod iron railings
shimmers cobwebs on balcony plants
and what doesn’t spill on cobblestones below
streams through open windows
stretches on waking bare limbs
dries dreamless nights’ last drop of sweat
dewy stance poised on threshold of consciousness
a Mediterranean sky absorbs the city’s vibrant colors
scent of the sea in blooming trees, in sun kissed hair
on young girls’ skin glazed with a hint of Bain de Soleil
home as sweet and safe as God’s lure of heaven
street vendor’s voice calling price of peaches
insulate the morning a familiar soft hue
rituals of coffee and idle gossip trill
the humid air in narrow alleys
radios blare love songs through shutters
on yellow walled buildings
diffused in city noise and coo of doves on ledges
they fade in wall crevices storing a city’s secrets
bounce of gold crosses between breasts
colorful hijabs ’round others’ bare face
friendships seeded in borrowed sugar, borrowed time
she, unaware of borrowed wailers on their way
makes plans on a sunny balcony as she hangs
her blue jeans on a clothesline
moments before war drums ripple through crisp calm
Qanun like a zither plucking
running goats from a carousing stream,
Saz strings singing each water drop,
Oud shaking the rainbow from the mist,
Kamanjah—that other name for a violin—
surfing along the ultraviolet waves,
while a Russian Balalaika taps
its toes frenetically and
the Darbuka keeps them in time
and sometimes Bongos serve
for Tablas—all a whirling meditation
chorusing the heavens in hopes
that one day their peace will come
as Arab and Jew play a concert together
on a mystical mountain in the Upper Galilee.
The BeZine 