In South-Central Pennsylvania,
the dogwoods are in full bloom.
Grass greens and wrens breed,
as bees zizz and aggregate pollen,
disturbing the allergies of women
and men. Un-garaged automobiles drive
into clouds of pollen flung like confetti.
But that was yesterday.
Today, the grass, birds,
bees, and people are bewildered
as the encrusted automobiles
emerge as fluffy featherbeds.
Mother nature halts her pursuits
to lament—to moan and weep.
…is a poet living in Pennsylvania, USA. His work has been featured at The BeZine Quarterly, Fevers of the Mind, Ink, Sweat, and Tears, Red Eft Review, Trouvaille Review, among others. He also is the editor ofEast Ridge Review, a new platform for poetry book and writer reviews.
This great tide of solar beginnings
Growth indivisible—beyond words
Such reawakenings
When we green ourselves
Sun spices everything stronger
A triumphant glare shows you
and her and the world wallows with us
all in now when life wells to a head.
Plant blooms bloom more
In a plethora of themselves
A grand annual rejoicing
When our faith strengthens
In silent joy that all is what it is
That we can be blooming now together.
…is a writer born in Berkeley who has been socially aware all her life. Years in Franco’s Spain only taught her more about group action and collaboration. Professor of American and teaching World literatures teach her how to live and love. Intensity is her middle name.
Life is a mysterious web of intricate interdependent relationships, and diversity is at its heart.
Kenny Ausubel
Dear Jamie,
Ji we never met on this Earthly abode,
yet we were together by soul spirit thought and words
Our virtual meeting place was the Japanese garden close
to your home full of sweet scented flowers and small ponds of water
You were so happy to shift in the one room studio
which had more open space and place for the Life Line... oxygen
Oh Dear Jamie Ji your trips to the hospital would make me feel so
helpless, for long hours nothing except prayers gave me hope that
all would be well, and it did, for many days, as Allah Most Gracious
gave time to share creative positive work and you shared more than
your strength and heart could bear. You lifted so many who needed the support,
your affectionate inspiration, grace and encouragement just
wafted like the soft breeze of summer spersed with tender tweets of
birds who sounded like a choir in harmony, singing a prayer then
a hymn.
But Jamie Ji on this Earth, the Creator's most blessed gift,
humanity suffered severely due to the shortage of the one thing
you too needed most—"oxygen".
Jamie Ji I never knew that a few days after you won the struggle
and quietly passed on to the promised heaven I would be down
on the prayer mat asking the Almighty for mercy forgiveness and
help for the same 'Oxygen for my own son in law, caught in the lungs
by Covid19, breathing heavily, within hours was put on the ventilator.
Confined, I felt extremely helpless, grieved and holding
on to your thoughts, your brave spirit and uplifting shower of
smiling stickers that would tingle and brighten up the mini screen
of the mobile, but the phone was silent this time, and so were you,
no words came through and my heart, laden with
sorrow asked me, "Think of how Jamie Ji must have felt?"
It was a severe hypoxic moment and as time passed no oxygen
had any effect. It was time. Time to go home for Salman,
time for us all to be patient, to accept the divine will, to wait.
Time took over. Your Japanese Garden will never wither.
Life gives hope for some time as flowers will bloom silently,
unnoticed, in the deep snow and emerge with lovely colors
to spread fragrance all around.
Constantly with your thoughts inspiration and guidance.
A.
Respected G Jamie Dedes had this special skill and vision for selecting quotes from various authors and preceding them with her own poetic expressions. She dearly loved nature, flowers, tall green trees and gardens, specially the Japanese gardens. She wished to merge her spirit with that of nature and sink deeply into its beauty. Here she quotes from Anne Frank’s famous diary.
The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quite alone with the heavens, nature and God. Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be and that God wishes to see people happy, amidst the simple beauty of nature. As longs as this exists, and it certainly always will, I know that then there will always be comfort for every sorrow, whatever the circumstances may be. And I firmly believe that nature brings solace in all troubles.
Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl
I was greatly inspired and wrote the following lines in response to Jamie Ji’s quote. My poem was featured in Jamie’s “The Poet by Day” blog at www.jamiededes.com on 28th August 2019.
“In the Beginning or In the End, a poem by Anjum Wasim Dar…posted by Jamie Dedes. In Nature, Poem/Poetry.”
In the beginning or in the end, we are but particles
unknown, powerless realizing changes that emerge
in our soul and spirit, settle in the blood and flesh,
becoming one with us, invaders to us, they occupy
our spaces, our inner chambers, pollute the air we
breathe, but all this is part of the nature that we so
dearly love, appreciate and be happy and peaceful
with, nature too loves us dearly seeking to possess
sometimes abruptly sometimes slowly, silently so
quietly that we are caught unawares, sometimes
with terror and fear, the strength then lies not in
defense but in the bravery to face and fight it, all
our prayers merge with the majesty and grandeur
of nature, its beauty color and sweet fragrance,
combine as love meets love and differences
disappear, spaces vanish and glorious heavens appear.
From the silence of a room
where others would be drowned
you breached the net of pain
and strife to inspire and unite.
No cause too small or big your
voice called others to the cause
of love and care for the world
and all that live on it in unity and peace:
Your dream will live on.
For you are now at peace
flown from pain and loss
and passed your dreams to others
to dream on for you.
older, older,
this slow retreat of you
vanishing like one glove lost
while you are ending,
someone, somewhere,
is beginning
from woman to woman
our songs stride in odd moments
watching soft dark not far from here
simple as an apron—
stronger than night
your feet may stumble
hers will run
older, older, older
I know time has stopped
and another, begins
where a spirit has just passed
“Rhythm & blues, nothing like it!
The languid lovely haunting sound
I heard back then, and now
when I see music I see a long
narrow shop, walls lined with
’45 vinyl discs sometimes red
or yellow, mostly black, inlaid
with labels: blue, green, pink,
black and names: Chance, Duke,
Peacock, Checker, a montage
of color and design. Up front
across a counter sat Dennis:
dark eyes, rosy cheeks, sensuous lips
and a few thin cowlicks spilled
partly down his forehead. Dennis
knew R&B very well, not
R&B as we hear today, but stuff
from the late 40’s, early 50’s.
he was fortunate to be at the heart
of all those languid melodies,
not jump tunes, but the ballads.”
Schaeffer saw him in later years
only once before Dennis passed.
A different record shop, where both
were visitors. Dennis’s opened black
leather revealed a waist that had
thickened, and instead of rosy cheeks
there was a puffiness to his face.
Somehow gospel came up in their
talk, Schaeffer said the Swan Silvertones
to which Dennis replied, Oh,
they’re the best, a wry smile
in his eyes. Schaeffer felt he’d
been right all along, these past
few years, since he began listening
to gospel, that the Swan Silvertones
with their tenor lead Claude Jeter
were the best. Dennis corroborated
Schaeffer’s feeling. He thinks—
when he sees Dennis up front in
a corner of the long narrow shop—
music is feeling, you feel the music.
Schaeffer’s Notion of Beauty
Bombs turn a building to rubble,
rescuers find
an arm, a leg.
In a mall a maniac fires a rifle,
leaving in his wake
dead children.
Hate manifestos
all over the Internet,
in the world there is danger:
a racist shoots Satyajit Chandra
at a bus stop
and nothing is done.
Still, even now, beauty
is with us.
In the midst of turmoil,
our Mother Earth besieged
by bloody conflict,
in a world beleaguered
by well-healed negligence,
humanity is laced
with one great flaw.
Children are dying
We are dying with you.
I am crying for you.
Yet, whilst this goes on,
you walk the woods,
harvesting your pine cones
putting them in your wishing well.
Your unconscious prayer
for a better world,
for love, for life,
that sows the seeds
of perfect purity
in heart and mind,
that will not fade with time.
This is the magnificence,
the magic of your spirit
that is untouched
by a tainted world.
Then, in one gesture,
one single act of generosity,
of utterly moving faith,
you beckoned me
come close to you.
You looked me in the eyes;
and I was hypnotised.
Then, you gave it to me,
one single piece of magic,
a piece of nature's bounty,
and bade me keep its secret
as covert as a spy.
Each time I hold your gift,
when we are far apart,
I'll think of you and
remember this moment,
by which you have renewed
my faith in all our futures.
You could melt the heart,
like chocolate on a Summer's day.
You could soften steel
in hardened minds.
You and your magic
are our future.
Eight years ago, my then 4-year old granddaughter gave me a pine cone. She had found it as the family walked together in the woods. She called me to her, very secretively, and put it in my hand, confiding in me that it was a magic secret and that I should tell no one. She bade me keep the secret, which I did do for five full years … until 29th September 2018. This particular date was the 100 Thousand Poets for Change annual celebration, which, in that year, was embellished by a campaign to Read-a-Poem-to-a-Child . It finally came to the day, five years after she gave me that pine cone, that I should share this magic moment with a wider audience for the sake of the mission of Michael Rothenberg and Terri Carrion, who established the 100TPC in 2011. Its mission is in complete harmony with the mission of the BeZine, to promote Peace, Sustainability and Social Justice. It was, most important of all, a reminder that we should appreciate, value and respect our children, grandchildren and all those who follow us, for the sake of a sustainable future for generations of young minds, whose task it will be to care for this precious planet …
Diminished mutters of an uncommon past; withheld resource
The expressions of squally times,
An evolving ponder of thought
Left in thresholds of a contemplated climate change
Peeping signs of unbearable moments; pandemic
Intermixed with marshes of a stiffened gaze
An un-hooped highlight in distant frameworks
Sustainability the solemn definitions of characteristic indignation & condescended adherence
Tentative an adjunct to propel a sustainable reaction
Mazes & fundamentals, the baseline tapers of prospective yields.
Think. Do not cut the funding
Rapidly warming Earth cries,
droughts, conflicts, floodings rise.
Pastoralists compete, struggle, worry,
as grazing lands gradually shrink.
Think, do not cut the funding.
Depending on subsistence farming
humans fight for life in camps.
Searching for food each day, as
plants trees crops slowly ... die
Think, do not cut the funding.
Pandemic lockdown proving seismic,
adaptation, adaptation, is the call,
O, please do not cut the funding.
Help All! Do not cut the funding.
I’m going to sink into oblivion,
obviously linking this planet
we’re living on to contagion
so many see raging in our lives.
The planet eyes a sad reprise
in an extinction surprise designed
to rid it of us—such a fuss to save
the ducks, dolphins, and newts.
Bring luck to what our environs once
meant, turning now to the battle cry:
Arise quills, venoms, and ills! Erase
the worldwide virus that is us!
I gather stones from ocean, sea, lake, river, stream, and the dry desert wadi; to protect my straw life from the storm winds of time they line the walls, shelves, walks, and a small corner rock garden. Snow buries them in winter, the outer ones, and the inner turn invisible beneath plaster and book dust as these stories and poems renovate the narrative, revise my living space into something that might hold up to erasures of climate, and my life into—something. Long after my DNA strands become a statistical probability chancing in some descendants’ groins; long after the house falls to dust, the garden to weeds, the shores of the oceans and seas recede, advance, the lakes come and go, the rivers dry and flood, the wadi erodes to flatlands; long after all of this; a few stones out of place here in a row, there in a pile, might attract some little notice, a bit of curiosity. This flint tool from Baaka. This agate from Superior. Amethyst from Ontario. Lava from Hawaii. Mica from Pennsylvania. Polished smooth granite. In some way we will remember. Where did such stones come from? When? How did they end up here? Why? What story do they tell? Who gathered them in? And who after all will stop to notice; in what climate will these stones be uncovered? Perhaps by a robotic rover returned from Mars…
A segment from Perseverance’s Mastcam-Z First High-Resolution Panorama March 02, 2021 — Cropped and adjusted in Adobe® Photoshop® by Michael Dickel Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS
the little crawfish that nipped my finger
has the coolest job on earth
rolling clods of wet humus
into moist balls
to build a chimney & bring
rich dark earth to the surface
its chimney had closed somehow, so
I turned the tower over with my foot
thinking I did him a favor
opening an air duct
a cardinal mistake—
this tiny crawfish emerged
from the thick gray mud
claws raised toward me
flexing & threatening
so I slipped a finger beneath it
to lift it back into its hole
the mudbug pinched me hard
a little fold of skin
bunched up between the pincers, the mudbug
not half my thumb’s length
squeezed it tight
today that hole was plugged again
from the inside
when the weather’s warm & dry
the crawfish rolls another ball
capstone to close the chimney
and hold moisture in
until late winter rain
or a much too early spring
Haiku 2020
“may we all have better vision in 2020”
picked off my hand
the ant that just bit me
—I might have killed it—
3-8-2020
two bumblebees buzzing
belly to buttonhole
zizz over my head
3-22-2020
turning over
the garden shovel and--
out drops half a worm
3-23-2020
second night of quarantine
—the smell
of someone else’s barbecue
3-24-2020
carpenter bees on
corner of the garage next door
eating the building
3-25-2020
The clouds are about
to drop from the sky
Aw! They crushed the moon!
3-29-2020
a curtain over
the window keeps lightning
from coming in
4-19-2020
epigram“it's either in this world
or never”
waiting for the wind
to raise a ruckus
tornado warnings again
4-19-2020
it was just a handful of rain
flung out of a cloud onto
the sidewalk
5-16-2020
Dennis Formento promises never to write a bio longer than the average poem. He lives in Slidell, Louisiana, Mississippi Bioregion, USA. St. Tammany Parish co-ordinator of 100,000 Poets for Change. Author of Spirit Vessels, Cineplex, Looking for An Out Place. Poem “Amarcord,” appeared in English and Italian, in Americans and Others: International Poetry Anthology, Camion Press, 2nd ed., 2020. Poem, “the floe of ice,” performed with Simone Bottasso on organetto, is on Youtube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlXNe9lKkxg
if I have to sleep, I’ll sleep, but the moon isn’t there anymore
what you see is a pale reflection, the moon
is self-generated light
what I mean when I say self-generated light
I mean a solar sail like a giant curtain
dragged behind the moon & keeping it
in perfect orbit above the earth’s surface
the real moon is gone, taken apart
by scientists from NASA, EU and the KGB
“the moon”
is just a thin metal disk powered by that solar sail
some people think
the moon itself is the sail but
I think the sail is deployed behind the moon
trapping light from the sun, powering the engine
that keeps it in orbit
you can see it if you telescope real close
astronauts know this—high-flying pilots know this—
just a few lousy miles across, the thin metal plate reflects the sun’s light
and the earth’s shadow just the way the moon did
well some people think it’s thin, durable mirror
but I think it’s metal—highly polished metal that resists
the pings and arrows and chips you’d normally get
from junk up there at the front door of space—
some people say it’s the frontier, but I say it’s the front door of space
The real moon is gone Scientists took it away
and left a lot of junk behind
Imagine all the lovers without a moon—
the bad poets—Jungian psychologists—I call ‘em
“spychologists”— basing their poems and prognoses on nothing
but a thin metal plate hovering above the earth
Oh, the tides have nothing to do with the moon
they never did, the tides are created by the sun
Everybody born with their moon in Aries through Pisces
has to find another planet for their sign
Your lives are meaningless NASA and the Russians
have stripped the moon of meaning
and replaced it with a thin solar sheet
The moon people
have nothing to believe in
The President knows this in his Oval Office
The Oval Office is a symbol of the moon!
He’s fighting to bring the moon back
but he can’t tell you, no one would believe him
and he’s got to keep his credibility intact
He knows why women are going crazy
their ovaries so accustomed to the moon’s
spiritual pull— they have evolved for millennia to respond to it—
Remember Jesus has a house on Mars—but NASA
doesn’t want you to know—
there are pictures Jesus would have to be eighteen feet tall
to be seen in this resolution some people say eighteen I think that’s impossible
but he’s the son of God so you never know
The scientists don’t know
The Moon the wolves howl at, the one we see
dipping into the Western sky—our Western sky
that belongs to us—remember the flag that was planted there?
It’s in a museum in Russia with Lenin’s tomb—
the Russians must hand over the moon—
a thin sheet of glass—some people say
—but I say it’s metal
sometimes visible during the day
reflecting the sun’s light
and the earth’s shadow in a perfect imitation of the real
psychological moon. The one in our dreams has been stolen
and the scientists have stolen our dreams.
Only the President and his queue
of anonymous advisors know this.
Dennis Formento promises never to write a bio longer than the average poem. He lives in Slidell, Louisiana, Mississippi Bioregion, USA. St. Tammany Parish co-ordinator of 100,000 Poets for Change. Author of Spirit Vessels, Cineplex, Looking for An Out Place. Poem “Amarcord,” appeared in English and Italian, in Americans and Others: International Poetry Anthology, Camion Press, 2nd ed., 2020. Poem, “the floe of ice,” performed with Simone Bottasso on organetto, is on Youtube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlXNe9lKkxg
I’m letting the garden be wild,
I think,
stop mowing the lawn
to benefit bee,
butterfly, spider—
never air-puddling
gnats, they agitate my sky.
I’m letting the wild be, think garden
hedges hanging loose,
holly thickening,
sparrow gossip halls,
goldfinch clown acts,
and no fly zones
for all the shitty grey pigeons.
I wild, I think I’ll garden,
bindweed no,
pluck it out!
slash bramble,
all interlopers can wait
to be rotten beneath the
ash I allow to remain.
I’m garden:
Wild!
send hard boots down,
suppress tangle and weed,
crush compost,
except you—pretty mallow,
you may stay.
I’m thinking YES, wild garden,
until a furred fury of
vigorous sinew
erupts in my eyes,
like a scream,
upending all assumptions
with a pink flick of rat-sceptic’s tail.
[With a tip of the hat to Wendy Cope]
the perfect pronunciation may seem unnatural
in this ostensibly reprimanded formless morning cavalcade
turning into a shapeless day of an awkward evening
lost in a mute doorframe
leading to a private cloud of a colorful sky
full with goshawks calling each other
pointing out the plummeting temperature
in the surrounding cities where people
live off the grid due to introvert
blindsided authorities ostentatiously lurking around
protected by their frozen shells
without explicable reason that would make them
taintless before the spirits
and their invented gods
with thin-lipped smiles
concave manhole
shriek as a nail pulled from dry wood
is the sound of death’s hoofs
covering a landscape measure
to reach
a wanna be constable
he who is hamming
behind a promisingly protective curtain of smoke
like an aardvark in the mud
we easily leave death alive
to get rid of creatures
unwished for
name your weapons
they cry
and those who rebel
will reach their demise
the sound of dying
reminds us of a place
we have never wished to discover
how to get rid of evil
light dirtied his pedantically flinching face
the frozen shell of rehearsed authority
cannot grasp the significance of resistance
despite our laid-out world in a stretcher
his confidence is crumbling in the gestures of this particular centrality
he is astonished in glancing at and discovering a two-way traffic in his unadorned brain
that made him lose his equilibrium
his benignity equals with fleecing
one can carry it anywhere
to conventional storefronts
to inconvenient staircases
to a convenient store upstairs
and leave it there as a
compensation of an incredulous notion of
trap buttoned
confidence
I keep some shirts at the far end
of my closet, shirts I’ve owned
for decades (since back when they fit).
I own some shoes with holes in the toe
almost worn through; shoes I’ve kept
in the dark corner of my closet floor.
If you were to ask me why I’ve kept them,
what with the shirt collars an inch
too small and the shoes a few steps shy
of perforated, I’d say, “Well, maybe
someday…”
But we know most somedays never come.
I own a memory I keep safe at the far corner
of my mind; a memory of …something… I’ve kept
for a couple of decades (when I could remember).
I hold this hope, one I’ve worried thin like a child
would his button-eyed, floppy friend, now worn
to almost gossamer thinness,
And if you ask why I’ve kept them,
what with the way most memory fades
in each new day’s light and how gossamer hope
doesn’t spring eternal I’d say, “Well, maybe
someday…”
That's because, if most somedays never come,
that must mean some do.
We watch in pain as they plunder
The middle class worry and wander
Peasants live in wonder
Big bellies parade slums masks covering the stench
They with no hope of tomorrow in hot sun sweat
Listening but not hearing the empty blubber
by bellies under tent’s shade
Hoping they will drop fifty shillings
for the malnourished child's feed
Dust from big taxpayer range blind them, they don’t see
prime Minister leave
The only six public toilets‘ contents lack space
and their smell sickens
They can’t serve them all, they pee and poop in buckets
for the poop man to dispose nearby
The poop man knock their door in the morning
They spent the day listening to prime Minister
so no money for poop man
The heat in slum houses is unbearable
and the poop is boiling in bucket
Coin of the day take malnourished child
to nearby government hospital
Nurses are on strike, no drugs, no doctors, slum dwellers
parade all sick of hunger
Police chase them from hospital
because they don’t have masks
The newshour, prime Minister reported to have built houses
in the slum, hundreds of billions used
They stare in wonder, prime Minister came to ask for their help
He talked of building bridges initiative and need
for voting for constitutional changes
The country needs more leaders and the need
to increase constituencies
Do they have to burn even the small rotten bridges
leading slum dwellers to national cake?
Who will pay the park of wolves that they want to increase?
The prices for commodities shoot overnight
Another day, no pay for poop man, the day spent in hospital
Citizens views needed on constitutional changes
Trillions set aside for a yes or no campaign
Children back to slums teachers on strike
The competition for toilets is worse in the slums,
stench is unbearable
The stench of the greed by ruling class is worse
Global warming has made the sun mad
that it threatens to burn slum houses
The BeZine 