The CURRENT ISSUE PROJECT TYPE should get this as its PARENT Project Type. When the new issue is published, the new PROJECT TYPE for the issue (Vol x | Issue y | Theme gets this as the parent. The old issue gets its Volume number (Vol n) as its PARENT Project Type at publication of the new issue.
We are continuing in this issue our ReCollection section, looking back through The BeZine past issues and blog posts in this, our tenth year. This poem comes from The BeZine Volume 3 Issue 4, on January 15, 2017. Liliana Negoi is a Core Team member, emirata. The theme for the issue this poem appeared in was “Resist!”
No Rain
blades of onyx
sharp
cut the umbilical cord
of sounds and tears
flooding the sea of sorrow
with dryness
the eyes of drought
measure with pride
the parched souls
lined up at the gates of the sun
“no water!”
the sponge drips only sour blood
on the lips of light
“no roots!”
echoes of salt
whirl within voices
and sand stays still
“unworthy!”
the earth screams
muddy with guilt and regrets
someone
somewhere
will carve hieroglyphs
in the stones we become
today…
We are continuing in this issue our ReCollection section, looking back through The BeZine past issues and blog posts in this, our tenth year. This poem comes from The BeZine Volume 4 Issue 2, on November 15, 2017. Irene Emanuel remains a contributing Core Team member. The theme of the issue this poem originally appeared in was “Hunger, Poverty and The Working Class as Slave Labor.” Jamie Dedes, z”l, our Founding Editor, began the introduction with this paragraph:
“All of our concerns—peace, environmental sustainability, human rights, freedom of expression—depend on a more equal distribution of wealth, on making sure no one goes hungry and on breaking-down barriers to employment, healthcare, education and racial and gender equity.”
Togetherness
They’re there;
hollowed into make-shift sponge-foam beds,
tight-curled into malodorous rag-blankets
and plastic of dubious origin.
They’re there;
the shadow-ghost people
of no fixed abode,
gathered loosely together
in cohesive misery.
They’re there;
existing on society’s fringe,
sustained by the government’s pandering promises;
sharing glue-highs and garbage rot
They’re there;
old children, dying people,
together in perpetual poverty.
They’re there;
trampled contours on grass verges,
silhouettes on street corners,
robotic vendors with nothing to sell
but themselves.
They’re there;
the street-people of forgotten causes,
unified in the rainbow nation
of lost hopes.
We are continuing in this issue our ReCollection section, looking back through The BeZine past issues and blog posts in this, our tenth year. This poem comes from The BeZine Volume 3 Issue 2, on November 15, 2016, which had the theme of “Loving Kindness.” Our Founding Editor, Jamie Dedes, z”l, wrote this poem in 2013 and was very fond of it. It seems a fitting closing to both this month’s ReCollection section and the June 2023 issue (Volume 10 Issue 2).
Japanese tea house: reflects the wabi sabi aesthetic, Kenroku-en Garden From Pictures section of OpenHistory under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license
Wabi Sabi
if only i knew
what the artist knows
about the great perfection
in imperfection
i would sip grace slowly
at the ragged edges of the creek
kiss the pitted
face of the moon
befriend the sea
though it can be a danger
embrace the thunder of a waterfall
as if its strains were a symphony
prostrate myself atop the rank dregs on the forest floor,
worshiping them as compost for fertile seeds
and the breeding ground for a million small lives
if i knew what the artist knows,
then i wouldn’t be afraid to die,
to leave everyone
i would be sure that some part of me
would remain present
and that one day you would join me
as the wind howling on its journey
or the bright moment of a flowering desert
if i knew what the artist knows,
i would surely respond soul and body
to the echo of the Ineffable in rough earthy things
i would not fear decay or work left undone
i would travel like the river through its rugged, irregular channels
comfortable with this life; imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete
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?
This poem was previously published in The BeZine in March 2018. The author thought it timely to present again because of its poignancy in the light of how children might be dealing with the change to their lives in Ukraine … far more violent than we have had to cope with in the West in the past two generations, by simply growing up. He is currently an Associate Editor of The BeZine.
John Anstie …
… Qualified as a Metallurgical Engineer, for the first quarter of his working life he worked as a scientist and engineer, for the second quarter, as a Marketing and Export Sales Manager, both in the Steel Industry; in the third quarter he held a variety of roles in IT and Project Management and was Master of his own company. The last quarter could well be his most fulfilling, if of least financial advantage, as a writer and singer in a small local chamber choir and with one of the UK’s finest barbershop choruses. Married with three children and six grandchildren. He is currently an Associate Editor of the BeZine.
You see all we have is this garden.
These bare, raw, hardened hands.
All we have is this garden.
This earth to grow with, these plants to root for.
All we have is this gathering of brother, sister, father, son.
They come here to garden together,
To break bread and sip water in the dusk.
In this garden, love was made.
Children grew and learned the flowers,
And grew some more and learned to plant.
The old woman with her white, white hair
Comes here to work the corn.
She sings to the children as they gather at her feet.
They can recognize the sound of her deep, husky voice.
“We shall overcome, we shall overcome,” her voice embraces the night air
The children memorize the song until they can sing it back to her.
You see they want to call this land real estate.
They think they can split it apart at the center,
Destroy its twisty paths, willow tree.
They think more of a community can be made by
Gutting the earth and slapping concrete over it, charging per square mile.
They imagine that the love this garden was made with can be uprooted,
Tossed to the side.
They have forgotten the feel of fresh corn in hardened hands,
How the sun strokes your back as you work the tomatoes.
They have forgotten that a child’s wisdom isn’t always found in books.
This garden was a refuge for the children
In the hustle of this crazy city,
To try to prevent them from running wild on the Lower East side
When the streets are layered with drugs, syringes, anger.
Maude with her white hair and bustling energy
Has spent hours tending to this sweetness.
She knows the way to create with plants,
How to tend to them,
Caress them with her fingertips, even sing to them.
She won’t let anyone hurry her.
She is stubborn with her blue cotton scarf on
And a tunic that contains her gardening shears, her winterized gloves.
The men with the bulldozer have come.
But Maude saw them from down the block, long before they arrived.
She just sits down, planting herself on the earth,
Rooted as a wizened tree
She blocks their passage at the garden’s entrance
“They cannot enter” she sings to herself “They cannot enter.”
The children sing behind her, echoing her.
And then she lets out a big belly laugh,
She cackles at them, not saying a word.
In her firm, rooted place, nothing and no-one’s going to move her now,
Not even their big engine.
In the last year of your life, they took a photo of you.
It was a formal picture.
You were seated outside in a large wooden chair,
You were seated upright, the green lawn falling away behind you, The trees marked a background in the distance.
Your eyes looked out far beyond the camera lens.
Your eyes looked away from the camera's eye in defiance,
You were not going to smile in that moment.
You were not going to pretend happiness:
It was impossible for you,
Not after the years of fighting.
You were not going to let the viewer of that photograph forget your journeys, The way your hands had lifted up young slave children from the floor, Pulling them onto your back,
Stepping out into the cold winter night, with no possibility of going back, Finding a way to keep going forward.
In this last photo they took of you,
You were dressed all in white, with a shawl wrapped around your thinning face, White hair cut close to your head.
You were strong, yet a model of peace.
Looking out beyond the camera, what did you see?
Perhaps you still carried within you
Those old journeys to freedom, hiding behind newspapers,
Lodging yourself between cars on trains,
When they set dogs on you, you disappeared.
You had a way of knowing how to find the shadows of walls in the middle of sun-light. It was a power that they could never know or pull apart.
Harriet, you were born different from the other girls.
Less passive, you carried yourself upright,
When the other girls giggled or looked down at the ground.
Araminta was your birth name, it meant defender of the people.
Once you crossed the line to freedom, you could have remained North,
But each time, even though your hands were worn out, your feet were calloused from miles of walking. You determined to go back again to rescue someone.
You said, “I never lost a passenger”
You were 94 years old in this photograph.
Even though you were aged, you gripped the chair's arm firmly. The toughness was still inside you.
It allowed you to journey forward
No matter what came your way.
Woke up this morning with the Manhattan lock down blues
Said I woke up this morning with the Manhattan lock down blues
Something came over this country
And I can no longer lace my shoes
Someone has stolen the economy and sent it out with the rain
Someone has stolen the economy and sent it out with the rain
Companies are starting to crash, jobs going down the drain
He’s a mad magician pulling feathers from his hat
But has the Doctor told him where the rabbit's at?
The narcissist has taken over
His twitter feed has gone wild
Now even more journalists must fact check his lies
The police have become the military
Shooting at random with no restraint
The police are now an army
And they are starting to look insane
Woke up this morning with the Manhattan lock down blues
Said I woke up this morning with the Manhattan lock down blues
There’s a Mad Hatter in Washington
Who is out on another tirade
Meanwhile, the sirens in New York city soar
And a thousand homeless people are not rescued from their shelter
Don’t mention the unemployed who must decide between rent or hunger
And the person who doesn’t have a voice to express his anger
As the virus numbers peak
Mr 45 says he is not so sick
And he breathes heavily outside the White House front door
Mr 45 claims there’s an easy cure
Perhaps he wants to distract the public with his talk of greatness again
But he’s left his medicine in the Hospital with his hydroxychloroquine brain
…is a poet, social worker, and activist who lives in New York City. She received a B.A. in creative writing from New School University and an M.F.A in creative writing from Sarah Lawrence College. Dorothy also works as a music journalist with a passion in African music. She has published journalism with Afropop Worldwide and World Music Central, among others.
A recent poem was accepted for publication by Evening Street Review.
Men will clutch at illusions whenthey have nothing else to hold onto.
—Czeslaw Milosz
Presuppositions, carrots, sticks and stones.
Break my bones. Re-mortgage my fractured home.
A system built on never ending loans
Will divide against itself and implode.
It’s hard to kick against the fiscal goads,
But people remain people, even so.
There comes a time when they will seek themselves
And find their shelves of purchases to be
Their allocated eternal dwelling,
As decided by the salesmen who delve
Into new definitions of this free
Doom. Despite the great reckoning welling
In the hearts of the masses, wound up tight,
The violence sparked will not be the good fight.
The Good Fight
I’ll fight your rope, your rules, your hope
As your sparrow does under your supervision!
—Jack Mapanje
The good fight is not in the violence
But the grueling daily grind of being
Fully present. Movable in silence
And in shouting. Invisibly seeing
The power behind the play, and playing.
But taking the game from the arena
And into the sand-pit where it belongs.
Noticing the blood, tending the lesions,
Both broken nose and cut knuckle. Weighing
Not the trifling arrest and subpoena
But the breath, every note of tragic songs,
And every synthesized social adhesion.
Bandwagons of revolution comply.
If your hope is in them, it’s already died.
Revolutionary
There is one thing, and only one thing,in which it is granted to you to be freein life,all else is beyond your power:that is to recognize and profess the truth.
—Leo Tolstoy
To be a revolutionary is to
Let your living make the mightiest noise,
Not to write a message of peace in blood,
Or let a movement’s leader dictate to you.
It’s not to find the tribe that fits your voice
But to reject tribalism for good,
As a concept and as a condition.
You don’t prove you’re not a pig by grunting
In protest against the proposition.
You must be changed to be change to see change,
And know the bed-rock of what you’re wanting
Beneath the gargantuan mountain range
Of rough rubble reasons rabble rousing,
To the meat of the hope you’re espousing.
…is a British Poet who grew up in Gloucester before spending eight years in London studying theology and working with the homeless. He now lives in the South of France with his wife and son, where he concentrates on writing, teaching English, and community building. His recent and forthcoming publications include Dreich Broad 3, Paddler Press Issue 4, Archetype Issue 1, Radix Magazine, Spillwords and Lothlorien Poetry Issue 7.
Which or why matters not.
It would be best to forget
The whole damned lot.
But what do you want to bet
That we will go for a rerun.
We will do as we have done,
Enlist the starry-eyed young,
Stack them like cordwood
Tight in the barrack bunks
Prepared to feed the flame.
We will play the patriot's game,
Wave the flag and sing the song
Fight for right and right wrong
And it will not be long, again, before
We exhume the past, bury the future.
…divides his time between Montana and Arizona. His poems have appeared an many magazines, most recently Grey Sparrow Journal, Rat’s Ass Review, The BeZine, Ibbetson Street, and Muddy River Poetry Review.
Raging at an uncommon pace
eons accelerating through the stars
little bright spot in the immensity traces
the sign of what it may become
a line disappearing in a soft vibration.
Fleeing to escape modern history
it may never be seen but as a memory
shiny speckle into the depth of an abyss
made of eternity and absent souls.
The poet squints to fix the moment
and imagine the words it may have spoken
echoing for all to hear the dying symphony.
Perhaps it will return with the new dawn
looking for a mate to grow in harmony.
For yet it seeks a rebirth in a hostile sphere.
In the Soul
Some join in the deep of secret hours
behind curtains thick with lies
truth does not know the way in
when they share ultimate fancies.
When dawn comes they will part ways
rushing onto a path into other tragedies
after a night to decades of illusions
they pretended to believe in eternity.
Shells will survive into their world
upon streets of stench and dark asphalt
where they will smile again with faith
that no one will scent their death.
Strange liquid like putrescent molasses
ooze from those living corpses
enveloped by a cloud of love
as they like to make it known on the rooftops.
I would rather walk by her side
Safe, surrounded by her aura
with a touch of her soul upon my breath
inhaling her being through every pore.
Rolls Royce and Little Yachts
Dressed in a bright gown
feet in golden stilettos
she stirs the Lamborghini to a halt
near the Cartier store where she will splurge.
Not far behind her the smoke of a city
fallen to the greed of the would-be gods
a low cloud hovers thick as muck
heavy with the weight of infinite miseries
The tuxedo waiting for her, too dreams
of helicopters and private jets
lounging on the acres of his vast greens
one step closer to vast fortunes.
Descendant of royalty long forgotten
little, wrinkled by endless suns
alone in the dingy room she cleans
mansions and castles large as her city.
In thousand-dollar Hawaiian suits
others bask on the beach of their own islands
fake hair and skin made of silicon they also go
to the tomb… in million dollar outfits.
…is the advisor for The Chimes, the Shorter University award winning poetry and arts publication. His writing and photography have been published in print, including Kestrel, Symposium, La Pensee Universelle, Paris, and other art and literature magazines in the United States and abroad. Most recently, his collection In Absentia, was published in August 2021 with Silver Bow Publishing.
Can you not hear us?
We can hear you,
“Thoughts and prayers.”
“Thoughts and prayers.”
For how many bodies
on the ground?
“God bless the people of El Paso, you say.
“May God be with all of Dayton,
Charleston, Philadelphia, Orlando,
Sandy Hook, Parkland, Atlanta, Bolder,
Buffalo, and Uvalde.”
On and
On and
On and
On.
Sadly, we plead to
stone-deaf politicians.
No answers, only rancid rhetoric,
followed by dead silence.
Except for,
“Thoughts and prayers.”
“Thoughts and prayers.”
“We are heartbroken.”
How many more?
How much more?
Hate and anger like molten
metal spilling hot and fiery,
torching the earth.
We are the voices of the dead.
That’s our blood smeared
on your walls.
Our bone shards scattered
on your streets.
From our graves we shout,
“Do something. Do something.”
Too late for us, but for the living
Please. Please. Please.
…is the authorof Touch the Sky, a heart-rending novel, filled with intrigue, about a missing child in Oregon’s backcountry. Her writing has received awards or recognition from Writer’s Digest, Short Story America, Willamette Writers, Oregon Writers Colony, and the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC). Her work has appeared in various literary magazines and anthologies, including the Saturday Evening Post’s Great American Fiction Contest Anthology. Other stories were performed at Liars’ League events in London, England and Portland, Oregon. She has also authored a chapbook, Beneath the Boughs Unseen, featuring holiday stories about society’s invisible people. She lives and writes in Oregon’s lush Willamette Valley.
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