‘a holy whirlpool spins in your river’ —Enheduanna
I enlist this river's mineral bed;
whose damp air manipulates bone-body shape,
whose discharged oracle once roughly bled
a shrieking carpet of dust, rolled swiftly out,
reconfiguring motes its water-shade laid
in fire-glyphs seared on the river's parched mud.
When Alexander sucked the poison root,
pleading to know if his tongue wrinkled stone,
sweating in semi-precious types of light,
he faced the whirlpool's voice-clot - found it mute;
circling earthy patterns of thoughtful doubt,
looping the river's underwritten knot.
How brightly the dust-wet whirlpool flares, half-immersed
in halo-bone. Many faces drawn, disperse,
whose deeds of kindness, are water-written.
I lift the river to my mouth—find it bitter—
I weep, rivers dry: when I rise, rivers rise,
their fierce burns refreshing my flame-filled eyes.
Astonishments of fire, astonishments of blood.
Where Woolf's softening skull blunders dim rock thud;
turning on her shoeless heel, dead Li Po,
whose eyes roll black to blue, staring in moon-sunk glow:
self-possessed of sleep in flame, river-thrown
in burning water, where all poets drown.
Commissioned by BBC Radio 3 The Verb in 2019 for programme ‘Along the River’ and subsequently published in Blackwell’s Poetry No. 1, 2020.
the circle sings a round of protest
marchers crash through the square
but my heart thumps its own protest
signs on for love to an open-ended slog
my masked mummer of doubt
riots through gardens of deception
knocks down arrogant losers
posers without shame
slashes sloganed preconceptions
and my iconolatry falls riddled
with pangs racking enough
to put my passive life at risk
forcing me to tuck
this unfathomable world
tightly inside
my once restricted embrace
you will be all right
recall spring
while nature whispers to a waiting field
all those secrets soaked faithfully
nudging a belief in growth
in peace, sowing trust
leaning forward;
like a monk dropping seed
keeping that final vow
Published first by The Remnant Archive, September 2020
If There’s a Better Tomorrow
If we count back to zero,
if we call to the spaces beyond,
and trek the stars that follow.
Which of our dreams, should we offer—
to a long winter’s night?
Let’s remember…
“what (was) usual
is not what is always.”
—Jane Hirshfield
Published first by Green Ink Poetry, December 2020
Waiting Out the Storm
My friends afford me
the comfort of their absence.
Sometimes a week or months go by.
Then when I feel alone, I remember
somewhere out there, in that other place,
someone still cares.
This was a time of need and fear,
divisiveness and protests.
It was a time of followers, idiots, leaders
believing their own lies and doubling down.
It was ridiculous.
It was a time for waiting
with little space for hope.
I worried and felt shame.
In other years—
at lunches among old friends I’d nod,
seemingly attentive, listening to past cons,
a rant, some rehashed excuses,
as misguided comments circled the table.
Opinions simmered—
but not mine.
When finished everyone leaned back
eyes checking for approval.
And I sat silent, knowing less,
about whom, I thought I knew most.
In that breather,
I took stock of the present.
The unending fires,
super hurricanes and floods,
oceans choking in plastic,
desperate cities looking out of war,
and ice shelves becoming history.
(Yes, all that.)
My mind is too small to hold
without a pause button.
It’s easier remembering how
rain quenches, restores.
But winter, (Oh God!)
winter has no time for old men.
Wait we must, then shovel our penances.
In a storm,
the world disappears,
and in spring,
with enough faith, we’ll find it again.
Published first by The Confessionalist Zine, November, 2020
Acrylic painting of Whitehaven harbour entrance, Whitehaven, Cumbria, Northwest England – Tom Higgins
I
Along the Douro toward Salamanca, faces rise from books,
tables are pushed together, destinations are forgotten and new
conversations begin - in a rush at first - as the daylight dies.
Across Hangzhou Bay the bridge rises and dips, breezes
murmur with relaxed laughter; children greet elders in low
voices and begin musing together about changes they'll make.
Over dunes, vines, and bush to the southern Cape, friends shake
their heads while strolling quietly together; their quick eyes glow
with joy in the charged air as they reveal their hidden ideas.
Down the Cordillera Central into its vast basin, the infirm rise
in their beds on thin arms and smile, glad in the end to know
the rhythm of peace in their own limbs and in others’ talk.
From the Gulf’s warm waters to windswept tundra, we’ll walk
toward each other, leaving our doors open on meetings that grow
animated with voices over food provided for the common cause.
II
Even now, we hear of suicides foregoing their sacrifices.
Even the victimizers have let themselves be led beyond harm.
Even the wealthy turn from their tragic course in good faith.
Worship begins anew, awkwardly at first, among total strangers.
Work slows into worship as neighbors relinquish their silence.
War blooms into work as everyone’s speeches are heard through.
III
The winds of common love blow warmly from the pages
of the books we open to new convictions. We awake crowded
into others’ lives, into the honeyed rising of complex harmonies
in our own voices, like nothing we have ever heard so close.
The ends of days leave room for us to go rummaging
through old, native inflections to forge a useful past, attentive
to accidental insults we may offer, and ready for correction.
The lakes of our hearts are now joined in trust and we embark
safely, even if at times the waters toss and our oars miss.
We can hardly believe that we used to call other people “total
strangers”; we turn from the past in the weariness we shake
from our hearts and hands, always eager to get to preliminaries,
like those first long looks into the eyes of those who’ve wronged
us, or devising lists on how to prepare old homes for new guests.
Having surveyed our outworn furnishings, once dear to us,
we prepare to remake them entirely as we put up new calendars,
though phrases including the word “repair” seem to creep more
often into our talk. Likewise, the news from elsewhere sounds
just like our own, playing lightly over the meals we prepare
together but might take alone, whichever mood strikes us,
remarking to those at hand, especially ourselves, how many days
we’ve spent at the peripheries of others’ lives, with friends, friends
of friends, in melting crowds, during single encounters and on
chance convergences, as in plans laid to fill an afternoon, trading
current references for an hour, or even some of our better stories
if the visit lasted the better part of a day, in homes we've entered
exactly once, hellos we never followed up on or renewed,
but that wander now back into our thoughts, like the slower-
moving distances in a view gliding out beyond the nearer,
racing verge even as we travel toward similar outings
right in the midst of the vastness we used to call “a race,”
outings with the once-met who think of us too and who,
we hear, are going to join us in nursing back to health
the rooms we all love but that still stand empty
for most of each day. Someone mentions “heaven”
and we all laugh, then go our ways.
IV
The rules, if you can call them that, for our conduct are self-
evident: axioms for good conversation and intelligent means
for spotting a good plan: one from which we can extricate
what matters most, if need be. You may have to tilt your
head just so to understand how all this works; it's easier
if you assume the posture you were in when you first
realized you were “growing up,” even if this seems like
a story you’ve only overheard somewhere. They are as easy
to attend to as one’s breathing, so it takes practice. Now and
then a fear might grip you; shudder, if you must, then resume.
V
Most at stake, of course, are the children, all around us
as we work. We don’t want to destroy them in our embrace,
like the angels hovering at the opening of Rilke’s First Elegy,
but how can we preserve these new insights even as we shed
habits that still lie about the grounds now like snares, and to keep
them from the fates we would otherwise rush toward headlong
in self-sacrifice? As though we had a choice! But we can absorb
these questions later. Let’s walk together a little further
as we talk. The children can mind themselves, and the lowering
light will just now be catching the bluebells in the beech groves.
It’s really as though some music were playing at the shore of a bay
that leads to broad, open waters beyond. Here - here’s the way.
Peace is an action word.
The yogi lying in savasana,
the meditater, the worshiper,
the nature lover know quietude,
but theirs is imperfect peace.
In our world of countries
saddled with bitterness and hate,
imperfect peace is the best
peaceable countries can know.
Peace is an action word
calming others’ fears,
seeking solutions to strife,
furthering the common good.
Only by peacing together
our one human family
can we finally say
peace nears, peace is at hand.
Like the Willow
What must be done
when venomous discord
coils about the branches
of one’s family tree?
Little help perjuring belief,
insisting it’s merely wind’s hiss
or leafy innuendos we hear,
not contention’s noxious voice.
And what good pruning limbs?
Discord’s poison planted,
all limbs are stricken:
the whole tree suffers.
Look to love, most patient love,
that chemistry of shared blood,
to reclaim lost harmonies,
grant the tree its growth—
Like the willow, family is resilient:
its members may toss and weep,
assailed by stormy weather,
yet love’s roots will to prevail.
Why Had We Fought?
My enemy and I, grappling among weeds, failed to see a pit into which we plunged. Hurting from our fall, we kept to opposite sides in that dark, dank hole, glaring hatefully at each other. Overhead, the surface loomed beyond our combined height. Beside us lay the remains of a deer that must have crashed through the pit’s flimsy cover rotting in pieces about us. Our breaths returning, we called out. No one answered. Our only hope rested with each other. The pit likely had served as an ancient cistern. Eroded bricks jutted from its sides. Seeing the task before us, we began sullenly to fashion a platform from which one of us might loft the other skyward. Unspoken went the question: who would be lofted? We worked with distrust, checking our anger.
As the first day passed into the second, and our bodies weakened from lack of food or water, we began guardedly to speak—first, how best to bolster our crude platform, then about our families. Time and our waning strength worked against us as we clawed bricks from the cistern wall and mounded them with dirt to increase our platform’s height. Even in the night’s darkness, we worked by feel, our bodies bumping against each other as we furthered our plan. On the third day we made our attempt. The question weighed heavily between us: who first would rise toward freedom? We sat quietly, staring in the gloom at each other. Finally, we drew a circle in the dirt. My enemy’s pebble landed closest to the center. I would do the lifting. He vowed to return.
I knelt on our makeshift platform, and he climbed atop my shoulders. Slowly I struggled to standing, raising him up. Though I couldn’t see his progress, I heard him straining to reach a handhold, felt his weight slowly lift from my shoulders—and I knew he’d gone over the top. I waited, fearing I’d been left to die. Would I have returned? But at last a knotted rope trailed down to me—he’d kept his word
Once we stood together at the surface, we peered down into the prison from which we’d raised each other. We shook hands, our eyes meeting. Why had we fought? Parting without rancor, we returned to our families, never to fight again.
Landscape With Something Happening Over The Horizon – Gerry Shepherd
Once The Leader Leaves
The leader has left.
The pennon withers
With the ebbing wind.
Flowers beneath our shoes,
Sandwiches served on paper-plates
So thin that even
My untrimmed nail
Can slash through their truths,
And I ask where we stand
Now that the words are gone,
And the oration is silent.
My friend munches on.
A dragonfly thins out
Into the space where our eyes go,
Seek nothing but find peace.
The Paradox
“Any man’s death diminishes me”- John Donne
In our springtime amble
We see a dule of peace-birds
Wash the strip of the sky
Between two in-between places –
Their burial ground, and our
Cremation pier.
The vesper left some fragrance.
I love it, albeit it makes me sneeze.
“Look,” I show my daughter
Those shadows that follow us,
“we are so small to own those.”
She shivers, remembers
The latest death amongst our kin,
And because she has been
Watching TV series she imagines
The glacial metalline trays our niece
Might have slept before they decide
Her flesh can be cremated.
A few feathers swirl en arriére.
Silence is the common ground
We stroll, shaken and sad as only
Human can be, and yet peaceful,
Perturbed, thinking about our race
Growing and diminishing – a paradox.
Time Has It Hands In The Fire and On The Frost
The bird, I imagine,
asks how long the bard'll
go on scrivening
about those stolen kisses he missed
as a young man.
From the street beneath
my verandah, a vagrant
upturns his palms. Money?
No, he shows his scald.
Time has touched
both the fire and the frost;
does the man feel
the veins swelled with the pride
for his battle marks?
Almost spring, the bipolar wind
inoculates two minds
I think with, and I think about
the bird of the morning
and the man without a home,
and those two minds fight
against the starry starry night
and chasing crows inside.
Time feeds two serpents.
Some rumours of the summer
lure you to open the curtains.
A flyer flies in. Don't pick up.
I scream. We didn't discover
any vaccine for belief.
On the day following
the National Military Pride Day,
the dead men and women reincarnate,
some as the crows
on the yellow painted barricades,
and some as scavengers
cleaning the meat they were,
but that day, when the tanks and bayonets
march like strange phallus cairns
from a tribe soon some other will replace,
they have more than flesh on their piths –
those dreams and dreads unfulfilled
they carried
are reborn too. Beware of those. Billows whisper.
Spring Morning, 2021
The morning sun,
if you play with words and
whisper with still-life lips,
'Golden shower.'
swishes through your arm hair,
and inside, an unreal siren shrieks
and squeals - Tide is coming
albeit, too late, you wreck and sink.
I hold you, also feeling erotic.
Morning, and yet the cats caterwaul.
Either they're mating
or have seen
what no mortal should see.
Below, in our weeds bed, dandelions
burst like suicide bombers.
Someone sneezes in our plain.
Shadow Puppets
On the unfading pillow
we lie;
hands, my hands, now
bark at the night
spread across the walls of this room;
my daughter holds the torch;
now my hands fly
to join the folk it will miss -
it always will.
What should my hands do?
My daughter moulds those
into the rugged back of a crocodile,
and or time that devours the mountains,
or the mountains
that swells out of the sea depths.
Full Moon, Springtime 2021
The reflection of the moon at its peak
looks like a before & after photography,
not a pair of fake shots used for selling something,
but one real you stumble upon in a spring cleaning.
The water seems more smoke and less mirror
one moment, and more mirror and less smoke the next.
Anyway, you would have thought the scene fake,
and yet loved to show the same to your best friend.
You cannot do so in this virus outbreak,
but that doesn’t explain why you do not call him,
why sometimes coming out and staring at the lake
is the only thing you do other than washing hands.
If you knew
Your whole family would die tomorrow,
From a senseless war not of your making,
Would you wage peace,
For just one day,
To keep your heart,
From needlessly breaking?
If I knew
Next week would poison rivers, the air,
Turned toxic by corporate dumping, pollution,
Would I wage peace,
For just one week,
Use my money instead,
For a “Greener” solution?
If we knew
Plants and animals would die next month,
Climate Change pushing them past the brink,
Would we wage peace,
For just one month,
Wage peace for the planet,
Could we do it, you think?
You, I, We, Us,
What will it take to make us care?
A day? A week? A month? A year?
Whole continents burning, unbreathable air,
Fishless oceans, concrete leaving all lands bereft,
Endless bodies, choked rubble from War’s bloody fare,
By the time we wage peace, who and what will be left?
Colourful World – Digital Work – Miroslava Panayatova
Come in. My door is open
The windows uncovered
Be you friend or stranger
The enemy of ignorance
My table, round
A circle of friends and strangers
Enemies breaking bread
I´ll pour you Italian espresso
You bring the baclava from Beirut
We will discuss the differences
Of olives
Big and small
Green and black
Let us chew on the options
You be the Muslim
I´ll be the Jew
I´ll poem, you sing
We shall dance before an open window
For all the world to know
That we can
I shall follow you
To your city
To your house
I carry flowers
A curious manner
A wish to know
Your tastes, the aromas of your kitchen
The chatter of children
The photos you hang
Faces of they whom you carry
In your heart
An old man dies
A child is born
You tell me stories
I tell mine
Both of us discharging the shit
Of our lives in a world gone mad with itself
Spilling our laughter and pain
When evening descends
We find ourselves
Alone in the still ambiance
Of a solitude shared
When I take my leave of you
I will carry your voice
Your soft eyes
Landing in mine
My breath in halt
In that moment of
Wordless silence
Of discovery
We share the grace
Night birds call
To waxing stars
All the world around
The grace of peace
I will carry your city
On the map of my memory
Carry your voice
In conversations on the bus
I will carry your smile
As a work of art
We shall both
Be changed
For the rest of time
From my grave to yours
We shall rise in the heat of battle
To run on the waters
Fly on the winds
To the heat of battles
Angels of deliverance
Summoning our descendants
To lay down the fear
Pick up the torch
That lights the way
The way we had trod
To the crossroad of
Fulfillment
Complete and calling
All the children home
In the Middle East
If you want to prepare for peace
You must first prepare for war
Because peace must be waged
With the same seriousness of intent as war
And there are as many obstacles and pitfalls
On the path to peace as there are along the path to war.
A weak man cannot forge peace because
His weakness tempts his enemies to attack
And weak are the sabre rattlers
Hoping to frighten their enemies
With simulations of disproportionate force.
Their fears and uncertainties blind them
To the path of peace.
Only a strong man is confident and sees clearly.
He walks calmly along the path
Narrow as the razor's edge.
The path to peace meanders through Gaza
Where we've been eyeless and
Our plow shares will be made out of swords,
Neither flowers
Nor gentle breezes.
September 28, 2016
Ode to the Common Man
This is not a tale that Homer’d tell of
Achilles, hero of the Achaean army,
Paris, jack of hearts and Troy’s downfall,
Or Odysseus, errant lord of Ithaca,
No, this is an ode to common men
On whose backs history marches
But of whom little or nothing is recorded,
Who follow heroes to untimely deaths,
Who mimic their brave gestures and rousing phrases
Until a roar rises up from countless throats
To cow those who would think more rationally,
Common men who stand against uncommon men,
Common men who march stridently in endless waves
Toward the future facing backward,
Common men who’d be their heroes
If only they were common too.
December 30, 2019
In the Valley of Elah
In the Valley of Elah, not far from Gat
A young Philistine puts a smooth stone
In the pouch of his sling with one hand,
Pulls the leather thongs taut with his other hand,
And swings the stone over his head,
Releasing its lethal trajectory
At a squad of helmeted shielded soldiers
Patrolling the rocky hills.
It is always the same play –
Sometimes we are David and
Sometimes we are Goliath.
February 12, 2021
Twenty years
325,980 bombs
Sent away
From these United States.
But sent towards?
Towards a bigger empire,
A wealthier portfolio,
Another generation
Trained to defend
A cruel nation.
Song of the Living Dead
The living
Bury ourselves in shame
Of pipeline trenches dug.
The living are ripped
Jaggedly, lengthwise; symmetry undone
By fracking.
The salt of the living
Bleeds, nuclear waste
Leaking into ocean waters.
The living mourn the loss
Of nature’s bountiful song,
Supplanted by the drone strikes of the dead.
Acknowledgment
Remind me,
Your anger
Is fear.
It will
Help me
Read
Unarticulated words on
The page of your
Heart, pore over
Them as I would my own,
To set aside ugly faces,
Translate
Them into vulnerability;
Vulnerability
Into tenderness; Tenderness, relatability –
Where we are one –
Where we know
Each other’s words so well we can, finally, grow.
Tulip at Night – Digital Work – Miroslava Panayotova
Pretending Peace
My peace plant has
Two American flags stuck in.
I like to imagine
One flag for peace abroad,
The other – peace at home.
But imaginations are
A dangerous thing,
Causing us to look for answers.
And, much to my chagrin,
Sometimes reality
Is scarier than pretend.
Equalizers
Skin color,
Gender,
Size up my bank account.
Weed-smoker,
Ex-offender,
Size up his bank account.
Drifters,
Loners,
Size up their bank accounts.
Pedophile?
Peacemaker?
Equals in eyes
Who size up where power lies.
I’m Not Qualified to Pray for Peace
Maybe
To pray for peace
Is too bold and ambitious,
When we know not what it means.
Maybe instead,
The prayers and hopes to offer
Would be for the wealthy
To be generous with their coffers;
For the injured and diseased
To find relief from their pain;
Or, for drought-laden countries
To get their share of rain.
Maybe we should pray for safety
For the world’s children,
Instead of praying for peace
To do a magic-trick in volatile regions.
Or, we could pray for cooperation
Amongst all cultures, nations and religions,
Rather than generic peace treaties
Which become tools of derision.
And, if we pray for fewer
Loaded guns, less animosity,
We might begin to understand this
Loaded word called peace.
Solar fairy lights are draped over bean poles
scattered in bushes, hang from trees
Small children snuggle in huge sleeping bags
are tucked into tiny pop-up tents, cocooned in strollers
Mums and Mums, Mums and Dads, Dads and Dads
relax together
By the trees, Ska is playing on a bluetooth speaker
while a Steel Band sets up with the Rock Choir
Someone somewhere being is burning the Jerk Chicken
Nan Breads steam on tables
people sit on blankets swapping delicacies, favourite snacks
spices pervade the air
Morris dancing is being committed, I hear the tinkle of bells
my wife goes to find them, laughing
Several Turkish families munching kebabs are
encircling two wrestlers covered in olive oil
who slip and slide on the grass, struggling to grip
as a wider audience gathers
Solar streetlights proclaim party, the Mosque draped
them in thin scarves to colour our night
We are reconnecting, reclaiming the night and ourselves
while older kids are transfixed by all the moths
most of the local wildlife is probably putting
paws over furry ears, heads under wings and muttering
sod off
The Banghra dancers are warming up to
the booming dollop dollop of their large drums
The local likely lads, all ready to strut their stuff
to rhyme and patter at the microphone
are laughing hard at something.
I go over to see what's up
It's all a Rap they tell me
can't you see?
Raucous all-night picnic.
Love Thy Neighbour
"We close the divide because we know, to put our future first,
we must first put our differences aside" Amanda Gorman
It’s hard, he doesn't like people my colour
but we have all been through hard times
we are now waiting for the future
wanting it to be good,
we all need care, attention.
I've been shopping for him since the virus first came
been trying to prize him from his flat
all that stuff piled high
can't be healthy.
Today the lifts work
since the community maintenance, they been good.
Today I got him to the park, reckon he needs fresh air.
And he came alive, started walking faster
went up to the trees, saying
robin blackbird,
well I misunderstood at first
racist begger I muttered.
Then, he turned, pointed up at some bird hovering
said Kestrel, and I realised
he knows this nature stuff.
Suddenly he was naming butterflies
hey, bloody butterflies have names
that are as beautiful as they are.
And I realised
when you name them, they are more real.
We spent a sunny afternoon wandering
me learning so much.
Then the kids came out of school
flooded through,
stopped, actually listened
began repeating the names.
He goes to all the local schools now
tells everyone about birds, butterflies, moths, worms.
God, worms are important
really they are
we need them to grow food.
He calls me his Princess these days, old devil,
says I gave him a new life.
Well, that's what we all want.
The other friend I told you about
He can show me which doorway to sleep in
and where the bins have good eating.
I have that little place I know
where they do the best Takoyaki.
He tells me the names of all the constellations
and the stars within them,
I explain how solar panels can be made so thin
and he understands.
He’s seen stuff
well I have too, but he can’t see that
yet.
I’m afraid to touch him in case I catch something,
he’s afraid I’ll call the Police.
We often meet in the beer garden
sip lemonade
“Yeah, I got lemons, didn’t I?”
he says ruefully.
His eyes can glitter with assumptions
resentments.
Our thoughts about each other
dance round and round and round.
I took him to the theatre
he knew the names of the lights
in the rig above us, could quote the play.
He took me to gospel choir
got me to sing, I knew the words.
We talk about how we met,
by the canal, feeding ducks.
He told me off for giving them bread.
We found we had lots in common
all those things we are interested in.
He tells me a lot, perhaps everything,
whether I believe him is
immaterial.
I talk about family and
he walks away.
We miss each other after a while,
meet up again.
In January 2017 I went to Beit Jala, a Palestinian town close to Bethlehem, for an International Intensive Training of nine days, to study Non-Violent Communication. NVC, the brain-child of Dr. Marshall Rosenberg, is known as a ‘language of the heart’ which enables compassionate connection with oneself and others.
It’s also a set of skills including both careful listening, and advocacy for one’s own needs. The training session I attended was designed as an experiment in living and working together, and I’ve wanted to recount to you a few of the moments during that time that stuck with me, from nightmarish—in prolonged awareness of suffering and bloodshed—to inspiring.
I’ve been thinking of the painful social rifts both here in Israel and in the US. The problems can feel hopelessly complex when considered strategically, even as a lot of people are working very hard to solve them. And yet it seems strange now in the telling: I confess to feeling low because this international group I only just met has dispersed. We flocked and clumped at the coffee urn or on the stairs, padding out of our rooms of a morning in the guest house together. We challenged one another to expand our minds and hearts- not self-consciously, it happened simply, moved by one another’s stories and the practice of active listening. Given the reality you report, this sense seems—with a rush—all the sweeter.
I need so much to try to understand what has made our close group connection possible.
Given that I’m a woman close to 50, pushing a walker, I was oddly at an advantage in a group of strangers who want to begin to understand each other- for the part of our group under the age of 30, they must know I won’t actually tell them they should wear shoes on the cold tile– but I wanted to. It was easy to connect with the middle-aged Palestinians, some of whom are community leaders, and many of whom are not new to Non-Violent Communication. When I asked how their neighbors take to their chatting up Israelis, several replied, I am respected within my community.
Our informal conversations take place in Hebrew. Not my native tongue, not usually theirs. It’s amusing and frustrating by turns. And in that initial brokenness there is less of the extraneous. Like having a speech impediment, the only thing worth the effort, at length, is to speak one’s truth. If our conversations are a walk together along a path, we are three faces with one seeing heart between us, we’re the lame, ancient ones of Rabbi Nachman’s Tales.
“ —Is that what you mean?” The careful attention and constant feedback required just to get my friend’s literal meaning straight proves a good model: I am also learning to check whether I accurately get what she feels underlying her words.
My question as to how others will be received at home is also background to something I don’t completely understand yet for myself. I made a choice as to how to present myself which I had not thought out carefully before arriving at the conference.
I am part of a small minority of relative liberals in my neighborhood, a National-Religious community within a more-traditional area of Jerusalem. When I voice views that are inclusive towards Arabs, neighbors often want to re-direct me into awareness that it’s a harsh reality: they want to kill us. Or, the ‘silent majority,’ they’ll say, if it exists, has no power over the brainwashing of Hamas. As voiced on my street these are not usually angry messages, nor vengeant. I too, do not want to perpetuate these images by stating them—it’s that it is crucially important to hear in them real fear, and concern for safety. Possibly there’s a subtext too of despair expressed as cynicism? What’s going on with those people on the other side? There is no one to talk to.
It’s both their steadfast hope in some unknown other ‘to talk to’- a commitment to the human spirit, together with the vulnerability of this position; and the taking up of individual power by no longer being silent, that causes me to feel that I’ve stumbled upon a cadre of heroes in the Palestinian women and men clustered in stuffed chairs in the Talitha Kumi hotel lobby.
Well, there I was, at a training group of roughly 100 people. And while in my daily life I’m humored by my community of religious zionists, here I was part of an even mix of Palestinians and Israelis, plus some who are neither, some who are both- with two other observant Jews. And there were a few Israeli settlers. I was one of the closest, for having spent seven years in Tekoa, and in belonging to a community which believes that God, through history, having returned the Jewish people to our homeland, is the beginnings of an eschatological shift toward humanity’s redemption. (Does it need saying? —there is no Jewish scriptural source and no commandment which requires excluding groups other than Jews from living in modern Israel.) The only voice in the room courageous enough to speak for the Jewish ancient love for the Land of Israel, and their right to belong here, came from a liberal Jew from Australia; how could I Iet him unpopularly represent us, alone?
After he had led the way I told our group, I expect that the Palestinians did not come to a non-violent communication session to speak only to those who agree with them- what kind of training would that be?
Later I learned that there is a phrase, “eating humus together,” which the activists-among-activists use for a sort of complacency that can develop among left-wing Israelis and Arabs.
The skills that we have been learning do not focus on debating our ideologies. I think you got it: a path of the heart—in any case I would be at a loss in trying to think my way out of this wet paper bag! How remarkable that these same Palestinian friends, some of whom have spent years in Israeli prisons, are still talking to me at the line-up to the coffee urn.
I feel confused because while my religious lifestyle may look outwardly extreme or dogmatic, I don’t resonate to those descriptions, but to the ethical concern I have seen in Jewish tradition, and the spiritual wisdom of rabbinic tradition. And now I have a bunch of people who may think I’m a radical ideologue of the right, yet I spend most of my time when the Arab-Israeli conflict hits the news, debriefing my children in the face of strong judgements they hear around them.
As I say, many of the senior Palestinians who attended, are focused, committed to using NVC in communal life. Economic factors and peer pressure can both be prohibitive. Some of the Arabic-speakers already use NVC regularly and teach regional workshops in the skills—in Mazen’s case, also from his home. He and one school principal—whom I admire for her measured words—have been involved in NVC for some [10] years.
If the factors stacked against them for the Palestinian participants cause them to be present in a more concrete way, for other participants, the deeper needs that brought them here vary. There were Jews from around the world, and very altruistic Americans and Europeans—8 individuals who were not Muslim, nor Jewish—these people often brought the particularly calm wisdom of distance. Many Israelis hoped to use NVC to enrich their personal lives, make like-minded connections, even as they too feel the day-to-day pain of the conflict here.
You may be wondering at this point about something that made me uneasy—it does seem a tremendous luxury that there were folks, I for one—who do experience NVC as personal enrichment rubbing shoulders with people who came here out of a sense of emergency conditions in the streets. A Palestinian community worker remarked, in our closing session, on this gap that we all had simply lived with until then without comment. In NVC form, he looked deeper into this potential grievance to see a need, and express his hope: that there will be a time when bloodshed is not a topic of discussion at such meetings, and Palestinian villagers too will have the relaxation of mind required to nurture the self.
I feel I’ve given you mostly lite sociology, not the personal stories that make people real to each other. I haven’t yet adequately conveyed a few of the human stories that, by the workshop’s end, would fill me till I felt I would brim over.
One of the first days of the Training. I meet Ayat, a self-possessed woman in jeans, a hjiab, blue eyeliner. We’ve broken into smaller discussion groups; our prompt is “Trust and Creativity.” She begins, “there is deep trust among my family. They trust me to travel to this conference, far from our very traditional village.” As I unpack all that this may imply, I wonder, is Ayat married? Does that figure in?
In this group of eight women, Ayat and I seem to be the most traditionally religious. In a sense the odd ones out. I decide to tell the group how my 13-yr-old was invited to the writing workshop her instructor now gives for adults, an hour across Jerusalem by bus. I tell them how I’m so careful to explain (when the time comes for parent-teacher meetings) that I went in person to check out the other students. That I insist my daughter calls me when she gets on the bus, each direction.
Yet, still, I see something draw back in her teacher’s face. We don’t do this in my community.
What precautions do we take to protect children, and which to protect the needs of women? Which needs of women?
When I was growing up on the East Coast of the US, when you confessed your challenges or fragilities among other women (or at least commiserated), you bonded. As our session comes to a close, I raise my eyes to those of Ayat, who does not see me. If you recall your honky-tonk—this is what’s running through my mind: “everybody loves me, baby/ what’s the matter with you?/ What did I do/ to offend you?”
I want to mention the Bereaved Families organization.
It was shared, life-shattering pain- not a pissing contest, not comparing Nakba vs Holocaust- that Rami and Bassam were there to communicate. Shared pain brought them to the conclusion that violence must not continue.
As a parent, coach or teacher, and any who devote themselves to nurture minds and hearts—there’s a certain maturity of perspective that one may find unfolding within. It’s something like this that had entered the room. Rami Elhanan’s 14-year old daughter was killed in a cafe bombing, but he wants to offer a message that it’s not anti-semitic to disagree with policies of the Israeli government. He describes that it’s his very Jewish upbringing that prompts him: Do not stand idly by the blood of your neighbor.
For Bassam, just as he fights now to create something positive of the memory of his 10 yr-old daughter, killed by a stray Israeli bullet, he is equally fighting this new path of peace for the lives of his five remaining children.
Many of the questions from listeners related to the personal conversion for each, as individuals, of anger and pain, at once private and collective, to a constructive driving force to end war. A movement of hope, when after losing a child, we wondered whether it would be possible to get out of bed in the morning.
On his virtually alchemical conversion, he says, My hatred would have destroyed me. I do this foremost for myself.
It wasn’t the first thing that came up, but in the course of conversation with our group, Bassam told us that after ‘graduating from prison’ he went on to a Master’s degree in Holocaust Studies; he visited the camps in Europe and wept there. He had wanted to understand the enemy so as to ‘conquer the enemy within.’ To be clear about this, We are doing this work to have a reason to get out of mourning. We are doing this to give meaning to meaningless killing. Not to hug each other and eat humus together. This he asserted before an audience half of which reclined on mattresses and reed mats, one striped shawl nestled upon another like a pack of drowsing puppies.
Bassam told us, it’s not a selfless love of the other that motivates him. I won’t offer you a blow-by-blow of the ten minutes of what I would have to call respectful tension when the discussion did turn directly to the political, to atrocities; there were queries and perspectives by Israelis and Jews from around the world—the 60-person group was able to maintain order and desire to hear out all sentiments until Bassam clarified that it was not his intention to compare our suffering. All this was going on in English with simultaneous translation to Arabic. It was indeed easy to become momentarily confused. If it had been the orientation of the group to take offense, we would have found a way.
Ayat spoke, and I had it in me to listen. Yet, later my mind- dull- refuses to recall her precise words. I think I hear: ‘The horrors the Israelis have inflicted and still inflict on the Arabs are incomprehensible. It is not possible to compare any other suffering to that which Palestinian mothers have experienced.’
Such bald judgements are rarely articulated in the environment of NVC, and my mind feels like I’ve walked into a tree. I turn to the person next to me. I briefly mime a hammer-blow to my brain, and then a forward movement of my heart. He is another new friend, a middle-aged Palestinian; just now he’s returning a look as if his understanding includes me, then splashes outward to every tile of the floor.
Our facilitator, a senior NVC trainer from Seattle, had asked the group beforehand to be mindful of the tools of NVC throughout the talk. We are learning to steer away from mental sparring in private and group interactions, toward a learnable skill of listening from the heart. The idea is to search for deeper human feelings and needs underlying the messages so often couched in divisive words.
One parent told Rami, “My daughter chose National Service rather than army service, in line with the way we had raised our children. Then my son chose combat duty, and I prayed every day that he would neither be killed nor kill anyone… yet it happened too, that my soldier son encountered a disabled Arab man who kept missing his bus, because others would crowd ahead of him. He helped the man to his bus, and continued on with him until he reached his village.
It was Bassam who responded. For four years I feared for the life of my then 13-year old son, who wanted revenge and threw stones. I prayed he would not be shot. (Bassam’s son did eventually join his father in non-violent activism.) I felt as I listened that Bassam connected with this father’s worry. And with a certain frustration tinged with helplessness.
Rami, in closing the presentation: At any moment your bubble might burst.
I wonder: can the polarization in the USA feel so harrowing to you, too, as to be overwhelming?
I’d like to hear what you have to say about this business of ‘hugging each other and eating humus together.’ My personal take is that there’s a place for this- our conversations, this letter- the NVC training was at times a kind of family feast, and I think we need this too to sustain ourselves. It makes me wonder if Bassam’s strident tone voices a common need that we do not stop there, it’s not enough.
We have divided into “home groups” of six or seven to discuss whatever may be spilling over in us personally. There are three Israelis in my group and four Palestinians, Ayat among them. Doron says, about Ayat’s earlier assertions: I found your words really hard to hear, but I appreciate that you’re not being ‘fake nice’. I’m impressed by your authenticity.
A Palestinian friend quickly explains that Ayat is new to NVC; in his view she expressed herself through indictments of Israelis out of a lack of skills to do otherwise.
It takes a few minutes to find a translator to render “authenticity”; “tzidik” sounds to my ears, like the Hebrew for “justice.” Doron is making clear efforts to offer this positive feedback to Ayat. I am reminded that until this outburst Ayat has spoken very little. I recall my heart pounding a few times when I felt a need to speak before the larger group. To draw attention to myself—I found this excruciating. I sense the force of emotion required for Ayat to stand and speak. When Doron’s affirmation of her directness and honesty registers with Ayat, her face relaxes and breaks into a smile that’s both a bit awkward, and warm. I haven’t seen it until now.
From anecdotes like these, I had wanted to draw observations about conditions that make it a little easier for us to meet each other, whatever the nature of our rifts… small notes such as how it was that when I confessed to Shiran (precisely in saying goodbye!) how moved I was by her care for my kashrut needs, I was rewarded by a flood of her personal stories.
Thursday nearing day’s-end, we discuss plans for Friday. There will be a Muslim contingent leaving for an hour to worship at a nearby mosque, while sessions will continue as planned in their absence. (Possibly the delicate accommodation of Islamic, Jewish, Christian and any other religious observances seemed such an enormous task- one best avoided?) A few women arrange to light Shabbat candles during the short afternoon break- at 3:30, it will be an hour earlier than necessary. But each training session is important; we make small adjustments where possible because we need one another for this work of the heart.
Friday morning I awake knowing there will be no time to shower and change just before candle-lighting. I prepare before leaving my room. I’m dressed to the hilt, wearing a BoHo dress from an ultra-orthodox shop and garnets—to breakfast in the dining hall.
Time for the first session. I sink into the anonymity of a row of seats in the main hall. Within a medicated brain-fog, my norm til noon, I’m sipping coffee. Movement to my right, dark fabric against my upper arm. Ayat is in the chair next to me. Her dress is sprinkled with cross-stitch Bethlehem embroidery, delicate and intricate, one page of an antique dictionary. The seeing is a hearing: hours of patient handwork, and deeper, the old language of craft that bespeaks time’s stretch beyond one lifetime. Beautiful, Jamila, I tell her. She has on sequined, gold-tone platform shoes. She indicates that this dress is her mother’s work, and yes, it’s in honor of Jumma, Friday.
You start to lose track of which language you use between you, or whether there have been words.
After you asked whether there had been a women’s march in Jerusalem, and virtually the following week there was a much more immediate response in Jerusalem to the immigration ban, I thought, huh, sloggy empathy? or simply that we emotionally prioritize what feels closest?
I want to play out the workings of that in slow-motion because it seems useful to observe.
I am so far away from you, in the Middle East, that tomorrow these events will surely affect me but there is a lag—it seems as if they don’t actually touch me in the moment that they come down for you. (On a deeper level I believe that what hurts one of us or one group hurts all of us: Karma or Midda keneged midda.) In cases where I may not feel a spontaneous movement of the heart I have to actively imagine with my head before it trickles down to my heart- this is actually the process that I have seen in the best of liberal thinking and that it seems to me you have trained yourself in, for decades. (Empathy as spiritual or moral imagination?) I don’t know why I am such a slow learner in its broader implications. More on that momentarily—just now I register your anger.
I have been wondering if my own anger in my local example of Israeli society, would feel more alive in me if I were still now living in Tekoa, where just down the road, youths bombarded drivers with rocks the very week of the training, and a soldier killed a 17-year old. (So often it’s our young men who pay the price when our collective anger torques through their bodies.)
But I haven’t lived there in seventeen years. Our conflict in this region feels so old. At times, endless. It’s now partly my own life experience that prompts my awareness of the self-preserving disjuncture of my heart from the ‘other side’. If I observe then feel this, it allows me a trickle of empathy even toward those who are not committed to non-violence and who would kill my sort of people.
This doesn’t imply a new identity as a self-hating ____ (Jew or liberal or whatever one may be), only a more flexible, expansive identity, and an awareness that we have the capacity to contain one another’s anger and other hard and soft emotions by being present to them in stillness, and we will not be burnt up by them.
I don’t mean to suggest that if we simply listen to each other, we will all agree, but that by focusing on needs rather than strategies, our emotional investment shifts to mutual respect and care for understandable needs.
At times during the training sessions, running through my head: why did it take so long for me to join you?
—here is a group who wants to connect from the heart in our common humanity.
Where was i?
I needed to care for and protect my family.
I am a father, I am a mother; sometimes ‘my family’ was so narrow in scope. And I had not enough of a trait deemed essential by the Mishna (Ethics of the Fathers), that of “haRo-eh et haNolad”, foresight as to what will come to pass, born of my attitudes and actions, or lack of them. How long it took for me to exercise some historical-spiritual awareness. Most of my own lifetime. The examples of Palestinians who feel existentially threatened by an opposing group yet who chose non-violence and dialogue after prison, inspire me. When I hear you sensing your own radicalization, it concerns me very greatly: you’ve cared for the seed of my possibility for empathy by the example of your own long commitment to activism on behalf of those unlike you. So beautiful—that core seems to attest what the human heart makes of any -isms, only flimsier or rougher clothing.
It’s been a day since the ceasefire, and I’m praying for the start of our healing.
I extend my condolences to families who’ve lost loved ones. Nothing is more horrid than Innocent children getting killed in the disputes of angry men.
My heart goes out to anyone who suffered injuries in body, soul and property, there is a lot of mending and healing that needs to happen now.
You know, when a battle ends, the people of violence go back to sharpening their swords and practicing their aim, in anticipation for the next round, which will probably arrive if they had a say in it.
However, people of peace go back to building the bridges above the chasms that were torn between people and between nations.
We have followed people of war for so long, I really do hope we wisen up and start following the people of peace. I hope we put our minds and energies to the work of rebuilding and healing.
אפשר להעז ולהתחיל לקוות לטוב?
כבר יממה מאז הפסקת האש, ואני מתפללת לתחילת ההחלמה.
תנחומיי לכל משפחה שאיבדה יקרים. אין דבר יותר נורא מילד שנהרג בגלל מלחמות
של גברים זועמים.
ליבי יוצא לכל מי שחווה פגיעה בגוף, בנפש או ברכוש, הרבה החלמה ובנייה מחדש
יצטרכו לקרות עכשיו.
אתם יודעים, כשנגמר קרב, אנשי המלחמה חוזרים להשחזת החרבות ולאימונים
בטווחי היריות, כהכנה לסיבוב הבא, שסביר להניח שיגיע אם תהיה להם יד בדבר.
בזמן הזה, אנשי השלום חוזרים לבניית הגשרים מעל התהומות שנפערו בין
אנשים ועמים.
כבר יותר מדי זמן שאנחנו הולכים אחר אנשי המלחמה, אני באמת מקווה שנחכים
ונתחיל ללכת אחרי אנשי השלום. שנשקיע את האנרגיות שלנו בבנייה והחלמה.
מה זה פרויקט המילה הטובה?
קמפיין אונליין שיזמתי כדי להעצים תכניות חינוכיות בנושא הסובלנות וההידברות.
אתם יכולים להירתם ע"י קניית החולצה באתר.
הלינק מעלה.هل بالامكان الابتداء بالتفاؤل؟
مر علينا يوم كامل منذ وقف الاطلاق، وكلي امل ان نبدأ عملية الشفاء.
جم التعازي لكل عائلة فقدت فقيدا. ليس هنالك شيء اسوأ من موت الاطفال بسبب حروب الرجال.
قلبي مع كل من تضرر في جسمه او روحه او ملكه، امامنا الكثير من الشفاء والبناء.
اتعلمون؟ في نهاية المعركه، يعود اهل الحرب الى شحذ السيوف وممارسة الاطلاق الى الهدف، استعدادا للمعركة القادمه، التي لا بد وانها ستأتي ان كانت لهم سيطرة بالموضوع.
في هذا الوقت، يعود اهل السلام الى بناء الجسور فوق الهوى الواسعة التي انفتحت بين الاشخاص والشعوب.
تبعنا اهل الحرب مدة طويله، كلي امل ان نتبع اهل السلام وان نستثمر قوانا وطاقاتنا في تعجيل الشفاء والبناء.
What is the magic answer to the thorny questions that it seems have resonated throughout human history? What can individuals do to move us toward a genuinely lasting peace on this sacred Earth of ours; on this, the only place that we and foreseeable generations have to live? What can we do to make us honest and worthy of the quest? It seems instead that we prefer the old formula that promises to advance us toward yet another round of talks; another ‘agreement’ that so often it turns out is not worth the paper on which it is written. Wherever we look in the world, this pattern repeats itself. Yet, after another round of protests, of raising funds to help the beleaguered and vulnerable local population, we in the affluent West sit back in our comfy armchairs, consuming our unnecessary little pieces of luxury … and I am no exception to this!
Once again, in the past month, the hornets’ nest has been well and truly stirred between Israel and Palestine; stirred by fear, anxiety and anger; by Lord knows who. Which party, which troublemakers, which gang, which international sponsor, who has a vested interest in maintaining the status quo … of division, conflict and any hope there may be of unifying the nations? As ever, the previously drawn, well established lines have been punctured and drawn into question. There is now another, yet it is always felt, fragile truce. The circumstances of this, as with all conflicts, is fraught with complexity, with entrenched views and attitudes, with ideological positions, with stubborn refusal to yield their politically, geographically and materially sensitive attitudes and policies.
We have spent a year fighting a common enemy, which for a time brought us together in our common cause to survive. How astonishingly resilient and industrious are those ordinary people, the medical professions, scientists and all those involved in enabling that survival. But as the black veil of this hidden, insidious enemy is lifted from our eyes, once again, sadly, we begin to see the all too familiar lines being drawn. The rifts between nations, territories, communities, even families, re-emerge.
There is therefore a question that needs to be asked: where is that elusive quality of humanity, that emotion that makes us glow and renews and binds our spirits? Where is Joy?
A unique relationship between two spiritual leaders from different religious spheres, those of Buddhism and Christianity, His Holiness the Dalia Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu can provide us with some answers. That Joy is a by-product; a by-product of what, I hear you ask? It is not easy in a life driven by material rather than spiritual concerns, but a solution is possible simply because the human character is such that we are capable of achieving great things in times of great need and a will to make changes to our personal and thereby collective lives. Practising the ‘Eight Pillars of Joy’ is the action we need that will give rise to this elusive by-product of Joy.
In their book of long conversations on the subject of joy, the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu developed some guiding principles, which they summarised rather happily as “The Eight Pillars of Joy” …
Perspective – there are many different angles
Humility – trying to be humble and modest
Humour – Laughter is much better
Acceptance – the only place where change can begin
Forgiveness – freeing ourselves from the burden of our past
Gratitude – appreciating what we have and life itself
Compassion – affirmation by meditation, prayer and fasting
Generosity – unconditional giving can be a source of ultimate Joy.
Achieving this and feeling the resultant Joy in our hearts and minds, I cannot see any other result than one further by-product, which is Peace.
There is evidence in this issue of the BeZine, as you might expect, in Corina Ravenscraft’s poem, “Asking for a Friend”, which cleverly moves from the ‘I’ to the ‘We’, from the personal to the collective, and on to a compelling final question. In the Joe Hesch poem, “Holding on to My Last Breath” he too hits home with the message that before we can wage peace collectively, we have to find it within ourselves. Then there is an essay on non violent communication, by Ester Karen Aida, which challenges us to address our seasoned prejudices by asking questions of each other and focussing in on our inherent truths. And there is so much more to bend your minds to thinking in completely different ways.
Wherever we are in our personal struggles … we need to take the first step and start today.
Mbizo sent these to The BeZine submissions email in recent days. I can report that he is alive and not in custody. I have clarified that he wishes for them to be published. I have lightly edited the essay with Mbizo’s review.
—Michael Dickel, Editor, The BeZine
The Tragedy of Speaking Truth to Power in Africa
a short essay
My story is unique and very much extraordinary because I am poet, a human rights poetivist. I have refused to bow down. A radical wordsmith that stubbornly refused to toe the line, to tone down my grinding imagery and crude metaphor. I write what surrounds me, the most critical of it in Africa is livelihood, citizens, voters people, government and leadership. As an African child, poet, writer, artivist or griot your story is fashioned by inequality, hunger, injustice. corruption and disgruntlement. Political leadership that bashes the rights of citizens through extortion, political violence, vote rigging, money laundering and mafia style business cartels.
I am a poet and an African griot who refused to repent into the church of rogue political elite. I started as a messenger of our village traditional cultures and later delved into the deep flesh of matters that affect my people as perpetuated by rulership that has caused gushes on me emotionally, spiritually and mentally. I have since lost cadres home, family, nation and abroad. I am labeled the enemy of the state. I have seen and lived in the midst of forests of death and bushes of hell. I have been running not reading.
It is not revolutionary to see a failing state and you remain mum and silent. It is not revolutionary to see and watch dictators scheming the national cake alone and we remain daft and silent. Corruption has since burrowed through sacks of confidence in most cities and nations. Poets are usually bought not to say or to see evil but to commercialize their verses and metaphors as praise singers; injustice continues and unfairness continues to burn ladders of justice.
The tragedy is revolutionary badges and lanterns of hope are given to those who Speak lies, those who see no evil, to those who loot, kill and destroy. The paradox is poets like me, purveyors of truth, are trounced out of their villages to be persecuted in dungeons of disgrace. We are bowled out of birth lands to be dowsed in climes of despair. We are given titles that are equalized to unpatriotic and other hopeless totems of rue because we refused to walk and talk the language of political thievery.
The African poet of resistance remains a prisoner dressed in the garb of prejudice for society and others among his peers are drenched in the fear of losing lives, jobs and favors if they walk alongside him in his lane; the revolutionary, protest poet walks alone in the dark valleys of death and his bed. Thorns await everytime he sneezes verses of truth, raw imagery and crude proverbs pointing to those sitting on high thrones and rabid minions. When ever chunks of truth are written by a so-called dissident poet, the system becomes a serpent and the state becomes rogue and the poet is gnashed, his lashing tongue is burnt.
Usually, when that happens peers squeeze themselves into their shells of fear; in fear of victimization, few remain of strong and foreign peers who stand firm because the rogue system cannot catch them and net them the same way they can do to the revolutionary artivist poet and his band of peers. Some peers are bought by pieces of gold to sell out the strongest ones and sometimes truth and genuineness are slaughtered on the slabs of poverty, corruption and extortion.
Humanity has lost the green color of life, the solid stead of dignity. Few pieces of gold can repent a true desciple into a daredevil qualified to kill and devour truth. Even though the African resistance poet is rich with expression, proverb and truth, he lacks life, money, mobility and material that his opponents are blessed with and poverty with despair are weapons used against him to keep under the grind of suffering. As the system becomes rogue, the poet is discarded to peripherals of dust where humanity does not exist.
This protest fortune-teller has gathered writings, written writings and created platforms for other artivists, writers, poets and others. His stories are immersed in crying metaphor, blood-drenched imagery, heart-rending irony, and all that is crude satire. His hybrid writings are dipped in beef roast of reason and his political commentary is the throb of a national drumbeat that was left unattended for the past 40 years.
Poverty is the song that cranks the brains of his people, his people are drunk on cheap propaganda. His killers are not tired of chasing this poet griot artivist who is running still.
The Tragedy is that the world has gone rogue, favor now goes with political affiliation, social inclination or cultural denomination or else you die choking with chunks of your poetry or you are strangled by the powers you tell the truth to; maybe where you run for refuge there are peers to your hunters and your killers and you become easy prey to predators you know and don’t know.
The Tragedy those homemates, those classmates, those of bloodline never saw you hailing a slogan and they don’t know how or if a poet becomes a political victim. They are psyched that a poet is an entertainer, a praise singer, a street actor and stand up speaker with lyrics oiling the throne of the king and queen. They are ignorant of my ordeals, of my revolutionary stance, my radical stead; they think I am insane. They are ignorant.
This is the tragedy of an African Poet of resistance.
President
a poem
Your prolific role is to see value in every citizen
I am a citizen carrying crude metaphors of truth in the caves of my mind
I am a Zimbabwean holding on to the raw scepter of true images of my land, our country
I am a people yearning for power elite to repent from corruption
I am a griot crying for bureaucrats to repent from stealing the national fat
I respect the flag, it's colors and its meaning, I am born by ancestors that saluted chimurenga
I am a fighter of truth and for justice, I am haunted, threatened and intercepted for speaking the truth
Art is a gift, poetry is a weapon of mass instruction, Zimbabwe is the country I know, country I was born, a country I know best of caves, heroes, plains, meadows and rivers
A country rich but a stolen country, stolen of truth, stolen of love, stolen of free speech
poets are national assets, recorders of history, fortunetellers of past, present and future
We do not to agree to make a country and to build peace
I thought the second republic is for all in the republic .
I never knew it is of the selected few,
I am voice crying in the wilderness, son of the soil haunted at home by minions of the state and l thrown into wild bushes for hyenas to feed on
Which crime have committed that makes me unwanted and unZimbabwean
The bones of mothers cry for me in the land of my birth, bones of my fathers are weeping for me
Zimbabwe carry the throne, thistle, roses, pain, laughter, hope and cries of my people
For when Zimbabwe and security minions give me a break
Is it a crime to write the poetic graffiti of crude truth
For when shall we remain praise singers of some things that do not praise
I always thought as griots our role is to sing truth Power and then corridors of power are sanitized
Truth is the only detergent washing the dirty linen of the state and we walk clean, loved and United
Mine is not a violent statement, it is a message to remind you that I am citizen, a child of Zimbabwe, haunted by securocratic intelligence inside and outside the country
The second republic as I was taught is the dispensation of truth, free speech and embraces all
We all got faults from high ranks of power,
I have written no placards but poetry, my slogan is poetry of resistance
If I die today, tomorrow or the day after I know that I died telling the truth to power
Death by the way the way of God, I have sacrificed to die writing true poetry immersed in jugs of satire and dishes crude imagery
I have lived a life as a defender of truth, as a writer of raw metaphor
Expressing the hard feelings of my pain and the pain at home
I will not weep on my death, but my death is not a way to surrender, it is to say, there is always that time to rest, to leave others carrying on with the revolutionary literary candles
If you are true, you lay a wreath alongside my poetic peers on my supposed shallow grave
They will call me homeless, country less, fatherless and motherless
But some will say here lies a poet, a griot, a son of the soil, a fighter and all
But if I don't die tonight I will continue the fight for truth and I know one day you will see the truth of my resistance poetry and protest letters and I will be buried decently next to the caves of my ancestors
I have done my prayers that even in dreams, death, life or writing, I will not be defeated,
This is my epitaph to the man that is myself, a man who has fought many struggles
I am rejected, haunted and persecuted by his own people
Where are you mr president
My brilliance, my shallowness, my poetry, my controversial political commentary and my hybrid narratives are an assert to the land dipped in tanks of corruption, murky waters of political toxicity,unfairness and other
I respect those doing good, fighting to build the nation but there is an elephant in the room injustice, human rights abuses, lack of free speech and corruption
I respect those speaking the truth and every time they are gagged
President, I am a griot crying in the wilderness
The BeZine 