Tag: poem

Posted in disability/illness, Poems/Poetry, poetry

So You Want to Know What Autism Is Like

Posted on by The Bardo Group Beguines
Autism* is standing still while
Everyone runs for the cliff edge
And you want to know why
Before joining them
But the surge pushes you down
And they thunder across your back
And you’re bloody but not broken
Because the rage keeps you sane
 
Autism is always being chosen
To be
The Cheese
In Farmer in the Dell
The Cheese stands alone
In the middle of the circle
As baby classmates point and sing
And you cry
But the next year you don’t cry
You will never let them break you
At least they won’t know
You care
 
Autism is getting it wrong when a boy flirts
Confusion from what he means
Interpreted by his ego
Thinking you’re indifferent
To his oh-so-obvious charms
And he hates you
 
Autism is being nice to a boy
Who seems like a friend
But not realizing
His ego cannot allow someone like you
To be kind
To flirt (must be, he reasons)
And he hates you
For showing interest in his
Oh-so-obvious charms
 
Yet autism is like everyone else
Loving friends and movies
Books and games
Dreaming of being asked
To the prom
And buying a dress
To transform the lightning and thunder
Into rainbows of love, peace and happiness
 
Autism is loving sex and drugs and rock and roll
But luckily learning that drugs can take you
Where you don’t want to go
Because you can’t come back
But some nights you think
Maybe that’s not bad
What’s to come back to?
Only thunder and lightning and rain
 
Autism is when married
Choosing a dysfunctional 
Who becomes an adversary
Family and friends roll their eyes
And laugh when he reveals your secrets
Meant only for him
It’s not like you’re barking like a dog
Or flapping your hands
Everything looks “normal”
But there must be some type of invisible mark
That all can see
Except me
 
What did they see?
What did I do?
What did I say?
 
Answers? No, so
Although I’ve never been a head banger
I want to badly butt
My head against theirs
Make them see
I’m like them
I am!
But I don’t know what to say
My tongue gets in the way
 
Children come
One is finally labeled
“Somewhat autistic”
What does that mean?
No information pre-internet
Never heard the word before
No idea I am
We’re all so different
But raise my children 
In the offbeat way
AKA, autistic
And their lives
Get drenched in different shades of rain
Thunder, lightning
Mudslides
 
What is Autism?
 
Autism is traffic jams
Oncoming headlights in
A foggy, dark night
Thunder drowning out your heartbeat
Automobile stereo’s base line ripping through your brain
 
Autism is thunder in your soul
As rain pours from your eyes
And lightning jerks your strings
 
Autism is knowing you are safest locked alone
In your room
Where no one can hurt you
But the curse is
Like everyone else
You crave society…
.
Poet’s note: Not all people on the spectrum are the same. I speak only about my life.
.
© 2020, Clarissa Simmens
.

CLARISSA SIMMENS (Poeturja) is an independent poet; Romani drabarni (herbalist/advisor); ukulele and guitar player; wannabe song writer; and music addict. Favorite music genres include Classic Rock, Folk, Romani (Gypsy), and Cajun with an emphasis on guitar and violin music mainly in a Minor key. Find her onAmazon’s Author Page, on her blog, and on Facebook HERE.

Clarissa’s books include: Chording the Cards & Other Poems, Plastic Lawn Flamingos & Other Poems, and Blogetressa, Shambolic Poetry.

Posted in disability/illness, Poems/Poetry

Feeling Good Was Good Enough For Me

Posted on by The Bardo Group Beguines

When being sick was all you knew
Sweet Jesus, the doc last week asked
“When was the last time you felt good,”
Me and Bobby McGee and I saw black
Roses. Could not thread my way to good.
Life a Harlem-globetrotter procession of sham
Dunks and wheezes. Born RH negative all my
Blood exchanged. Lord have mercy then
Coughing times in bed over and over again.
I hadda find good feeling cuz i was an other early
Outcast over and over. Put the music on
And I would play the piano
Rocking to peace my outcast soul.

Sickness made me hold on to my
Strange and play it on an Aeolian harp
To woo the good places and make me me.
Thank you Kris Kristofferson,
Good enough for a life to live,
To share with you the secrets
Of my soul on the edges
Of strong all along. Be a pearl
On my own making the
Good happen. Jiving Janis.
Feeling good was good enough for me.

© 2020, Linda Chown

LINDA E. CHOWN grew up in Berkeley, Ca. in the days of action. Civil Rights arrests at Sheraton Palace and Auto Row.  BA UC Berkeley Intellectual History; MA Creative Writing SFSU; PHd Comparative Literature University of Washington. Four books of poetry. Many poems published on line at Numero Cinq, Empty Mirror, The Bezine, Dura, Poet Head and others. Many articles on Oliver Sachs, Doris Lessing, Virginia Woolf, and many others. Twenty years in Spain with friends who lived through the worst of Franco. I was in Spain (Granada, Conil and Cádiz) during Franco’s rule, there the day of his death when people took to the streets in celebration. Interviewed nine major Spanish Women Novelists, including Ana María Matute and Carmen Laforet and Carmen Martín Gaite. Linda’s Amazon Page is HERE.

Posted in General Interest

Neurological

Posted on by The Bardo Group Beguines

You’ve Become Neurological

What a fetish we have
for being in balance, for
homeostasis in a golden mean, drone balancing the books of life.
Scales, balance, dead weights.
This dubious insistence upon equalities kicks out the untoward: albinos frozen in their pale,
stammerers and limpers struggling with impatient eyes looking on.
Like they’ve crossed over the line “for whites only.” And certainly you neurological ones should stay in place, out of sight, too.

If your proprioception snaps, too,
it’s the granddaddy of the bombing out of you as you know you to be.
This is the medical tyranny of the majority as de Tocqueville cautioned about democracy.
Now what you touch is somewhere, but just not here,
It’s always a reaching.
Your fingers lost your nose to feel find. Feel find has gone.
Like your whole being’s gone dyslexic: you neurological zoo.
No more you for you.
There is anger, too, when people don’t get that it’s out of your hands.
Slithering along between neurons,
that there’s nothing to do
when your nerves fail you.
This new kind of notness,
this neural obliteration
where you can perhaps start reconnecting you.

© 2020, Linda Chown

Linda Chown

LINDA E. CHOWN grew up in Berkeley, Ca. in the days of action. Civil Rights arrests at Sheraton Palace and Auto Row.  BA UC Berkeley Intellectual History; MA Creative Writing SFSU; PHd Comparative Literature University of Washington. Four books of poetry. Many poems published on line at Numero Cinq, Empty Mirror, The Bezine, Dura, Poet Head and others. Many articles on Oliver Sachs, Doris Lessing, Virginia Woolf, and many others. Twenty years in Spain with friends who lived through the worst of Franco. I was in Spain (Granada, Conil and Cádiz) during Franco’s rule, there the day of his death when people took to the streets in celebration. Interviewed nine major Spanish Women Novelists, including Ana María Matute and Carmen Laforet and Carmen Martín Gaite.

Linda’s Amazon Page is HERE.

Posted in Disability, disability/illness, General Interest, Illness/life-threatening illness

Pugliese

Posted on by Kella Hanna-Wayne

(poo-glee-ay-zee)

my grief
in listening to music that I cannot dance to
is just the feeling of my heart leaving my body
as it soars across the dance floor
begging my feet to follow

it is the same pleasurable agony
of missing the one you love,
my brain places each step
and says oh!
wouldn’t it feel good to move this way?
naively seeking a reunion
that will never arrive

but my affair
with listening to Pugliese,
the beast of the tango world
that dancers study for years to master,
is like having my body hurled across the room
against the walls
against the ceiling

it screams why
aren’t
you
dancing

you
will never be enough

you

are

not

worthy

And yet I return to it
to be thrown again
and again and again

a fractured soul
with a battered body
returning to her abusive lover

how I long for the way Pugliese hurts me

—Kella Hanna-Wayne ©2020

Posted in Poems/Poetry

Three poems by Judy DeCroce

Posted on by The Bardo Group Beguines

Senseless Hope

she worries about losing

but not yet, not now

 

senseless hope can’t be found

 

it is definite…

she will always be ill

a beginning that will now 

be forever

 

I see it, when she does not

sometimes friends replace mirrors

 

but she is still herself in these moments 

with sense of humor fading 

 

details…

less, too much…

all shocking but eminent

 

diagnosis, pills, doctors watching,

talking, watching

talk

 

Still Trying

 

“We are losing altitude all the time” 

—Josephine Miles

Gravity and time must be the story,

strength…the music causing this smile.

 

Stepping to a mirror,

baring all you’ve become…

 

already, some is gone in the falling,

yet most remains. 

 

Anyway…that’s what we do.

late, early

 

Obstacles, challenges,

stepped over as they rise.

 

That horizon is a goal not always ahead.

It slips the lead, follows, or moves beside.

 

Today, yesterday, tomorrow,

that’s what we do…trying the best we can.

 

A Measure of Certainty

memories once carried off 

even with all my hurry

 

were certainly too late

no longer lasting 

 

sometimes a lost memory is the future

forever an empty field

 

I feel guilty 

the whole time.

© 2020, Judy DeCroce

Judy DeCroce, a former educator, is a poet/flash fiction writer and avid reader. Her works have been published by Plato’s Cave online, Front Porch Review, Amethyst Review, Tigershark Publishing, and Pilcorw & Dagger.
 
She began writing flash fiction and poetry in 2006 from which many have been published in US, UK, and India. Judy is also a professional storyteller and teacher of that genre for over 35 years, and has worked with students as young as kindergarten as well as adults.
She uses “first person” storytelling to entertain and has been invited to perform in many settings.
 
A requested instructor in Writers and Books summer program Summerwrite, and, ADEPT: An enrichment program through BOCES 2 in Rochester, New York, Judy continues to teach Flash Fiction and Storytelling.
Her impetus for writing was borne out a childhood tragedy where she was bedridden for 5 years with a then unidentified illness. Because of this, she found it easy to use her imagination to build stories of what could be. 
She was lucky to have a favorite aunt who would tell her stories before she went to sleep. This, was her most important connection to becoming the storyteller she is today.
Judy lives and works in upstate New York with her husband, poet/artist, Antoni Ooto.
Posted in poem, poetry

Sick Leave

Posted on by Kella Hanna-Wayne

when everything good leaves my body

my loves, my likes, my have done/s, my will do/s

when my arms are limp, my mind full of a buzzing and humming

 

when my friends are whisked away into the whirlwind of their lives

and I am the only inactive thing

I am left with your voice chipping away at my mind

 

it’s as if I had been wearing all my accomplishments like a robe

holding them close to my body 

covering the inadequacy underneath

 

when my body grinds to a halt 

and I am stripped of every ounce of my value

underneath it all, you are still here

red and raw on my naked skin

 

when the pain of my throbbing joints flood me 

my whole self circling around and around

I try to imagine that the grey aches and sharp flashes

are something beautiful

 

tonight I ask myself

what does my pain look like?

I shut my eyes and see the night sky filled with stars

 

I am the black expanse of unending nothingness

my pain appears as a million balls of light 

 

the shape of me is only visible 

by following the path of my pain

© 2020, Kella Hanna-Wayne

KELLA HANNA-WAYNE (Yopp), one of our newest Zine team members and a partner in our upcoming February series on illness and disability, is a disabled, chronically/mentally ill freelance writer who is the editor, publisher, and main writer for Yopp, a social justice blog dedicated to civil rights education, elevating voices of marginalized people, and reducing oppression; and for GlutenFreeNom.Com, a resource for learning the basics of gluten-free cooking and baking. Her work has been published in Ms. Magazine blog, Multiamory, Architrave Press and is forthcoming in a chapter of the book Twice Exceptional (2e) Beyond Learning Disabilities: Gifted Persons with Physical Disabilities. For fun, Kella organizes and DJ’s an argentine tango dancing event, bakes gluten-free masterpieces, sings loudly along with pop music, and makes cat noises. You can find her on Facebook, Twitter, Patreon, Medium, and Instagram.

Posted in General Interest

Environmental Justice ~ Netted Turtles, Suffocating Whales, The Ocean Needs Help ~

Posted on by anjum wasim dar

Netted turtles suffocating whales,
fettered fish, life in the seas, no more
some fishermen’s tales, or of pirate ships
with towering sails, is now filled with
plastic tin can waste –
Smoky dust hangs everywhere, frightened
birds restlessly seek air, all clean, one large
falcon fell, and brought a 737 down to land,
real flier  of the skies, is the bird or  machine?
sunlight blocked, nothing pure nothing fresh
to taste, land weeps for flora and fauna, forests
denuded are falling to death, dinosaurs long gone
to rest hope new ones don’t surface, as water is

scarce and plants depressed- no more does the
nightingale sing, so loud is the clang and hi-fi din,
flowers are captives of terracotta pots, rubbish dumps
growing are up to the chin,

Colors all smudged –reflect the Earth’s distortion
my heart pains at the planet’s destruction-
have we left a place, free of pollution?
I wonder if ever we shall find a solution.
May the Lord so merciful and gracious
forgive us, for the dishonor and desecration.
Come forward, look around, let us take action,
It’s time we cleaned the land and cleared the ocean.

© 2020 Anjum Wasim Dar

ANJUM WASIM DAR (Poetic Oceans), one of the three newest members of the Zine team, was born in Srinagar (Indian occupied Kashmir) in 1949. Her family opted for and migrated to Pakistan after the Partition of India and she was educated in St Anne’s Presentation Convent Rawalpindi where she passed the Matriculation Examination in 1964. Anjum ji was a Graduate with Distinction in English in 1968 from the Punjab University, which ended the four years of College with many academic prizes and the All Round Best Student Cup, but she found she had to make extra efforts for the Masters Degree in English Literature/American Studies from the Punjab University of Pakistan since she was at the time also a back-to-college mom with three school-age children.

Her work required further studies, hence a Post Graduate Diploma in Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) from Allama Iqbal Open University Islamabad and a CPE, a proficiency certificate, from Cambridge University UK (LSE – Local Syndicate Examination – British Council) were added to  her professional qualifications.

Posted in Poems/Poetry

cord in d# minor

Posted on by The Bardo Group Beguines

three days of rain
of pain and painted flesh
the moan of empty rooms
and what is left
but the sheeted furniture
the whistle and shuffle of bones
a broken telephone my own footsteps

how quickly they appear and disappear
those passing tones these luminous encounters
the changing unseen floating dreams
neither living or dead but waking

distant strains of miles and coltrane
the reflection of the moon on passing trains
inarticulate fingers suspended over keys
the creaking eaves that echo all is gone
what’s left of me? i’m going home

i drift from myself to major and minor
the percussion of the brushing of leaves
a wind in transition a slur of expression
i am divine imperfection
the rapture of autumn the sorrow of fall
i lie in my shadow not me at all

but the one who lives outside myself
who finishes what i’ve left undone
who sings for you and eats thin air
who reaches for nothing and finds nothing there

© 2019, Antonia Alexandra Kilmenko

ANTONIA ALEXANDRA KILMENKO  is a former San Francisco Poetry Slam Champion and she is widely published. Her work has appeared in (among others) XXI Century World Literature (in which she represents France) and Maintenant : Journal of Contemporary Dada Writing and Art archived at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. and New York’s Museum of Modern Art. She is the recipient of two grants:  one from Poets in Need, of which Michael (100 Thousand Poets for Change) Rothenberg is a co-founder; the second—the 2018 Generosity Award bestowed on her by Kathleen Spivack and Josheph Murray for her outstanding service to international writers through SpokenWord Paris where she is Writer/ Poet in Residence.

Posted in Peace & Justice, poem, Poems/Poetry

Wandering, a poem for Mbizo Chirasha, Zimbabwean Poet in Exile

Posted on by The Bardo Group Beguines

“No one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark.” Warsan Shire, Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth

The wandering waters, dripping
Into rising seas and land now lonely
For his human foot, which finding
No room at the inn, wanders
Like the waters, violated like a fish
On the deck of a boat, gasping
Soul bludgeoned, human skulls
And fish entrails, politicos and
Pundits examine like I Ching coins,
Accidents of birth, plight of place
A remote sliver of moon surveils
From the starless sky, unmoved

Dedicated to my friend, Mbizo Chirasha, Zimbabwean Poet in Exhile. Please connect with me if you are able or know someone / some family able to host him in Germany. Thank you!  bardogroup@gmail.com

© 2019, Jamie Dedes

Photo credit: Crescent moon courtesy of beth woodrum under CC BY 2.0 license

Posted in poem, Poems/Poetry, Poets/Writers

The Road to Zvegona, a poem by Poet-in-Exhile Mbizo Chirasha; Update on Mbizo’s situation

Posted on by The Bardo Group Beguines

See a procession of young mothers chattering their way
From water fountains in grenade torn sandals
And blood laced bras
Decade of Bullets, Mbizo Chirasha

Is fading the memory of its son,
Who for words must ride the night
Fleeing ears that hear thunder on a babies purity guggle,
Zvegona, my homestead,
Ancestors are watching
Elders on a scheming mission
Trading lies with more lies
The road to Zvegona
Your Sideroads sigh
Your song is silent
Only hiccups of mothers greet the sun
Yearning for the return of the bearded child
Who lives on the strings of truth
Truth refused a seat at the council of baboons on the lagoons
Goons settling scores on the assumptions that a boy has a price,
Well, the boy true has a price
But not one you can pay with looted coins
The boy has shaved his hair not his brains
The boy has slipped his boots on and truth has raised its flag
And the spirits of truth sing his Achilles heels on,
So Zvegona, the village of the lucky poet,
Grow thistles and thorns
Feed cattle and goats
The boy has shaved his beard
Ready for a walk back, to shave the land of all pretentious shenanigans
Uprooting the weeds and weevils
Repair the kraal too,
Where roosters shall announce light unto the land,
Currently bent double under the gargantuan weight of lying tongues.
Zvegona, you are my yesterday
Zvegona, you are my tomorrow in whatever form, shape or …….

© 2019, Mbizo Chirasha

UPDATE ON MBIZO

Mbizo is still in hiding with irregular access to water, food, computer and Wifi. Nonetheless, he continues working at his mission including  NOTICE FREEDOM VOICES PRIZE  and BRAVE VOICES POETRY JOURNAL and Womawords Literary Press.

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

The first New Look Brave Voices Poetry Journal will be out by the 15th of December 2019. It is a Christmas gift. Our deadline for articles [and poetry] is the 10th of December 2019. We look  forward to contributions and features with a length of 1500 words. You can send these in the body of mail with photos as attachments. Please include your publishable photos and a fifteen line bio to bravevoicespoetry@gmail.com

Yours creatively ,
Mbizo Chirasha- Brave Voices Poetry Journal Curator

We’ve received letters of support to go in Mbizo’s applications for grants and safe harbor, but the Go-Fund-Me effort is still not to goal, which would provide for the immediate need for pantry staples, computer, and so forth. Without predictable computer access, Mbizo has not yet been able to do his interview with the Canadian radio show, though the offer still stands.

International Human Rights Festival, the entity that sponsored Mbizo’s Go-Fund-Me, has attracted $480 and raised the goal to $750.  They have cut him some partial funding for now.  Meanwhile, folks, I suggest that if enough of us donated the price of one morning latte, we’d make the goal.  What do you say? A whole bunch of tidbits would combine for a whole lot of success. You can make your donation anonymously HERE.

If you are able and interested in helping in any way, you can contact Mbizo directly at: girlchildcreativity@gmail.com

– Jamie Dedes

“We remain resilient in the quest for justice, freedom of expression and upholding of human rights through Literary Activism and Artivism. ALUTA CONTINUA.” Mbizo Chirasha

RELATED
MBIZO CHIRASHA is a recipient of PEN Deutschland Exiled Writer Grant (2017), Literary Arts Projects Curator, Writer in Residence, Blogs Publisher, Arts for Human Rights/Peace Activism Catalyst, Social Media Publicist and Internationally Anthologized Writer, 2017 African Partner of the International Human Rights Arts Festival Exiled in Africa Program in New York. 2017 Grantee of the EU- Horn of Africa Defend Human Rights Defenders Protection Fund. Resident Curator of 100 Thousand Poets for Peace-Zimbabwe, Originator of Zimbabwe We Want Poetry Movement. He has published a collection of poetry, Good Morning President, and co-created another one Whispering Woes of Gangesand Zembezi with Indian poet Sweta Vikram.
Posted in Environment/Deep Ecology/Climate Change

Global Harming, a poem by Deb y Felio

Posted on by The Bardo Group Beguines

The Human Impact on Nature courtesy of George Hodan, PublicDomainPictures.net

we’re crossing the desert in sandals
across new Antarctica
camels follow with our packs
it feels like southern Florida

before the ocean rose and drowned
the people near the shore
and then receded sixty miles
creating quite a lore

to be recited by old timers
beginning with remember when
there was water in these here parts
now there’s sand up to our shins

we’d swim and fish—those were the days
they’d tell the children listening
to magical times when people were wet
coming from deep water glistening

It’s just a fairy tale, we know
the children refuse to believe it
like so many of us long ago
hearing the global warning bit

slow but sure the changes came
spring slush replaced the snow
low temps in seventies everywhere
and gale winds would always blow

but we were brave and kept our cars
kept digging for petroleum
concern belonged to the next generation
never mind the panic symposium

so here we are just like they said
dry and hot as old Florida
in our sandals with our camels
crossing the new Antarctica.

© 2019, Deb y Felio

Originally published on The Poet by Day

With this post we close our month-long Climate Action blog-series presented in solidarity with the world’s youth and with the many organizations that held events this past month.  Our gratitude to and appreciation for the contributors to this series and our readers and followers. Together we rise in support of our beautiful blue-green Earth and our ability to survive and thrive here.

In the spirit of love (respect) and community
and on behalf of The Bardo Group Beguines,
Jamie Dedes
Founding and Managing Editor

Posted in Environment/Deep Ecology/Climate Change

The Chalice, a poem by John Anstie

Posted on by The Bardo Group Beguines

Dear Earth, you are a sacred aqueous Isle
in a dark and endless sea of universe.
You may never reveal your strategy.
We may be  bound  by  genetic code
to the presupposing chemical destiny
of one great astrophysical master plan
for all living things. We, who represent
your malaise,  your chronic infestation;
we,  like a fleeting itch in your long life,
will never comprehend it.  But, in truth
you know too well  that  we can never
understand more  than one percent
of all there is to know. You contain
the knowledge that is beyond us.
We are but a rash on your skin.

One day, we know you will
raze all of our delusions,
prepare us for the day
when a blinding light
will  inoculate  you
and inform us  of
a moment when
extant humans
will, at last be
prepared to
distinguish
the  l i e s
f r o m
truth
and

so
we
a r e
m e r e
a t o m i c
p  a  r  t  i  c  l  e  s
inside   a   temporal   chalice

© 2014 John Anstie
All rights reserved

Posted in Environment/Deep Ecology/Climate Change

Moon Child, a poem by John Anstie

Posted on by The Bardo Group Beguines

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

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

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

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

© 2018 John Anstie
All rights reserved

Posted in General Interest

Moshe’s House in Space, flash fiction and photography by Michael Dickel, artwork by Moshe Dickel

Posted on by The Bardo Group Beguines

Author’s note: Sometimes, our children tell us things that they see or know, and we don’t have faith in our children’s senses. This is speculative fiction about climate change that suggests the children might yet show us a way, even if it is too late for us. This flash fiction appeared in The BeZine July 15, 2016. A somewhat different version of it originally appeared on Fragments of Michael Dickel (now called Meta/ Phor(e) /Play).
Ark-2 Digital Art from photos and sidewalk chalk Ark-2
Digital Art from photos and sidewalk chalk (photographed)
©2014 Michael Dickel

Moshe’s House in Space

Before, no sand swept through, no water splashed—a beach at driving distance, yes, but a long, long walk away. Before the three-year old’s stories, which I only half listened to: he was born in clouds before dinosaurs were alive; he died; “But now,” he said, “I’m becoming alive again.”

I thought a story he told me one morning came from his dreams.

He knew a dinosaur, he told me, with bright blue feathers in the day. At night it turned wooly and gray, to keep warm. The dinosaur had a name, Pollaydowen.

I thought, what an amazing imagination my three-year old son has, what colorful dreams.

He had other stories, about his house in space and all of the animals that lived there with him, a farm he had at this house. He went on and on with details—listing every animal we saw at the zoo, on farm visits, in books, on videos, on the internet; listing all of the plants and flowers he had heard of; listing creatures great and small in his lakes and seas.

How did he know all of them?

He insisted we should visit his house in space.

Then changes came suddenly, not slowly, as even the most pessimistic predictions had held. One day, news report said the sea covered beaches even at the lowest tides. The next week, waves washed across roads. Houses washed away. Whole neighborhoods of people could barely evacuate before the surf swallowed the land and their belongings.

The water washed sand over everything. The ozone layer shredded. Paint bubbled and peeled on cars, houses, government buildings. Everything and everyone aged.

Soon, sand dunes blew across the road in front of our house. The house looked like fifty years of neglect had settled in on it over the past few weeks.

That last day, my wife and I heard my son speaking in his room. And we heard another voice.

We went in. A bright blue flash turned toward us.

“We have to go,” my three-year old calmly explained, “now.”

“These sands end time here, the last to flow through the hour-glass,” the blue lizard-creature, Pollaydowen, added.

As we left the house, we trekked through hills of sand.

We returned once, to see what had happened.

I left this note for you who might find it, scratched in the walls, just in case anyone remains. We have an ark.

Photo ©2014 Michael Dickel
Photo ©2014 Michael Dickel

 

Posted in Environment/Deep Ecology/Climate Change

The Planet Speaks, a poem by Carolyn O’Connell

Posted on by The Bardo Group Beguines

Deforestation in the Maranhão state of Brazil, 2016, courtesy of Operação Hymenaea, Julho/2016 under CC BY 2.0

“We’re fighting for soil, land, food, trees, water, birds. We’re fighting for life.” – Gregorio Mirabal, Indigenous leader and coordinator of the Coordinator of Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon Basin (COICA)

the Amazon burns! No one
quells the fires
air; knowledge is lost in the fire.
Waters run polluted! No one
seeks to free fish
or children drinking poison.
Air spins in cyclones
destroying all under its twisting cloud
flooding the earth.
Metal is used to make war
peoples flee
are called predators by those who’ve only known comfort.
Are we but people
whatever language colour, creed
we came from one source?
But will expire
in our own detritus
unless we care for our planet
which will spin
into the void of extinction
unless we care for it and others.

© 2019, Carolyn O’Connell

Posted in Environment/Deep Ecology/Climate Change

The Return of Primordial Night, a poem by Jamie Dedes

Posted on by The Bardo Group Beguines

“Because, underneath all of this is the real truth we have been avoiding: climate change isn’t an “issue” to add to the list of things to worry about, next to health care and taxes. It is a civilizational wake-up call. A powerful message—spoken in the language of fires, floods, droughts, and extinctions—telling us that we need an entirely new economic model and a new way of sharing this planet. Telling us that we need to evolve.” Naomi Klein (b. 1970) is a Canadian author, social activist, and filmmaker known for her political analyses and criticism of corporate globalization and of capitalism. On a three-year appointment from September 2018, she is the Gloria Steinem Chair in Media, Culture, and Feminist Studies at Rutgers University.

the ghosts of our parents search vainly 
for wildflowers near the beach at Big Sur

they were deaf to the threat in thunder,
but we were struck by lightning,
heaved in the rain and waves and
the overflow from the melting ice

the computers went down
their screens black as the wicked water,
in whirling chaos they morphed into drums

every fetus turned in the womb,
the men went to the mountain tops
and the women sheltered in caves

the souls of saints and sinners
were run through a cosmic wash cycle
after the spin dry, a new wisdom

but the shades of our parents remain,
they’re waiting for us at Big Sur,
waiting by the Santa Lucia Mountains

© 2013, Jamie Dedes

Posted in Environment/Deep Ecology/Climate Change, General Interest

The Honeymoon’s Over, a poem by John Anstie

Posted on by The Bardo Group Beguines

Spring’s promise of high summer
has passed, the lush greens gone,
and now less vibrant. Parched.
Stale somehow. Disappointing.

The promise so much sweeter
than reality; the heady warmth;
sun filled days and mirage haze
the balmy heat, hot naked nights.

We should enjoy this time, by rights
but if it brings us closer to the fall;
the Autumn of our life, if that is all
then can we not enjoy the cooling

promised winter chill, another world,
its yielding to the blacks and whites
mysterious greys, the icy haze,
the freezing hibernation, preserving.

But no. An earlier Spring, that comes
too soon, and sooner still the melting
Arctic ice. One day, there’ll be no more
dreaming of a summer honeymoon.

© 2017 John Anstie
All rights reserved