P O E T R Y
C O F F E E H O U S E
Volume 1, Issue 1, 2008 / Le Nouveau Monde Vert
Peace goes into the making of a poem
As flour goes into the making of bread. - Pablo Neruda
m e n u
Would you like to listen to some light JAZZ in the background
while you browse the poetry menu?
If "yes", click here
Patricia Wellingham-Jones
Mrs. Coyote
Gregg Mosson
I Saw the Moon
Adrian Manning
After the Levee Breaks
A. D. Winans
Growing Up In America
L. A. Powell
Dove Café: In Memory of Black Elk
Prakash Kona
Rebel
Theresa Wolfwood
We Are the Canaries
Sondra Zeidenstein
Resistance
David Allen Stringer
Freedom in Nature & Society
Matt Black
Where the Wild Wind
Gregg Mosson
A World Without Picasso’s Guernica
Amitava Chakrabarty
Empathy
Adrian Manning
Salvador Dali
Patricia Wellingham-Jones
To Feed
Malobi Sinha
Whole
Theresa Tomlinson
Limbo
Tholana Ashok Chakravarthy
An Obsession
Beate Sigriddaughter
That Day
L. A. Powell
Poppies in the Wal-Marts
Matt Black
Revenge of the Wheelie Bin
A. D. Winans
Survival Song
Theresa Wolfwood
Chiapas
Prakash Kona
Onions
Sondra Zeidenstein
Emmett Till
L. A. Powell
A Secret Horse Screams
Amitava Chakrabarty
Our Leader
~ WE
ARE THE CANARIES ~
Theresa Wolfwood
We are the canaries
in the mine shaft
of daily fear
of a suffocating end
that we, the world,
even unto the smallest fly,
will die snuffed by poison
emanating from crazed leaders
from profit mad media moguls
from the toxic fumes of lies
that pour
from laboratories of prevarication
silken words
false images
invisible atoms
measured into
vessels everywhere
billboards, expert sources,
surveys, sale flyers
policy papers from consultants
restructured
companies, governments
whole countries,
the
miasma of conspiracy
so powerful
even the very air we breath
is threatened.
we are the canaries
smelling the methane of death and greed
we go ahead
resolute in our rallies, our meetings, our walks
our words, our deeds become a chorus
bearing witness against prophecy
the deceit of greedy promise
we sing even in dark places
prisons without light
we sing into open skies
and empty streets
we will sing and sing
until our frail lungs exhale
our truth
that will enclose
the busy,
the apathetic,
the otherwise occupied with
golf courses or cruises
or the magic of malls
and those who have no strength
and lack bread
and those who hear only bullets and bombs
and lack shelter
we will sing until they all hear us
sing until they lift up and join us
sing until we sing the songs together.
we will be as a host of golden birds
rising from invisible and deep places
we will banish the fear
we will transform the power of desecration
our song will restore the earth
and the sun will rise anew
to celebrate us on a pure and glistening morning.
© Theresa Wolfwood 2008
|
~ SURVIVAL
SONG
~
A. D. Winans
This poem is for you Irwin Altman
And for Ed "Foots" Lipman too
For every poet who ever paced the cell blocks
Of San Quentin, Folsom, Attica, and Neil Island
Or gave his life in the people's struggle
Of Chile, Cuba or Nicaragua
This poem is for those who walk the
Dream of freedom with guerilla visions
In their hearts and eyes
This poem is for those who gave their life blood
To wash the streets free of oppression
For those who rest in heroic and not so heroic graves
In the struggle for human dignity
Poet of blue denim jacket
Mechanic of whispering trees
Walking the execution yard
Over the sleepy tresses of rain
The imaginary and not so imaginary
Shattering of the skull
I sit here one day from turning seventy-two
In this prison of a zoo
Thinking of long unwritten poems
Thinking of young boys who have fought the real war
Of grieving mothers and widows
Thinking of young girls with color book eyes
Young women in black suspender belts
And knee high leather boots
With revolutionary roots
Thinking of how the words come too late
And never say enough
Knowing that in the Buddha Temple of life
All things must die
Knowing there is no survival
No tarot cards horoscopes or incantations
To being back the dead
I walk the midnight supermarket of death
Thinking of Lorca and that long dirt road
Thinking of the execution wall the hangman's noose
Ethnic cleansing ovens and genocide
Hearing the gypsy ballad that sings to the heavens
Knowing there is a strange code to this language
We are addicted to.
As Gene Fowler pointed out to me
Evil spelled backwards is live
Being made into a State automated robot is evil
But dying is not evil
For it is in its whole the disintegration the
Bacterial feeding which in turn
Is a live process
And so the fight goes on and must go on
Until every street has been cleared of assassins
Until every newborn is encircled in a poem
A thousand Bushs a thousand Cheneys
Cannot kill the spirit
The vision remains even as we retreat
Into the depths of our being
Listening to the blood beat solid against the hands
Knowing there are secrets in the bones
That cannot be denied or sold out
To the whims of others
Sleep well my brother
Only the flesh is gone
Your strength lives on in those who dared
To reach out and kiss the sun
© A. D. Winans 2008
|
~ MRS. COYOTE ~
Patricia Wellingham-Jones
Town knows her
as Mrs. Coyote. Tall and lean,
she lopes through Gold Rush Country
in tawny sweaters with earth
stained pants, her sharp nose
twitching in thought.
Grieved by the western habit
of draping coyote carcasses
over fence posts, unconvinced
their marauding brothers
get the hint, her main concern
is the wildness in their cells.
She sees these untamed eyes
staring out of poets.
Poets, who must be left undisturbed
to record the unwritten songs
that rustle dry grass,
whip treetops into leaf storms,
frenzy incoming tides.
Who express the wildness
in cells stifled long.
© Patricia Wellingham-Jones 2008
|
~
POPPIES
IN
THE
WAL-MARTS
~
Lawrence Alfred Powell
look at this!
look look!
over here!
yes you too can be worry free
and, baby, you know you deserve it
impress your friends
wind up winter, and watch it snow
kiss a cloudy seashore for half off
do not worry yourself, do not think
of the flies that bite screaming babies
dark chin and crying forehead
whose future withers back to dirt
yes! you too can have magic glistening hair
just the way you want it
teeth whiter clothes cleaner
be a thinner you!
do not worry yourself do not think
globe's hidden half slowly rots
sobbing women swallow hunger nails
blind fever clouds hover over hope
come, come splash in majestic showers!
what a wonderful waterfall in your very own bathroom
can be yours on monthly payments
yes, you have the power to enslave the sea !
and blow it at your face, for a fee
for a fee, for a fee, you can be anything you want to be
see, you're free, whoopee
do not worry yourself, do not think
of the flies that bite screaming babies
dark chin and crying forehead
whose future withers back to dirt
come, come, don't be afraid of the woods!
there's a special discount over here...
yes panel that new den of yours
with fresh strips of tree flesh
doesn't it just smell wonderful?
celebrate yourself, at a new plush mahogany desk
write those happy memos to all your friends
on the mashed skins of uprooted pines
bones flat as pancakes
do not worry yourself do not think
when the green silence shouts wounded
as grass sneezes on rotting mad seashores
where bloody gulls fly empty
and cold sockets of time understand
sail the wind! after all, you can afford it!
come on, be all that you can be
prove to all the world,
that this weekend
you are free, you are free
master of the roaring waves !
for a fee, for a fee
do not worry yourself, do not think
of the flies that bite screaming babies
dark chin and crying forehead
whose future withers back to dirt
© Lawrence Alfred Powell 2008
|
~
REVENGE
OF
THE
WHEELIE
BIN
~
Matt Black
Round and round the wheelie bin
the little children play
"I'm just a friendly wheelie bin"
they hear the wheelie say
Round and round the wheelie bin
the little children run
Snap, goes the wheelie bin
and swallows everyone
Bad luck, kids, but you just had to die
Because I'm the black hole that flies through the sky
I'm the terrible world you empty each week
I'm the row of grim gods that stand on your street
I'm old tins, cereal boxes, worth nothing, no cash
I'm the O of emptiness, the tardis of trash,
Feed me, feed me, I'm the mouth and the spoon
I've eaten the sun and I've eaten the moon
Round and round the wheelie bin
"Why don't you look inside?"
Snap, goes the wheelie bin
and all the children die
I'm a liquorice tower-block holding a telly that's bust
I'm as bleak as your fear full of tea-bags and dust
I'm a rubbish crow, the giant beak of the planet
Feed me, empty me, I'm a hungry black gannet
I'm a gobbledy, gobbledy, gobbledy bin
I'm the rubbish of fun and the rubbish of sin
I'm all your Christmas wrappings left after the day
I'm all of your wishes, just thrown away
Round and round the wheelie bin
the little children stole
Snap, goes the big black beast,
and swallows the children whole
I'm the saddest sentry outside your front room
I'm the cave of despair, the dustbin of doom,
I'm the mystery of your neighbours, what do they buy?
I'm their beer-cans from Tesco's and their left-over pie
I'm a black-mouthed monster, I'm hungry and wild
and if you don't feed me junk I'll swallow your child
because I'm the consumer king at the end of the world
and I'm the Big Lid that eats boys and girls
© Matt Black 2008
|
~ ONIONS ~
Prakash Kona
Everyone wants a piece of land - to belong and to imagine,
I'm a peasant - my loves are land, woman and onions,
I would be poor if I had the wealth of the world
And not feel the pungent taste of onions on my palate;
My life is the present that my dead past encroaches upon,
When I think of truth it is the millions of South Asia
and across the earth in pockets I refer to as 'third world,'
When it comes to reality it is what my eyes configure,
in the revolution of an instant: the future rushing
Into the arms of a present: an order where no one goes
to bed on an empty stomach,
Children do not have to pick food from garbage dumps,
Lifestyles are not bought and sold in free markets,
with the poor paying with their lives;
The word 'refugee' is reality - the truth being that
refugees create the haven for cynical elites
To revel in schizophrenia of head mocking the heart;
The have-nots are united in their plight as have-nots,
it is those who have that are threatened by walls of
A deafening silence, isolated as atoms and without bonds
that give the material world a semblance of reality.
© Prakash Kona 2008
|
~ WHOLE ~
Malobi Sinha
I am flame
I am the wind
In the trees
I am she who you
Call when the chips
Are down; the one
Who comes to you
At your call.
I am your mother
Your wife
Your daughter
And child;
I am the flame
In your heart
I will tear you apart
On a whim
If you know not
Who I am; I will render
You senseless, useless,
Battered and down
If you abuse any part
Of my whole;
But love me
And you will get
The just rewards
Of love returned
Salvation unfolded;
I am a part
Of your whole
© Malobi Sinha 2008
|
~ THAT DAY ~
Beate Sigriddaughter
that day
I woke up wanting to caress
the face of things
to whisper
to live is enough
that day
I rode a fairground ride in celebration
sky blue Denver tilting
and a small boy by my side
kissing the whirlwind with laughter
that day
I learned that scientists are working
on a bomb that vaporizes
human life on impact
finding us by body heat
leaving the more valuable things
unharmed the buildings
intact the roads the bridges
not even in my dreams had I been
this breathless against my will
for whom
will these bridges span?
will the books then read themselves?
for whom will roller coasters roll?
that day
I vowed to quick
caress this sweet quick world
without pity without promise
but with passion that
even a single soldier rolling
in the dirt of conflict would be more
sacred than a bridge a drop of oil
an ocean of democracy
there will be no more tears then
quick now caress
© Beate Sigriddaughter 2008
|
A WORLD
WITHOUT PICASSO'S GUERNICA*
Gregg Mosson
At the United Nations, blue drapes sheath
a tapestry rendition of Guernica, so speakers can paint
blitzkrieging dreams, burying screams affixed and aired;
killing machines can work again.
Who expunged Guernica from the U.N.,
and then did U.N. walls tremor
down to their foundation
in the "war to end all wars"
and covetous twentieth century?
Yesterday, today, or tomorrow
bombs drop and discombobulated body parts
hurl through the air, and brown limbs
burst from horses
and spin past a still-standing bystander
dumbstruck
as infernos smoke and buildings crumble.
* Picasso painted Guernica in response to the Nazi bombing of the Spanish
town Guernica in 1937 during the Spanish Civil War. Guernica’s fragmented
bodies and open-mouthed faces have appeared often during peace marches
since the U.S.-Iraq war began in 2003.
A tapestry rendition of Picasso’s Guernica was placed outside the United Nations
Security Council in 1976. During the infamous United Nations speech by then
U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell arguing for invasion of Iraq, a blue curtain
covered up this tapestry. The curtain hid Guernica from reporters and cameras
waiting to question Powell and others when they exited the U.N. Security
Council. Art is a form of memory. That speech that day was not about proving,
but forgetting.
© Gregg Mosson 2008
|
~ SALVADOR
DALI
~
Adrian Manning
put his cape in for a spin
but before he did
he draped floppy eggs
and watches over the machines.
We didn’t listen to his
statements of genius
about the state of modern washing
and we were glad
when he had gone
- those damned ants
were getting everywhere.
© Adrian Manning 2008
|
~ RESISTANCE
~
Sondra Zeidenstein
The small black and white tv on the kitchen table
is tuned to the News Hour, Jim Lehrer
interviewing Mariane, wife of Danny Pearl,
and I can’t get a sharp picture
or a voice that isn’t breaking up.
I so want to hear
the widow of the decapitated man,
journalist who had been humiliated, tortured,
before he was killed. I remember
she’d pled to his captors: take me in his place,
kill me. She has a right to speak.
Her girlish face fills the small screen.
We press in close, my husband and I,
like partisans in a cellar
glued to their short wave radios.
You are a journalist?
Will you go back to journalism?
Jim Lehrer keeps asking the same question
as if in the guaranteed safety of his newsroom
he can’t believe her.
Yes, I’ll go back to Pakistan.
We journalists have a responsibility.
His hard-to-read eyes narrow.
But didn’t you want to see those men
who took your husband killed?
Didn’t you ever feel that?
Of course.
Then I wanted everyone dead.
But…the static is fading,
we can hear her, my husband weeping now,
she says it quietly, with assurance,
this woman, young, eight months pregnant,
in mourning: ultimately what happens is
violence brings more violence…it takes
a lot of courage to be nonviolent, you know...
I’m trying to come up with this courage myself.
This is the message
we have been listening for, isolated
through all the comfortless, bloodthirsty months.
© Sondra Zeidenstein 2002
|
~ CHIAPAS
~
( NO TENEMOUS QUE PEDIR
PERMISO PARA SER LIBRES * )
Theresa Wolfwood
Well fed tourists, hungry for exotica
gawk at the sunlit facade
an old Spanish cathedral
in older Mesozoic mountains
where
doves moan on precarious precipices
on angels
freshly painted mustard amarillo.
Brown shadows scuttle on
sharp edges of history
under walls of mayan, maximillian and moors
symbols of power long gone
Christ still bleeds
on the cross
inside these walls
well impregnated
with male urine.
Centuries pass
they come and come
conquistadores all
white and strong
blind
in armour of self-belief
construct of global power.
His thick slugs of arms
swoop
upon a scrap of humanity
filthy in a black skirt
the rest mud coloured
her legs
frail twigs of earth.
Her terror ignored
he laughs guffaws of glee
My God!
he laughs?
where is glee in this girl child?
maybe five years old
who falls in rigid fear
from his fleshy noose
and vanishes from
the worn pavement
into cracks of lost time
to die within a year.
* "We Do Not Have To Ask Permission In Order To Be Free"
(Zapatista slogan on grandstand in front of cathedral,
San Cristobal de las Casas)
© Theresa Wolfwood 2008
|
~ GROWING
UP
IN
AMERICA
~
A. D. Winans
as a child
I thrilled to the
railroad trains
riding out of the badlands
not knowing they were owned
by robber barons
I watched the calvary charge
the Indian villages
like Attila the Hun
believing Custer a hero
and Sitting Bull a savage
not taught in school about the
deadly smallpox plague
diseased blankets traded
Indians for title to their land
a deadly plan to murder
an entire nation
generations of ripped-off cultures
gather in the museum of history
dolphins die in tuna fishermen's nets
while pelican eggs refuse to hatch
victim of man's greed and waste
as the blistered hands of faceless
migrant workers reach out for recognition
only to find death in pesticide laced food
the tools of revolution
laid aside rusting from affluence
and false security
the dreams of thousands
of brave warriors lay buried
in unmarked graves
no historical monument
will make mention of them
their children buried
in graves so small
their parents wear them
in their hearts
like an anchor weighed
to the soul
© A. D. Winans 2008
|
~
EMMETT
TILL
~
Sondra Zeidenstein
…little has been said about the photographs of Emmett taken at his
open-coffin viewing, which were first published in Jet magazine
and shunned by mainstream news organizations.
New York Times, on the 50th anniversary of Emmett Till’s murder.
Now, fifty years later, his body exhumed,
the crime re-examined, a documentary shot
showing white people joking after the trial
which acquitted most of the suspects
who were there the night
he was grabbed from bed
where he slept next to his cousin,
tortured before he was shot
and dumped in the river
and dragged out of the river
and delivered to his mother
in a sealed coffin
which she demanded be opened
so she could see
and then make everyone
(but not the readers of white-run newspapers)
see.
Is that why he hasn’t haunted me before?
I’m white.
I didn’t read Jet.
Besides I was twenty-two, with two babies,
in the North.
I could not/would not imagine it.
Now, fifty years later, my grandson,
fifteen, full of himself,
liable to walk straight into a mess
he can’t imagine how bad
and get himself hurt,
or worse,
I look at the famous photo.
Even now the white newspaper prints it
blurred, from a distance.
Once Emmett had round dark eyes,
mischief his brimming mother, Mably,
tried to keep a lid on,
He was good at art and science, she said.
I want everyone to see what they did to him:
eyes removed, a hole drilled in his forehead.
This brought to me now
when I’m determined to open my eyes
to what I cannot bear to see,
the terms on which we become human.
© Sondra Zeidenstein 2008
|
~ AFTER
THE LEVEE BREAKS ~
Adrian Manning
alone adrift
on a stationary rooftop vessel
unable to sail away
corpses like felled
tree stumps
float by
automobiles perform
aquatic handstands
a lone dog barks
a case of beer
20 cans of sardines
the only feeling
an agonising
taut knuckles whitening
holding on
to
hope
too proud to
give in
too little to
lose
© Adrian Manning 2008
|
~ WHERE
THE WILD WIND ~
Matt Black
I am
a turning bubble but a million times bigger,
a mystery of mountains and valleys and water,
I am
hanging in the sky with the moon and the weather,
watching the stars and space stretching forever,
I am
your backyard, your garden, your future,
your promise, your playground, your treasure,
I am
where the wild wind rushes over,
yours to live on, yours to look after
© Matt Black 2008
|
~
I SAW
THE
MOON
~
Gregg Mosson
I saw the moon this morning
driving in darkness on the highway to work. I had forgotten
I roamed on a planet. The moon swooned across my windshield
and swung—so to speak—into the passengerside window
I tried to glimpse,
peruse its pinkish marbled hue
and swerved twice into the left-hand lane,
coming too close to change.
I had to forget the moon.
Tend the machine
entrusted at hand.
The moon appeared again—mammoth,
primordial, aglow, father of o-shapes,
mother of a million bats kissing a fulfillment of wishes
few know they have. I find the moon again while moving
from Highway 95 onto the circular Washington Beltway,
and feel renewed
by this coincidence, circling the moon, refreshed
in the waters of what I am, not through the memory of events,
but through the memory of roots.
Thirty miles traveled—the moon
now exudes a lemony-milky hue:
a succulent descent
into a wide open cradle
where wild things are born
in the glow of the night
some call a wakeful dream.
© Gregg Mosson 2008
|
~ TO FEED ~
Patricia Wellingham-Jones
In Afghanistan
people eat grass—
if they can find it.
I sit over coffee
and the Wednesday food section
in the paper and think
about our fat kids, imported fancy foods.
I want to slide my hands
over the twirling globe
and spread—like fine olive oil
where each whorl of finger and palm
touches land—baskets of grains and greens.
© Patricia Wellingham-Jones 2008
|
~
REBEL
~
Prakash Kona
Dreams are rebels - they mock systems and render them inferior
to dark intelligence of the brain;
Nights are rebels laughing at futile wisdom
of sunshine and dust;
The heart is rebel to everything that comes from mind,
Unwelcome are thoughts - the mud-boot stains
on the carpet of imagination;
Life is a rebel because it defies death
at every possible instance,
It crouches before fate like a wounded tiger
and strikes with strength of the wounds;
Truth is a rebel that pushes one into the flux of becoming,
The status quo of lies means nothing to truth;
Memory is a rebel because it captures bits and pieces of void
before plunging in a sea of extinction;
The thing I rebel against is what takes me away from you,
I fight with strength of a dreaming tiger wounded to core.
© Prakash Kona 2008
|
~
AN
OBSESSION ~
Tholana Ashok Chakravarthy
I rustle through the small heaps of leaves
Which creep and leap by the blowing wind,
The spring is but a pleasing season of love
All beings long and aspire to welcome it.
Occasional rainy showers are a real delight
Provoking to experience again and again,
They stoke the buried temper of my spirit
Yet, deep inside I sense a streak of pain.
The blissful buds which glanced yesterday
Blossomed into a bevy of cute flowers today,
Untamed, tomorrow is bound to surge ahead
To override today, towards another tomorrow.
I glimpse the enthused birds sing and play,
I see the tree-tops dance to the gentle breeze,
Showers are such a delight to every creature
This is where the amusing nature of nature lies.
Memories of lovelorn days fill my wet eyes
Behind the blurred vision I guess the answer
Though afar, the dearest one is close near
Trying to pour life into my elusive tomorrow.
© Tholana Ashok Chakravarthy 2008
|
~
EMPATHY
~
Amitava Chakrabarty
You try to sever the discordant tree
Chopping its trunk and leaving the root,
But it will grow in revengous spree
With venomous foliage it will shoot.
No peace pervades in church or mosque,
But it thrives in the depth of human mind,
From Tasmania to Okhotosk
You hear the clutter of religious grind.
You corner a cat it scrapes to jump
You stamp on ant it stings in revolt,
More the bullets on men you pump
The more you invite their vengeful jolt.
Loosen your grab near and far,
Sacrifice some pleasure for oppressed souls,
Give them a chance to be at par,
It works mountains sharing moles.
Impudent to defy the world-
Be not. Neither fiddle with peace,
Your rant and rave has never lulled-
Revolting voice; nor gave you peace.
© Amitava Chakrabarty 2008
|
~
OUR
LEADER
~
Amitava Chakrabarty
Our leader, a cultured gentleman,
Dipped his pen in a pot of blood-
To write our death knell was his plan,
And drove iron screws in fertile land.
We clutched our children to our heart
And clung to the soil, our mud
Deep in our marrows, we refused to part
Our blood and our mother earth.
Then one morning they came with guns,
To thump down law with lawlessness,
To shoot scampering women, have fun
From those who lost consciousness.
A moment before they slew her daughter
In front of her pleading eyes
And lifted her on their shoulder
To extract fun until she dies.
When the charred embers smoked no more,
When so called peace was established,
When our land captured with galore,
Would come up hubs and industries.
Our leader, the cultured gentleman
Between his cigarettes and poetry
Said to our trampled clan
“Your blood gave you industry”.
© Amitava Chakrabarty 2008
|
~
FREEDOM
IN
NATURE
AND
SOCIETY
~
David Allen Stringer
Out of doors, amongst forest trees, birds and flowers
in contemplation's beatific and poetic hours
one can feel so free 'neath open sky, by open sea
and one's psyche can on wings like song-birds fly,
content to be a small part of divine creation,
relishing such moments sweet of liberation
from all those abstract bonds that seem to grip
the human mind, us into closed communities lock
with all those expectations and dogmas –all here let slip,
like unwanted clothing, as of one's life one takes stock-
but, why is it that, with others, one feels controlled
by systems' forces that so many in bondage hold
when all one needs do is on our earth to survive,
in simpler tasks feeling so vibrant, simply alive?
In the eternal continuity of our Mother Nature
surely lies our best sense of security
in which reverence for all life to nurture
so enabling our souls to feel, thus, free
for don't we cling to dogmas and systems
because in that Primal Life-Force we have lost faith,
are not our best prayers, to creation, the hymns
as the great creator spirit guides us on our path,
bearing that lantern of the everlasting light
whence visions open wide our sight,
while those from nature alienated find
in urban cultures that this has been left behind
causing men to cling to man-constructed gods
to give them those dictates than man in slavery holds!
Yet, we still need some rules to keep us paths
of reverence for life, conscience embodies in faiths
such as teach us the social law born of that
law divine of creation, by our creator set,
or else, in purblindness, we our freedom can assert
in ways that bring not blessings, but all-round hurt,
a faith that frees, like those best teachings of Christ
to save us from our sins against ourselves and others
that we should be, with all creatures, as sisters and brothers,
so to guide us into maturity, a light!
So let us not religions reject, rather them transcend
with a universalist sympathy with all, within & beyond
so that, likewise, our groping human community
can know spirit’s non-enslaving bonds
and how to be collectively free!
For complicating conflicts inevitably arise
from all narrow attachments in our society
when several of these tangle with each other,
like bands of jarring and clashing colours
that cannot overlap, in harmony, as in a rainbow
(thus such attachments cause the sufferings we know)
and are better transcended by the wise;
A simple faith may give a sense of unity
when each has a monopoly in its community
but, in our modern world, this is impossible
when these rival dogmas in our lives entangle,
which our eyes may blind to that one, all-embracing Light
with which Natural Creation has blessed our human sight!
© David Allen Stringer 2008
|
~
LIMBO
~
Theresa Tomlinson
I zone in and out, in and out,
until in is no longer an option.
Time crawls by as the sloth
speeds on ahead.
I close my eyes, everything
seems so far away, simply the
backdrop for something that is so
much more, yet I hear everything
and understand none of it.
I feel light, suspended between
the here and now, this life and
the next. Have I died from boredom?
How absurd.
I shake my head, the fog clears,
the nothingness fades. Too soon
the fog and nothingness return.
I hate this. I'm stuck in limbo
and there is nothing.
© Theresa Tomlinson 2008
|
~
A
SECRET
HORSE
SCREAMS
~
Lawrence Alfred Powell
worshipping fallen towers
the vast waterfall of fools
flows downward
chasing hollow greed armies
sipping madness
inspired by
feather celebrities
and the body snakedance
they struggle to remember
a thousand screens
saluting scorched skyscrapers
and blister machines
they invest in pride banks
to overcome traumas
of a quicksand childhood
and lingering humiliations
of unrequited loves
and the time they got fired
now the hate puppets and
volcano merchants can
really sizzle
feasting on blind fear
and the lost womb's hunger
wrapping electric shadows
and amusement albatrosses
tighter and tighter
around their necks
until the noose
becomes their flesh
and the news
becomes their mind
deep within the artist caves
a secret horse screams
© Lawrence Alfred Powell 2008
|
~ DOVE CAFÉ
~
( IN MEMORY OF BLACK ELK, WHO STILL
SPEAKS ACROSS THE PRAIRIES )
Lawrence Alfred Powell
beyond
the brittle howl of shame daisies
and rotting buffalo
beyond
the greedy image puppets
the endless reflections
of their everywhere mirrors
beyond
the lonely fever of distrust
the long night, with its
pyres of arsenic madness
is the dove café
it is time we rebuilt the hope towers
time to reawaken renaissance
with a eucalyptus chateau
of beautiful artists
let us hold up peyote lanterns
to the sun
and answer the silent fear caverns
with a roar of trust
meet me at the dove café
we shall form
a sacred ring of future
passing peace pipes to unimagine
the square prisons they have built
everywhere around us
© Lawrence Alfred Powell 2008
|
|
