Futility

all around the world

we scream out against war crimes 

but who’s listening?

*

an island man stands

up to his waist in water

above his drowned house

*

most people can see

what's wrong with war and greed

yet governments still ...

*

The Choice

In a world

of so much hatred,

how to continue

to be of love?

How to resist

being frozen in horror?

Or burning 

with rage and blame?

But those

are not the ways.

Only peace

can beget peace.

If only 

we could each

become an oasis

of light.

I imagine

each small circle of light 

spreading,

merging.

I can’t make it so

for others. 

Each can only 

choose it ourselves.

And why – in the face 

of pain and injustice?

So as not to be 

that which I abhor.

Sharing with Poets and Storytellers United at Friday Writings #107. The prompt is to write about a time when we weren't sure if we could (or wanted to) do something but ended up doing it anyway. What I've written is a little bit different  – more about something I want to do but (being human) often end up falling short.

Visiting the Dead

Patti Smith, in 'A Book of Days,' includes a photo of an angel in a cemetery. She says, 'Visiting the grave of Bertholt Brecht, I always pause to touch her wings.' 

That 'always' makes me wonder about the frequency of her visits … her pilgrimage, one might deduce.

I suppose it's convenient for people to have somewhere to go, to remember and reflect on those who have passed on before us, whether family members and friends or those great figures we have revered. 

I don't much hold with visiting graves, myself. I also don't have much tolerance for funerals. The body, no matter how wonderful it was in life (and they are all wonderful, bodies) is a mere empty shell after the soul has flown. Funerals and graves and urns full of ashes, it seems to me, are really for the living who are  left behind.

I would rather remember my family members by their photos taken when they were warm with life; my friends by their words and actions; the 'towering dead' (as Dylan Thomas called them) by their works which remain to move and inspire us.

your living face 

the timbre of your voice 

indelible –

even after being gone

for years of memories

Note: The Dylan Thomas reference is to his poem, 'In my Craft or Sullen Art.'

In Friday Writings #106, Magaly asks us to include in a piece of writing the full title of a book we're reading or planning to read this December. I have been reading Patti Smith's 'A Book of Days' all year, one day at a time, and am continuing to do so during December.

Seeing the Earth and the Stars

 

Vincent saw the energy in things! 

His painting of the starry, starry night 

with its whirling, swirling vortexes of light

and the live trees and hills responding

in echoing, answering, pulsating life –

aflame with life! – is more real to my eyes

than the most exact photograph. He caught

the inner truth of all that surrounds us,

supports us, wraps us, feeds us: our Mother

Nature, powerful Goddess, creator 

of the burgeoning Universe. In his day,

too few understood what he showed. Yet

he went on painting truth. What more

can anyone do than express whatever

understanding is given, whatever vision?

Perhaps he demonstrates how to look deep,

how to look far, how to see both in and beyond.

(Image in public domain.)

Written for Friday Writings #106: 'Starry, Starry Night' at Poets and Storytellers United.

Poem for Beltane Night

 

This Beltane is marked by storms, especially

of the inner kind: loss, bereavement, trauma, 

challenge, one after another. In the quiet of night

I go out, to find a large moon high behind trees –

and next to her Jupiter, clear, close as a lover.

This night I have no lover of my own 

to help me celebrate. Even those cats are gone

who used to come with me at midnight

into the circle of my patch of earth, my garden 

and my sacred trees, to greet the moon.

Yet I feel the whole earth pulsing with love

in this time of alive silence: a throb beyond

our ears to hear, yet not beyond our feeling.

The street, empty of people, is full 

of presences co-existing, just out of sight.

They come in peace. I greet them so.

Somewhere else, there is fighting,

there is fear, there is death, there is horror.

Tomorrow, I may have to face them,

those conditions, but tonight –

I’ll gaze at my own face in the mirror, 

speak to myself the words of blessing, 

bringing in love for me, love for my friends, 

love for the Goddess and the God, 

love for all creation, love of Life. 

Beautiful world, I will not forget you,

even when the work gets hard and the nights 

grow cold. The love I summon is for you, 

your regeneration; the love I call into being 

is for all of us. The love I am is that which I seek. 

I stand in love. My heart embraces the Universe 

as my hand blows a kiss to the moon.

Inside, I pour a nip of ginger wine.

I write a poem for Beltane. (Poetry as fertility.)

Pieces of dark chocolate melt in my mouth.

Why Did Life and Circumstance ...?

On my smart TV I find Jules et Jim

and watch it again after all this time,

remembering when Verona and I

saw all the New Wave movies from France. 

There had never been anything like them. 

We were both in love with Alain Delon. 

Though The Seventh Seal from Sweden was 

what utterly blew our minds. (Nothing else

did; we were probably the last generation

so innocent of drugs.) We were living in Carlton, 

I was a student. There was only one university

in Melbourne then. The cinema was next to 

the pawn shop; we were customers of both. 

We became best friends: discovering and loving 

words and art together. We were sharing 

a rented house. She painted a mural 

on her bedroom wall – one that could be

washed off when we left. I failed French and 

switched to Philosophy. (English Lit was always 

a given.) Germaine Greer was on stage at the Union 

Theatre. We called it the Onion. Germaine could 

sing, dance, act and be funny, the lot. It was before 

she wrote her book. She had purple hair, long 

purple nails, legs that went on forever, and 

a voice husky from cigarettes. We all smoked. 

Everything altered with the long vacation 

when I went home to Tassie and we couldn’t 

keep renting the house. But it took a few more years 

and many life changes before that idyllic friendship 

soured. We were grown by then, mothers by then. 

I was already divorced the first time. Verona was 

widowed. I never saw her again after 1967, although 

I know vaguely what became of her (the grapevine). 

Like me, she contrived a life which she’s still living.

We only watched those movies once; they burned 

into the brain forever after. But now I’d like to go back, 

revisit the young Delon, wish once more for a mouth 

like Jeanne Moreau’s, and still be so blazingly clear

that Art is the whole meaning and purpose of life.

For Friday Writings #99: Why??? at Poets and Storytellers United, I'm asking people to entitle a piece 'Why—?' fill in the blank, and write to our title. As you see, my own title question is still somewhat unfinished, but I trust the poem will clarify.