|
5.5x8.5 paperback, 76 pages, poems and essays
introduction
IMPEACH: from Late Latin impedicare, fetter (as a foot),
shackle, hinder.
MONSTER: from Latin monstrum, inauspicious portent or sign.
Typically there are signs or warnings before ‘shit happens.’ I think of this process as a pattern of mercy built into the universe.
When not heeded and instead allowed to run amok, monstrums can take on a form-- anything from falling on one’s ass, to an addiction, an ex-lover who refuses to leave, a river-polluting corporation, a brainwashing media, a
flagrantly offensive military force. . .
Many of the modern monsters appear as the proverbial wolf in sheep’s clothing. Whether a super-fancy-car-driving televangelist, or a clown pedophile, or a corporation that holds charity events with one hand while destroying
natural habitats and cultures with the other-- the concept is the same.
Many signs in the world continue to go unheeded, and so: many monsters need to be dealt with.
To impeach can be as simple as: in a court of Law - to challenge the credibility of a witness, or as complex as: removing a country’s leaders from office.
From a cosmic perspective, since elimination of a person from this worldly realm is most naturally done on an
individual basis by the Creator, it becomes anyone’s wise and justifiable choice to hinder and shackle, in some form, those who override the Creator’s natural mechanism of the cosmos.
What leads to ‘people’ (whether two-legged or four,
whether wingéd or gilled, whether crawling or sitting rock still, whether bending as trees or moving as air) being
overridden, oppressed, or abused AND how to overcome those injustices, is a large surface upon which these poems and essays scratch.
May they stir you enough to help thwart a monster or two and help bring about a brighter New Dawn.
– Mankh
March, 2008
The Nobel Peace Prize Goes To. . .
a child in Iraq a sparrow in Detroit
a polar bear a wildflower the one cell
in Rove’s brain that is peaceful
a chunk of ice floating away from the top
of the world
the soldiers who have held their gunfire
the soldiers who have left the war
the soldiers who refused to become soldiers
a sparrow in Afghanistan
the Myanmar monks the Australian abos
a Darfur grandmother a Hopi grandfather
a Taoist a true Christian the funniest Jew
you’ve ever heard
the Shakers the Quakers the Pacifists
the half-baked weed smokers
the devotees of Walden Pond
the whirling Dervishes
the drunk in the alley who has only damaged
his own knuckles
against the cold brick wall in the heart of winter
a fool in a field in the middle of anywhere
who is feeding a sparrow with one hand
and waving a white flag with the other
Holding the Light
What is a gooseneck lamp doing in Carl’s meadow?
Why are the geese crossing the two-way street
in suburbia?
Could it be something to do with the jiggy society,
so much pompous and ignoring the circumstances?
Urgency removes doubt,
a human being lifting a car to save a life–
divine adrenaline has not been studied enough,
nor altruism, nor buy one give one free.
Opening an inner door. . .
towards the end of summer and eyeing October
peppers red as apples
apples red as whatever you want them to be red as. . .
from New Orleans to Dharamsala to Baghdad to the
ghettos of America
the obvious are being overlooked: the poor,
the reincarnated, the childlike,
the ones who do not tan from sun because they have been here so long. . .
and they are all holding the light, in the dankest corners
and in the shallowest pockets of economic warfare they are holding the light. . .
as a peach on the ground, as a red brick-wall in the
afternoon glow,
as the eye in a vision, and the sparrow who grabs on
to the middle of the long, tall stem of a sunflower. . .
holding the light.
US and U.S. and THEM and THEM and YET. . .
After the death of his one-year old daughter in 1816 (one of four children to live less than two years) haiku Master Kobayashi Issa eventually wrote:
This dewdrop world
is a dewdrop world
and yet... and yet...
The brilliance of the poem is that, no matter the particular situation, the reader is left to contemplate how “and yet...” applies personally.
It’s all a wink of the cosmic eye, they say, but that mantra becomes a greater challenge when stuck in traffic, or facing a dire situation of survival, recovery, or healing.
The outpouring of concern and assistance for the survivors of the 2004 Indonesian tsunami, especially the children, reveals the loftier side of the human spirit. And yet… why the lack of concern for the Iraqi children?
Is it that many people consider THEM “the enemy’s children?” Do most worldwide charities quietly condone the war on Iraq?
As for the common folk, some of whom genuinely find it easier to assist people coping with a non-partisan natural disaster, many probably don’t know where or how to give aid to Iraqi families and orphans who have been indiscriminately bombed out of their homes.
A websearch shows little at all… and if I did send some money somewhere: would I be considered as assisting the enemy? And yet… the victims and children (dubbed civilians) are not really “enemies.”
Many U.S. children are struggling, though presumably,
something is done for some of them on a day-to-day basis (apparently unworthy of news reporting).
This planet is grappling with a severe case of segregated, schizophrenic, multiple-personality disorder (call it what you will) psychology.
There is US, a generic term for all the folks who have enough freedom and abundance to get by day-to-day on a higher than mere-survival level.
There is the U.S. with its varieties of people and cultures, plus various factions within and without of the government, many of them victims and survivors of the current and past wars.
THEM is another loose category of tsunami victims and survivors, and THEM is also Iraqi victims and survivors.
There are plenty more THEMs and yet “and yet…” prompts us to look beyond all of these illusory labels.
Global networks having search-and-rescue systems; less-than-emergency systems ready to go on command (like an army dedicated to preservation instead of destruction); and food-and-supply banks (like our western rental-equipment stores) would go a long way toward helping those in need and encouraging respect for people around the globe. Each and every one of US-and-THEM is a precious, tiny droplet in this “dewdrop world.”
Issa, by the way, translates as “cup of tea” or “one bubble in steeping tea,” and he aptly put forth a universal response to the notion of a flash-in-the-pan existence with little or no purpose.
Since Issa’s One Bubble of Haiku has survived the years: what little gift might you bring forth?
2021 by Walter E. Harris III.
|
