MEN'S VOICES: THE STATE OF THE WORLD AND THE STATE OF OUR HEARTS

Today we are listening to the men in our community, as they share their poems and thoughts on the state of the world, how it weighs on our hearts, and what keeps us going in spite of it all. Definitely topics we can relate to; as poets, we seem keenly aware of, not just the beauty of the world, but its darkness. Perhaps our poems can shed a little light into the dark corners and lighten the way just a little. We can hope. Let's listen to Bjorn Rudberg, Ollie the Tired Monk, Michael (grapeling), and Marcoantonio, whose words run in counterpoint to the daily news.

ONLY THE LIVING CAN FEAR

The taste of fear is open, pure and red —

a lump of meat, its poppies lost and flown

from cries in mud, in trenches darkly bled.

We harvested our fear from fields we’d sown

with honey dripping from our leaders’ tongue.

The scent of fear is blood and broken bones.

We fought with tears and cried with broken lungs,

we bulwarked, starved, believed it’s more than right,

to maim our foes, the newborns and their young.

The sound of fear is sweat of starlit nights,

we waited as the forest grew inside,

it spread with rotting hands and ropes wound tight

   around our necks the night we lost our pride

   when life was soiled and all we knew had died.

This sonnet is one that I have been working with through several different versions. The original version was written for Real Toads as a sonnet challenge, and when we started our form project at dVerse. In this particular one, I worked with Terza Rima rhyme scheme inside a Shakespearean sonnet. The idea on the poem is a subject on the evil in every one of us; lately I have watched many documentaries about the big wars in Europe and I fear that war will come back one day. I think the war itself is less interesting but more how human being changes, how ordinary men can do the most horrific things, and how war, fear and hatred will make humans do things we would not be capable of during peace.

Sherry: I suppose if soldiers thought of the other side as being human, they could not fight at all. I am most struck by the lines "when life was soiled and all we knew had died." It is no wonder soldiers come home with inner wounds. They have experienced hell. Thank you for this thoughtful poem, Bjorn.

Michael recently wrote a poem that offers us a positive reflection, amidst all the gloom of wars, climate change, crazed leaders, and despairing refugees. We need his words of hope!

The World Is Not Going

the world is not going
to hell anymore
than the sun is burning
out: tomorrow
will burn just the same as today.

I’ve neglected the garden;
it hasn’t missed me. Dirt accepts
wet or dry equally, it’s only living
things that notice the difference
but still, I noticed today’s rain

continually high-fiving the Meyer lemon
which bowed in return, as though smiling,
yellow rind glistening like an old man’s stained teeth
or mine in the window.
What is a half century

if fifty revolutions is a myth:
the entire solar system swirling
in spirals around a star racing through space
so maybe the world is going
after all

Sherry: We live in hope! Mother Earth tries her best, in spite of our mistreatment, to carry out her cycles. What gives me comfort is that she can heal, if we give her half a chance. Where did this poem come from, Michael?

Michael: My impending half century at the time was the foundation. 

This poem was posted in reply to Grace's prompt at toads about David Huerta, and having now revisited it, I see that in the poems she highlighted he wrote of fruit. I suspect his lemon, coupled with the scrawny Meyer bush outside my then-bedroom window, inspired the one here. Perhaps I had witnessed a then-rare rain buffet the winter rind.

Rereading Grace's notes, she observed that Huerta's poetry invites the reader to participate in constructing the meaning of the poem, a precept I admire - after all, it could be that. 

I've always been curious about the concept of time, relativity, space, and how we feeble humans so often insist there are great cycles, but how cosmology shows us we spin through space and time without ever really tracing the same path again.

Or maybe it was none of that, just idle musings. Spinning into another year older makes the mind wander, doesn't it?

Sherry: It certainly does. Thank you so much, Michael.

I always love it when Ollie, the Tired Monk (and one of our first members at Poets United) pops up on the blogroll. No matter what is happening on earth, the Tired Monk can be seen in his tattered robes, sweeping, shoveling, chopping wood, with his temple dog beside him. That gives me great comfort.

scattered bits n'fragments

i)

tired
deep temple dog tired
tired of wars
...words
n' wars on words

tired of fighting
pushing on the last few
fading monks
to move
just move

ii)

coffee pot
bottom burned black
       needs scrubbing
morning of wet monk
sleeves

iii)

energy drink cans
scattered up the ditches
or squashed flat
and paved over
in the pre-frost rush

iii)

this violin
is a fiddle in these hands
sawing  - mingling
with Americana chords
lifting n'healing
yer broken heart

         *****     *****

Sherry: I, too, feel that bone-deep weariness. Regular people are so tired of all the sparring, the rhetoric, the damage that is being done. I love the tune you play to help heal all the broken hearts, my friend. Heaven knows we can use a good tune!

     *****    *****

A Question  

you really the tired monk?

yeah
bone weary tired

beat burdened
but still ready
to serve

propped up
by temple dog walks
a few warm holy songs
maybe a slug of highland healing
bit of Drambuie warding
off this winter cough

yep
held up by these monk robes

...just

source

Sherry: This strikes a chord, as I see hard-won gains being stripped away, injustice everywhere, climate change melting the planet....I try to hang on to optimism and hope. But some days ... just.

Ollie: Being a monk these days is such a blessing.  There is much work to be done, and many to serve.  Some days my more human parts break down.  This piece is a meditation on what keeps me moving forward in this world: a little music, my temple dogs, and maybe a nip of single malt.  Today I felt like the only thing holding me up were my old battered monk robes.  

Sherry: I have those days, too, without the support of monk robes. But my cane helps! Thank you for this poem, Ollie. Your poems always make me smile. I can see the Tired Monk, bravely battling the snowdrifts in eastern Canada.

Marcoantonio, another early member at Poets United, wrote a very perceptive poem on these topics, which I am happy he agreed to share with us. Let's take a look:

Fire and Storms

devastation of storms and floods appear 
then come the hell of fires and words are
said from a tongue of sharpen blades not for 
the sake of pain for loss or sorrow but for the sake
of their own tomorrow 

the flower does not blame the wind
for its loss of petals, the rain for
their wilting, the sun for being parched
with too much heat or for the night
stealing the day

in selfishness and greed there is
no good that comes but a sadness
and lament avails for the souls departed
and all who is left are the lonely and  
the cold hearted

source

Marco: My piece reflects the present conditions of how our country, the U.S.A., is being devastated by Hurricanes and Forest fires, and how our present resident of the White House has little empathy for the specific states affected - either because one is basically 'brown' people, and the other, because it was and is a state that is not supportive of his continued 'megalomania', narcissistic, racist, xenophobic, self-serving ego.

Sherry: Plain words, Marco, and I share your frustration at the widespread social injustices that are occurring. In your poem, I am most struck by the line "the flower does not blame the wind for its loss of petals." That is very beautiful.

Thank you so much, gentlemen, for your poems, which illuminate so well the state of our hearts at the present state of the world. Shall we overcome? I hope so, for the sake of the young.

Do come back, my friends, and see who we talk to next. Who knows? It might be you!