Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Zero Tolerance

Logo of the Zero Tolerance Policy at Queen Mary University of London Student Union

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Various countries have laws for zero tolerance of: Using certain pesticides and chemicals, Bullying in the workplace, Dealing Narcotics, Driving while intoxicated, Belonging to gangs, Using weapons and drugs and violence in schools, and increasingly, Discriminating on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation and religion in many settings.

And by international agreement since 2012, all countries have zero-tolerance for genital mutilation: 

The International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) is February 6, today. 

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Midweek Motif ~ Zero Tolerance

     Zero-Tolerance is controversial, and hard to enforce.  This is not just because one law doesn't fit everyone, but because laws are applied unevenly.  In the USA, biased law enforcement has led to a racist "school to prison pipeline," for example.

     But when Zero Tolerance becomes a law, its job is to prevent future damage.  Changing behaviors by enforcement now is meant to change attitudes over time.   Does this work? Can it work? Should it work?

     Here are 2 personal examples:  

(1) I recently witnessed a speaker at a library event give contact information for female circumcision, and no one objected.  A lady next to me shushed me when I bristled, and said, "We try to tolerate everybody."  Later I asked the Library Director why he allowed it, and he said he hadn't heard it.  People try not to know, I think.  But how can I be shocked when I didn't follow through myself?    

(2) In my high school English classroom, I had zero tolerance for hate speech of any kind.  To enforce it I had to insist students were in MY space, not public space where free speech is legal.  Imagine the debates!  I had to renew the contract with each new group of students. 

Your Challenge:  Take one tiny piece of this vast topic to illuminate in a new poem using your stories, images, experience, wishes, and potential solutions.  Feel free to focus on FGM.  

From "Crisis Communication," a slide share 
by Dr.Arivalan Ramaiyah Director of Praxis Skills Training and Consultancy

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“We were all involved in the death of John Kennedy. We tolerated hate; we tolerated the sick stimulation of violence in all walks of life; and we tolerated the differential application of law, which said that a man's life was sacred only if we agreed with his views. This may explain the cascading grief that flooded the country in late November. We mourned a man who had become the pride of the nation, but we grieved as well for ourselves because we knew we were sick.”  ― Martin Luther King Jr.

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Goodbye to Tolerance

BY DENISE LEVERTOV

Genial poets, pink-faced   

earnest wits—

you have given the world   

some choice morsels,

gobbets of language presented

as one presents T-bone steak

and Cherries Jubilee.   

Goodbye, goodbye,

                            I don’t care

if I never taste your fine food again,   

neutral fellows, seers of every side.   

Tolerance, what crimes

are committed in your name.

And you, good women, bakers of nicest bread,   

blood donors. Your crumbs

choke me, I would not want

a drop of your blood in me, it is pumped   

by weak hearts, perfect pulses that never   

falter: irresponsive

to nightmare reality.

It is my brothers, my sisters,

whose blood spurts out and stops

forever

because you choose to believe it is not your business.

Goodbye, goodbye,

your poems

shut their little mouths,   

your loaves grow moldy,   

a gulf has split

                     the ground between us,

and you won’t wave, you’re looking

another way.

We shan’t meet again—

unless you leap it, leaving   

behind you the cherished   

worms of your dispassion,   

your pallid ironies,

your jovial, murderous,   

wry-humored balanced judgment,

leap over, un-

balanced? ... then

how our fanatic tears

would flow and mingle   

for joy ..

Farah Gabdon's poem "Woman"

(The Finnish League for Human Rights, Oct. 2016, Helsinki, Finland.)

Tolerance

By Thomas Hardy

'It is a foolish thing,' said I,

'To bear with such, and pass it by;

Yet so I do, I know not why!'

And at each clash I would surmise

That if I had acted otherwise

I might have saved me many sighs.

But now the only happiness

In looking back that I possess —

Whose lack would leave me comfortless —

Is to remember I refrained

From masteries I might have gained,

And for my tolerance was disdained;

For see, a tomb. And if it were

I had bent and broke, I should not dare

To linger in the shadows there.

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Please share your new poem using Mr. Linky below and visit others in the spirit of the community.   

(Next week Sumana’s Midweek Motif will be ~ Love. )

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Silence

       “In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” — Martin Luther King, Jr.

SOURCE

“The human heart has hidden treasures, In secret kept, in silence sealed; The thoughts, the hopes, the dreams, the pleasures, Whose charms were broken if revealed.” — Charlotte Brontë

       Midweek Motif ~ Silence

We all know how still, quiet or at rest Silence is. What an absolutely soundless world we enter into if we could really step into Silence!

How to bring Silence into this cacophonous, noisy world?

Where to find that soundlessness? Is Silence merely absence of sound or more than that?

Or is it this Silence that we fear most so we fill up every inch of it with sound? Is Silence oppressive?

Let’s explore the world of Silence today:

Silence

by Thomas Hood

There is a silence where hath been no sound,
There is a silence where no sound may be,
In the cold grave—under the deep, deep sea,
Or in wide desert where no life is found,
Which hath been mute, and still must sleep profound;
No voice is hush’d—no life treads silently,
But clouds and cloudy shadows wander free,
That never spoke, over the idle ground:
But in green ruins, in the desolate walls
Of antique palaces, where Man hath been,
Though the dun fox or wild hyæna calls,
And owls, that flit continually between,
Shriek to the echo, and the low winds moan—
There the true Silence is, self-conscious and alone. 

           

After Long Silence

by William Butler Yeats

Speech after long silence; it is right,
All other lovers being estranged or dead,
Unfriendly lamplight hid under its shade,
The curtains drawn upon unfriendly night,
That we descant and yet again descant
Upon the supreme theme of Art and Song:
Bodily decrepitude is wisdom; young
We loved each other and were ignorant. 

Silence

by Marianne Moore

My father used to say,
"Superior people never make long visits,
have to be shown Longfellow's grave
nor the glass flowers at Harvard.
Self reliant like the cat --
that takes its prey to privacy,
the mouse's limp tail hanging like a shoelace from its mouth --
they sometimes enjoy solitude,
and can be robbed of speech
by speech which has delighted them.
The deepest feeling always shows itself in silence;
not in silence, but restraint."
Nor was he insincere in saying, "`Make my house your inn'."
Inns are not residences. 

Aprons Of silence

By Carl Sandburg

Many things I might have said today.
And I kept my mouth shut.
So many times I was asked
To come and say the same things
Everybody was saying, no end
To the yes-yes, yes-yes,
me-too, me-too.

The aprons of silence covered me.
A wire and hatch held my tongue.
I spit nails into an abyss and listened.
I shut off the gable of Jones, Johnson, Smith,
All whose names take pages in the city directory.

I fixed up a padded cell and lugged it around.
I locked myself in and nobody knew it.
Only the keeper and the kept in the hoosegow
Knew it--on the streets, in the post office,
On the cars, into the railroad station
Where the caller was calling, "All a-board,
All a-board for . . . Blaa-blaa . . . Blaa-blaa,
Blaa-blaa . . . and all points northwest . . .all a-board."
Here I took along my own hoosegow
And did business with my own thoughts.
Do you see? It must be the aprons of silence. 

Please share your new poem using Mr. Linky below and visit others in the spirit of the community—

 (Next week Susan’s Midweek Motif will be ~ Meteor Showers)

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Flood

The Waving Surface of the Autumn Flood, Ma Yuan - Water Album - circa 1160

“I wish I hadn't cried so much!" said Alice, as she swam about, trying to find her way out. "I shall be punished for it now, I suppose, by being drowned in my own tears!” 
― Lewis Carroll

“Science fiction films are not about science. They are about disaster, 

which is one of the oldest subjects of art.” 
― Susan Sontag

“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, "Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping." To this day, especially in times of "disaster," I remember my mother's words and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers – so many caring people in this world.” 
― Fred Rogers

Monsoon in India 2017
(So many have lost everything and died in floods, I found it hard to choose a picture.)

Midweek Motif ~ Flood

Flood in metaphor is often a positive, delightful gift and surprise; whereas flood in reality is often devastating, especially when disaster preparation is missing.  When the idea of flooding enters poets' hearts, when we are flooded with it, we are prepared with the tools of capture and taming even if we are overwhelmed.  So where to begin today? With an actual flood and its stories?  Or with the concept overpowering the will?  You decide.

Your challenge:  
Write a new poem with a flood motif 

and post it below.

The Art Of Drowning

by Billy Collins

I wonder how it all got started, this business
about seeing your life flash before your eyes
while you drown, as if panic, or the act of submergence,
could startle time into such compression, crushing
decades in the vice of your desperate, final seconds.

After falling off a steamship or being swept away
in a rush of floodwaters, wouldn't you hope
for a more leisurely review, an invisible hand
turning the pages of an album of photographs-
you up on a pony or blowing out candles in a conic hat.

. . . . 

(Read the rest HERE.)

The Flood 

by Robert Frost

Blood has been harder to dam back than water.

Just when we think we have it impounded safe 

Behind new barrier walls (and let it chafe!),

It breaks away in some new kind of slaughter.

We choose to say it is let loose by the devil;

But power of blood itself releases blood.

It goes by might of being such a flood

Held high at so unnatural a level.

It will have outlet, brave and not so brave.

weapons of war and implements of peace

Are but the points at which it finds release.

And now it is once more the tidal wave

That when it has swept by leaves summits stained.

Oh, blood will out. It cannot be contained.

Arroyo: Flash Flood

BY JOHN UNTERECKER

The canyon walls close in again,

slant light a silver glare in brown water.

The water is only knee deep, but when the boy reaches the

   boulders—

purple dark, silvered by the smash of brute water—

water will tear at his chest and arms.

The walls of the canyon are brilliant in late light.

They would have glared red and gold for his drowned camera:

splashed blood to his left, to his right a wall of sun laddered

   with boulders.

. . . . 

(Read the rest HERE.)

A Leak in the Dike

BY PHOEBE CARY

A Story of Holland
 . . . . 

But where was the child delaying? 

      On the homeward way was he, 

And across the dike while the sun was up 

      An hour above the sea. 

He was stopping now to gather flowers, 

      Now listening to the sound, 

As the angry waters dashed themselves 

      Against their narrow bound. 

“Ah! well for us,” said Peter, 

      “That the gates are good and strong, 

And my father tends them carefully, 

      Or they would not hold you long! 

You ’re a wicked sea,” said Peter; 

      “I know why you fret and chafe; 

You would like to spoil our lands and homes; 

      But our sluices keep you safe!” 

But hark! Through the noise of waters 

      Comes a low, clear, trickling sound; 

And the child’s face pales with terror, 

      And his blossoms drop to the ground. 

He is up the bank in a moment, 

      And, stealing through the sand, 

He sees a stream not yet so large 

      As his slender, childish hand. 

’T is a leak in the dike! He is but a boy, 

      Unused to fearful scenes; 

But, young as he is, he has learned to know 

      The dreadful thing that means. 

A leak in the dike! The stoutest heart 

      Grows faint that cry to hear, 

And the bravest man in all the land 

      Turns white with mortal fear. 

For he knows the smallest leak may grow 

      To a flood in a single night; 

And he knows the strength of the cruel sea 

      When loosed in its angry might. 

. . . . 

(Read the rest HERE.)

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Please share your new poem using Mr. Linky below and 
visit others in the spirit of the community—

Next week Sumana's Midweek Motif will be "Nature: Her Words."

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ War & Peace

“War does not determine who is right – only who is left” — Bertrand Russell

SOURCE

“I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality….I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.” — Dr. Martin Luther King

       Midweek Motif ~War & Peace

The World War I (1914 – 1918) ended with the establishment of the League of Nations — with the aim to explore the possibilities how wars could be avoided.

            

Yet armed conflicts among nations continue and Peace remains elusive as ever, thanks to the belligerent nations. Life does not matter!!!!

Raise your voice in this context.

1914

by Wilfred Owen

War broke: and now the Winter of the world

With perishing great darkness closes in.

The foul tornado, centred at Berlin,

Is over all the width of Europe whirled,

Rending the sails of progress. Rent or furled

Are all Art’s ensigns. Verse wails. Now begin

Famines of thought and feeling. Love’s wine’s thin.

The grain of human Autumn rots, down-hurled.

For after Spring had bloomed in early Greece,

And Summer blazed her glory out with Rome,

An Autumn softly fell, a harvest home,

A slow grand age, and rich with all increase.

But now, for us, wild Winter, and the need

Of sowings for new Spring, and blood for seed.

Earth Is Frenzied With Fury

               (A Song)

 by Rabindranath Tagore

Earth is frenzied with fury; in constant vile conflict;

Awfully crooked its path; tangled in wily greed.

All sore souls pray for the new birth of a Savior

Save us O Great Life with Thine life giving words

Let bloom the love-lotus with ever flowing nectar

              

O the ever Serene, Free and Holy presence

Let your Mercy absolve Earth of its stains

O Generous One initiate onto the firm renouncing path

O Supreme Mendicant claim our ego as your alms

Let all forget their cares, woes; delusion be severed

Let knowledge as the radiant sun dawn in its splendor

Let all world gain life, the blind receive sight

O the ever Serene, Free and Holy presence

Let your Mercy absolve Earth of its stains

The grieving heart of Mankind is smoldering with agony

Worn out in treasure hunt the discontents are aggrieved

Lands far and wide flaunt their blood-tilak* of filth

Sound your conch of well being and bliss

Touching all with Thy right hand to bless

Play Thy auspicious tune to the rhythm of Grace

O the ever Serene, Free and Holy presence

Let your Mercy absolve Earth of its stains

                    Translated by Sumana Roy)

To All In The So Called Defence Industry

by Adrian Mitchell

Arms trade workers, here's an early warning 
You might wake up tomorrow morning 
And find that this is the glorious day 
When all your jobs will just melt away 
Because the people of the world are going to make sure 
There'll be no more, no more, no more war 
So now's the time to switch your occupation 
From dealing in death and desolation 
Don't hang around now you've been told 
The international murder trade's about to fold 
You won't have to maim, you won't have to kill, 
You can use your brain and use your skill. 
Peace needs workers of all kinds- 
Make artificial limbs instead of landmines. 
Tricycles instead of tridents, 
Violins instead of violence, 
Lifeboats, hospitals, medicine, drains, 
Food and toys and buses and trains- 
Come on, there's plenty of work to be done 
If we're going to make peace for everyone. 

                 

Please share your new poem using Mr. Linky below and visit others in the spirit of the community—

                (Next week Susan’s Midweek Motif will be ~Independence)