Free Association Day

Free association day,

Words tumbling

Like water off a cliff

And still no shape

No form , just freely

Associated, like people

In a lost cause.

Are we a lost cause?

Do words and association

No longer matter. Are

We just matter, having to

Calm down brows and colons?

Take deep breathes,

Not deep sea mining.

Mind the extinction,

Cause it’s ‘this gap’

That’s the problem.

Free words in a computer

On a march to censorship.

How to celebrate free

Association day? Disassociate.

- by Michael Stolt

Our Bodies Touching

This is my 200th poem. I am proud of myself. Through all my doubt and disbelief, the words have still wanted to come and manifest themselves through me. I still want my poems to be…… i’ll stop there. if you like it, let me know.

I was thinking of you, us:

Sitting around the campfire,

The flickering of the warm light,

The crackle and pop of desire.

Our bodies touching the way

flames do, melting into each other.

A sky full of twinkling stars.

The deep dark of the night forest.

The quiet between us. As loud as

Our beating hearts. Our breaths

Building white bridges of hope

between ripe lips. Dreams of reflection

bouncing off our eyes into the flames.

Soft blankets wrapped around us like the night.

Oh, the light of love and desire,

Sitting next to each other patiently.

The log cabin behind us awaits.

Come my love, take my hand, stand.

Come build the bridges to our dreams.

- By Michael Stolt

A Secret

© Turtle Caps Art   Queens Boro New York City.. street art, painter, muralist, graffiti, illustrations.

The beauty of poetry surprises me again and again. Even though poetry is not mainstream or something one could earn one’s living from, its about love; love of words and ideas and just love itself. The well known poets are good, to be sure, but it is gems like this poem below that makes my heart skip a beat and fall in love, all over again, with poetry. Long live the poets!!

ps. this poem was posted on Allpoetry.com, find it here , go check it out.

by EugeneM

A Secret

When I was a young man,
with no more sense than patience,
I found a sort of backstairs, backstreet
love that bloomed only in
the cul-de-sacs of alleys
at the rear of shops, or the shade
of churchyard linden trees.

I would go to her at nightfall
when the summer’s dust
was still warm on the roads
or rain had sweetened them,
keeping always to the dark pools
between the street lights,
the gloom of avenues
where tall spreading planes
occluded the watchful moon.

I concealed my love, as a child
hides a treasured find
in a sequestered place,
stealing out to caress it, careful never
to confess it to priest or teacher,
police or parent; I sealed
our secret from all prying eyes,
denied her by burial
under a hundredweight of silence.

The years between have tombed
her name like the sunken bowsprit
of a ship long graved
beneath the sea’s immensity;
only I know the quiet of those old
night pilgrimages to see her
and yet no dearer thing to me
than the remembered likeness of her face,
so that in dreams I find myself
running down moonlit streets
in search of our lost love.

Lie With Me

By Michael Stolt

Lie With Me

I lie!

Forgive me!

I lie here with you

In a bed of lies.

Cries of desire flow,

“Go slow”, I say

Keeping the lies at bay.

Housekeeping is mad making;

Dusting and cleaning.

I lie!!

Believe me!!

We lie on the things we love-

Squash them to keep them safe

The truth is heavy but light -

The bed’s springs need

Replacing –

Places map out

Our living and dying,

Why does that always enter-exit my thoughts?

The neuron that gets caught.

                                    Thought.

Think, link your existence to another’s

                                    Contact;

Contract, cataract – the blindness

Is a wildness for sure.

                        What’s the cure?

Coveting, loving – dying.

                        There it is again,

A constant thing, like lying.

Our Two Silences

A place of peace and inner silence, somewhere in this beautiful world.

by Anna Swir (1909-1984)

Our Two Silences

Silence

flows into me and out of me

washing my past away.

I am pure already, waiting for you. Bring me

your silence.

They will doze off

nestled in each other’s arms,

our two silences.

Translated from Polish by Czeslaw Milosz and Leonard Nathan.

Ode To Forgetting the Year

By BARBARA HAMBY

ODE TO FORGETTING THE YEAR

Forget the year, the parties where you drank too much,

            said what you thought without thinking, danced so hard

you dislocated your hip, fainted in the kitchen,

            while Gumbo, your hosts’ Jack Russell terrier,                                                  

looked you straight in the eye, bloomed into a boddhisattva,

            lectured you on the six perfections while drunk people

with melting faces gathered around your shimmering corpse.

Then there was February when you should have been decapitated

            for stupidity. Forget those days and the ones

when you faked a smile so stale it crumbled like a cookie

            down the side of your face. Forget the crumbs and the mask

you wore and the tangle of Scotch tape you used to keep it in place,

but then you’d have to forget spring with its clouds of jasmine,

            wild indigo, and the amaryllis with their pink and red faces,

your garden with its twelve tomato plants, squash, zucchini,

            nine kinds of peppers, okra, and that disappointing row of corn.

Forget the corn, its stunted ears and brown oozing tips. Forgive

            the worms that sucked their flesh like zombies

and forgive the bee that stung your arm, then stung your face, too.

While we’re at it, let’s forget 1974. You should have died that year,

            or maybe you did. Resurrection’s a trick

you learned early. And 2003. You could have called in sick

             those twelve months—sick and silly, illiterate and numb,

and summer, remember the day at the beach when the sun

            began to explain Heidegger to you while thunderclouds

rumbled up from the horizon like Nazi submarines? The fried oysters

            you ate later at Angelo’s were a consolation and the margaritas

with salt and ice. Remember how you begged the sullen teenaged waitress

            to bring you a double, and double that, pleasepleaseplease.

And forget all the crime shows you watched,

            the DNA samples, hair picked up with tweezers

and put in plastic bags, the grifters, conmen, and the husbands

            who murdered their wives for money or just plain fun.

Forget them and the third grade and your second boyfriend,

            who loved Blonde on Blonde as much as you did

but wanted something you wouldn’t be able to give anyone for years.

Forget movies, too, the Hollywood trash in which nothing happened

            though they were loud and fast, and when they were over

time had passed, which was a blessing in itself. O blessed 

            is Wong Kar Wai and his cities of blue and rain.

Blessed is David Lynch, his Polish prostitutes juking

            to Locomotion in a kitschy fifties bungalow. Blessed

is Jeff Buckley, his Hallelujah played a thousand times in your car

            as you drove through Houston, its vacant lots

exploding with wild flowers and capsized shopping carts.

So forget the pizzas you ate, the ones you made from scratch

            and the Dominoes ordered in darkest December,

the plonk you washed it down with and your Christmas tree

            with the angel you found in Naples and the handmade Santas                            

your sons brought home from school, the ones with curling eyelashes

            and vampire fangs. Forget their heartbreaks

and your sleepless nights like gift certificates

            from the Twilight Zone, because January’s here,

and the stars are singing a song you heard on a street corner once,

            so wild the pavement rippled, and it called you

like the night calls you with his monsters and his marble arms.

Barbara Hamby was born in New Orleans and raised in Honolulu. She is the author of seven books of poems, most recently Holoholo (2021), Bird Odyssey (2018) and On the Street of Divine Love: New and Selected Poems (2014), published by the University of Pittsburgh Press, which also published Babel (2004) and All-Night Lingo Tango (2009). Her first book, Delirium, won the Vassar Miller Prize, The Kate Tufts Award, and the Poetry Society of America’s Norma Farber First Book Award. Her second book, The Alphabet of Desire, won the New York University Press Prize for Poetry and was published in 1999 by New York University Press.

I Am Thinking

By Michael Stolt

I Am Thinking

I am thinking and thinking and blinking,

These two things I do without… ummm

Yes it’s weird,  isn’t it? Add to that

That my heart beats without my consent,

I cannot stop it even if I wished for it

Or swished my tail in irritation. There

Is no mitigation for this life started, never

Stopped. We carry the burden of life

Don’t’ we? It weighs heavily on each

Of us, no matter who we are or

What we have to say about it. We

All act as if it’s the best thing

That’s ever happened  to us. “be

Grateful for your life”, be responsible

in drinking and flying and smoking,

but don’t be joking about not

staying around. Kill yourself

responsibly the propaganded

advertising proclaims, better yet,

suffer yourself into consumer stupor,

penned up with the others: cattle, sheep,

pigs and chickens - ready for

the slaughter. Is it only me who

carries the burden of life, or are

there others? Covered up under the

false joy the consumerist church preaches.

It reaches everywhere, all over the place.

There is a race you know. For survival,

Revival, burial.   

Breathe

Breathe by Becky Helmsley

She sat at the back and they said she was shy.

She led from the front and they hated her pride.

They asked her advice and then questioned her guidance.

They branded her loud, then were shocked by her silence.

When she shared no ambition they said it was sad.

So she told them her dreams and they said she was mad.

They told her they'd listen, then covered their ears.

And gave her a hug while they laughed at her fears.

And she listened to all of it thinking she should,

be the girl they told her to be best as she could.

But one day she asked what was best for herself,

instead of trying to please everyone else.

So she walked to the forest and stood with the trees.

She heard the wind whisper and dance with the leaves.

She spoke to the willow, the elm and the pine

and she told them what she'd been told time after time.

She told them she felt she was never enough.

She was either too little or far far too much.

Too loud or too quiet, too fierce or too weak.

Too wise or too foolish, too bold or too meek.

Then she found a small clearing surrounded by firs,

and she stopped ... and she heard what the trees said to her.

And she sat there for hours not wanting to leave.

For the forest said nothing, it just let her breathe.

Branded

By Michael Stolt

Branded

He sees cars barking their

brands in the streets;

oblivious to the noise they

are making, oblivious to

the line they are drawing.

Branded owners stepping

out of branded cars.

He wonders if it hurts to be

completely branded top-to-

toe? He hears the owners of

the branded people carriers

talking about their branding,

proud that they allowed it,

even prouder, louder about

how much it cost them.

He jumps at the barking bite;

branded, running out of sight.

Pitter Patter

By Michael Stolt

Pitter-Patter

Pitter-patter, the rain falls softly.

The iron roof becomes nature’s instrument –

Ting -tang-ting-tang,

A kettle drum drummed up by the rain.

It is soothing in a dry place;

The sound of rain – ting-tang-ting -tang

Pitter-patter

Where rain is often somewhere else

Visiting places it knows well.

When it comes here, it is hesitant,

Shy almost. First a few drops,

Testing the ground as it were.

The first few drops come spitting, hit and miss.

Tong…tong…tong, a heartbeat, a throb of life.

The sound on the tin roof is one of hope.

The next splatters tong…tong… ting

Silences our chatter because we are praying,

Urging the sky to shed its shyness

And open up.

As if the rain has heard our thoughts,

More drops start to fall and the tin roof

Starts to chime away – ting-tong- tang.

There is news on the roof from the heavens

And We sit and listen so spellbound no interpreter is needed

In a gesture of starting slow, mother nature seems

To be asking, “Are you ready, my love?”

In a silent discourse we are not meant to hear

Or understand, the answer comes.

Mother nature opens up the heavens and beautiful

Rain comes pouring down.

The sound on the tin roof is a cacophony. That kettle drum

Has become a frenzied bunch of zombies trying to beat their way in.

We all start breathing again, only now noticing

That we were holding our breathes all along.

The smell of rain on the highveld air is sweet.

It awakens the soul. It smells of pure joy.

It smells like soil that is smiling, rich and creamy

With an aftertaste of life.

This smell is what gets us up, we cannot keep still any longer.

A jumping bean collective – only with arms and legs.

There is no holding joy back. Not even man’s best

Efforts or machinery can control it.

We are out the back door, naked.

Our clothes lie abandoned and lifeless under the drumming roof.

Do you know what freedom feels like?

It is being naked,

running and jumping and rolling in the grass

              while clean cold rain

Frolics over the hills and dales of your skin.

We are squealing with delight.

Have you ever had a sore face from smiling?

The rain is no longer shy – she is now laughing with us.

It is a beautiful sight and sound. The pitter patter and splash

Of rain.

The rain settles in to an easy tempo, one that quietens the world and darkens

The sky. One that will continue for hours.

It is a cosiness, a gentleness the world desperately needs.

We go back inside where it is dry.

Our bones shiver.

A hot bath and a cup of tea restores us to warmth.

Under the blankets with a book we creep – yet rain gazing keeps our eyes

On the story happening outside.

The sounds of rain touching trees, roofs and earth is the

Sound of gentleness, growth and renewal.

The soul can rest in this.

We take deep breathes, the world slows and goes quiet.

When we wake the rain is gone. She could not wait for us.

We are not sad, her visit was magic, as always.

Pitter- patter the rain’s memory clear and cold on our own.  

What We Want to Hear

By Michael Stolt

What We Want to Hear

Politicians aren’t able to

Tell the truth

Because we aren’t able

To accept it.

We want to hear that all

Is going to be ok; our jobs

Secure, our lives safe.

No one can guarantee

That, not even ourselves.

We have made the politicians

What they are, and if they

Are not what we want,

Whom can we blame but

Ourselves; so when they

stand up there telling us

what they think we want

to hear, we know It a lie

perpetuated by our need for it.

What the politicians want

To say is, “The economy

Is shot to hell. Hell is

Visiting us here and now.”

What the politicians want

To say, is “It will get

better, not now, but in

A long while.” but “there

Is no quick fix, be patient

In your pain.” They are silent

In telling us what they want

To say. We hear only, our own

Lies retold. They, hoping for the

Vote, retell them. We, seemingly

Hearing them for the first time,

Revolt and withhold from them, our vote.

The Amazon is Dying

Picture courtesy of Voices of Youth

“We must change almost everything in our current societies.
The bigger your carbon footprint - the bigger your moral duty.
The bigger your platform - the bigger your responsibility.
Adults keep saying: 'We owe it to the young people to given them hope.'
But I don't want your hope.
I don't want you to be hopeful.
I want you to panic.
I want you to feel the fear I feel every day.
And then I want you to act.
I want you to act as you would in a crisis.
I want you to act as if our house is on fire.
Because it is.”
― Greta Thunberg, No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference

Poem By Michael Stolt

The Amazon is Dying

The Amazon is dying

to give space for this art,

space for growing cane and cows;

the world here wants them cheap,

but not too cheap that we

loose our sleep,

over children labouring their

childhood away to feed ours.

free trade is a great idea -  

they are free to trade with us.

In pursuit of profit

the world has gone mad:

Fish for shrimp in Scotland,

Peel the things in Thailand,

Ship them back to Scotland,

Export them to the world,

Destroying local trade and

Environment for your haul;

globalisation this is called.

To give space for life – mine,

yours, the world is dying.

Don’t Make Our Minds

“I hope you will not turn her head into a battleground.” Nsuuta talking to Kirabo’s grandmother in The First Woman by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi

——————————————————————————————————————————————————

 This poem was inspired by the sentence above. Men, culture and society create these battlefrounds in women’s heads. It is unacceptable and i will not accept it anymore and work hard to eradicate this from the world.

——————————————————————————————————————————————————

Don’t make our minds a battleground

Where wars of worthiness are to be fought:

There is enough war and destruction.

Don’t make our minds a minefield of the

Cultural-self trying to blow up the true-self.

Don’t scuttle our dreams with your own,

Don’t bombard the city of our choices,

But hear our voices – not as your own –

For you do not exist in the future.

Don’t make our minds a battlefield where

We wage war against our bodies and your

Insecurities. There are no securities – even

banks fail.

Our bodies are beautiful. All of them.

All sexual choices and love is right

and part of the same story.

Don’t make our minds a place where unrest lives.

Our minds are a place to feel safe and sound. There is no

Worse hell than that – an unsound mind.

It is a human rights violation – one the oppressor

Knows well.

Don’t make our minds a place where our worthiness

Comes from the making of a marriage or baby:

There is no value in these shackles of despair.

Shackle nothing, freedom always finds its way.

Let our minds and bodies speak for themselves

In the power of their own decisions, creations and projects.

Don’t make our minds the obstacle that stands

In the way of us finding our beautiful meaning.

Let us break down all barriers and pre conceptions.

Daughters, heed the battlegrounds in your minds

created

By well meaning, yet misguided and damaged, people.

Dear other, your battlefields too have left scars.

Never give us the tools to weaponise our

Minds against ourselves or others, the earth

And all living creatures depend upon this.

May we make up our own minds!

Antics in the Sky

Johannesburg is renowned for it’s electrical storms in the summer. I remember those big black clouds moving in. It felt like somebody had shut the curtains and turned on a vacuum sealer. The air was being sucked out of the sky by the approaching weather front. You could feel the air pressure drop. The darkness was comforting in a way. The black sky tumultous and streaked with lightning. The lightning would come closer and the thunder become louder and rolled through the heavens like a wave in the sea - you could follow it with your eyes. It is so dramatic. You could smell the nitrogen in the air and taste it on your tongue. In my youth, the storms wouldnt last very long - maybe an hour or two. After the lighning, thunder and rain, the storm passed and the skies opened up to their previous deep blue. I always had the feeling that the blue was cleaner and more vivid than before, but maybe that was just because the world had been washed clean.

This poem comes from a particularly memorable storm.

Antics in the Sky

The black sky, lightning bleached,

abducts the air and electrocutes

it to the ground with a crack.

Drama abounds in the stained sky.

Trees bowing to their master the wind,

Breaking under his demands. We

are all captive to the antics of the

god’s in the sky. Some awed, some floored.

Heavy Air

Heavy, fresh, deep-breathing air,

Frosted and hung over balconies

Draped with droplets of water – stare.

The season’s soft change is coming

And our blankets we will be hugging.

Deep-breathing. Lung -filling air;

The weight of your freshness I can’t bear.

Bare and blanketed I sit here with

The morning’s soft edges so dear.

Dear me, time is slipping its knot,

Terribly tighter as I go back to my cot.

Fresh breeze, perfumed with Autumn’s rust

Full-bodied and, yet empty of spring’s lust.

“Lust not for the things gone,” I say.

For everything now, is this day.

Day break breaks the seam of darkness

Again. The power of sun we will harness.

My brow frowns – it’s timeless.

Timeless tantrumed toddlers rush me by.

I try not think about them and why.

Why grow and be borrowed to life

When most see only horror and strife?

Strife twists in my ribs, a sharp pain,

And bloodless I bleed without a stain.

This is where the world’s hurt lies;

In my bloodletting and soundless cries.

No matter what we do, everything dies

And bonds of carbon and more unties.

Burning the Old Year

By Naomi Shihab Nye

Letters swallow themselves in seconds.

Notes friends tied to the doorknob,

transparent scarlet paper,

sizzle like moth wings,

marry the air.

So much of any year is flammable,

lists of vegetables, partial poems.

Orange swirling flame of days,

so little is a stone.

Where there was something and suddenly isn’t,

an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space.

I begin again with the smallest numbers.

Quick dance, shuffle pf losses and leaves,

only the things that I didn’t do

crackle after the blazing dies.

Burning Drift-Wood

by John Greenleaf Whittier

Before my drift-wood fire I sit,

And see, with every waif I burn,
Old dreams and fancies coloring it,
And folly's unlaid ghosts return.

O ships of mine, whose swift keels cleft
The enchanted sea on which they sailed,
Are these poor fragments only left
Of vain desires and hopes that failed?

Did I not watch from them the light
Of sunset on my towers in Spain,
And see, far off, uploom in sight
The Fortunate Isles I might not gain?

Did sudden lift of fog reveal
Arcadia's vales of song and spring,
And did I pass, with grazing keel,
The rocks whereon the sirens sing?

Have I not drifted hard upon
The unmapped regions lost to man,
The cloud-pitched tents of Prester John,
The palace domes of Kubla Khan?

Did land winds blow from jasmine flowers,
Where Youth the ageless Fountain fills?
Did Love make sign from rose blown bowers,
And gold from Eldorado's hills?

Alas! the gallant ships, that sailed
On blind Adventure's errand sent,
Howe'er they laid their courses, failed
To reach the haven of Content.

And of my ventures, those alone
Which Love had freighted, safely sped,
Seeking a good beyond my own,
By clear-eyed Duty piloted.

O mariners, hoping still to meet
The luck Arabian voyagers met,
And find in Bagdad's moonlit street,
Haroun al Raschid walking yet,

Take with you, on your Sea of Dreams,
The fair, fond fancies dear to youth.
I turn from all that only seems,
And seek the sober grounds of truth.

What matter that it is not May,
That birds have flown, and trees are bare,
That darker grows the shortening day,
And colder blows the wintry air!

The wrecks of passion and desire,
The castles I no more rebuild,
May fitly feed my drift-wood fire,
And warm the hands that age has chilled.

Whatever perished with my ships,
I only know the best remains;
A song of praise is on my lips
For losses which are now my gains.

Heap high my hearth! No worth is lost;
No wisdom with the folly dies.
Burn on, poor shreds, your holocaust
Shall be my evening sacrifice!

Far more than all I dared to dream,
Unsought before my door I see;
On wings of fire and steeds of steam
The world's great wonders come to me,

And holier signs, unmarked before,
Of Love to seek and Power to save, --
The righting of the wronged and poor,
The man evolving from the slave;

And life, no longer chance or fate,
Safe in the gracious Fatherhood.
I fold o'er-wearied hands and wait,
In full assurance of the good.

And well the waiting time must be,
Though brief or long its granted days,
If Faith and Hope and Charity
Sit by my evening hearth-fire's blaze.

And with them, friends whom Heaven has spared,
Whose love my heart has comforted,
And, sharing all my joys, has shared
My tender memories of the dead, --

Dear souls who left us lonely here,
Bound on their last, long voyage, to whom
We, day by day, are drawing near,
Where every bark has sailing room.

I know the solemn monotone
Of waters calling unto me;
I know from whence the airs have blown
That whisper of the Eternal Sea.

As low my fires of drift-wood burn,
I hear that sea's deep sounds increase,
And, fair in sunset light, discern
Its mirage-lifted Isles of Peace.

The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

by Wendell Berry

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,

vacation with pay. Want more

of everything ready-made. Be afraid

to know your neighbors and to die.

And you will have a window in your head.

Not even your future will be a mystery

any more. Your mind will be punched in a card

and shut away in a little drawer.

When they want you to buy something

they will call you. When they want you

to die for profit they will let you know.

So, friends, every day do something

that won’t compute. Love the Lord.

Love the world. Work for nothing.

Take all that you have and be poor.

Love someone who does not deserve it.

Denounce the government and embrace

the flag. Hope to live in that free

republic for which it stands.

Give your approval to all you cannot

understand. Praise ignorance, for what man

has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Ask the questions that have no answers.

Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.

Say that your main crop is the forest

that you did not plant,

that you will not live to harvest.

Say that the leaves are harvested

when they have rotted into the mold.

Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.

Put your faith in the two inches of humus

that will build under the trees

every thousand years.

Listen to carrion — put your ear

close, and hear the faint chattering

of the songs that are to come.

Expect the end of the world. Laugh.

Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful

though you have considered all the facts.

So long as women do not go cheap

for power, please women more than men.

Ask yourself: Will this satisfy

a woman satisfied to bear a child?

Will this disturb the sleep

of a woman near to giving birth?

Go with your love to the fields.

Lie easy in the shade. Rest your head

in her lap. Swear allegiance

to what is nighest your thoughts.

As soon as the generals and the politicos

can predict the motions of your mind,

lose it. Leave it as a sign

to mark the false trail, the way

you didn’t go. Be like the fox

who makes more tracks than necessary,

some in the wrong direction.

Practice resurrection.

Mortality by Lola Haskins

Every thrown stone falls.
But there is a moment first
as it hangs in the air

that the blurred hand
that tossed it will not come again,
thinks the stone as it flies.

The News Told of the Terror

I wrote this poem in April 2009 in response to the earthquake in Italy. I was amazed by the coverage. CNN and the like made it out to be as if Mother Nature was the culprit and the malevelant one. It made me mad so I wrote this poem. Fast forward to anno 2020, with wild fires in California, Hurricanes in Florida and the retreating ice sheet of Greenland that will never be restored. We are killing our planet. We are parasites. We are all complicit, some, read Donald Trump, more than others, but we all are guilty. Just by our breathing.

The news told of the terror

in all its shaken aspect;

bodies collapsed by

collapsing buildings.

The horror shaken out in

the everyday lives of those-left.

Its shaking measured enough

to break the Lego of man’s ego.

Shaken as if laid upon by

Parkinson diseased hands,

until every stone was turned.

No war was fought here!

No unnatural deaths

occurred here, in this natural

disaster. No, nature takes its

course and cripples the cities

just as the cities cripple it.

Nature’s innocence shows

no remorse for being itself,

but rejoices in the quite of

a new day. All fury forgotten 

among the rubbled streets,

only broken lives and the

memory of being broken remain.

“How could this happen to us” ,

go the cries of the happened upon,

“Why has God forsaken us?”, atheist

and believer simultaneously say.

Where are the same cries and same

remorse for the dead , deadened

in man’s conflict against itself?

No, it is perfectly acceptable to

starve and enslave the poor;

enrich to protect the rich;

kill and be killed for the sake

of saying ,”I am right.”

It is not the earth’s fault that

man plants domesticity on the

fault line, or lines up concrete

shacks where no beast tread.

Why have we so humanised

the elements of nature that

we think them even scarcely

capable of the same measure

of cruelty as mankind?