I have nothing left
and so I am consumed
incendiary
for the mother whose fire is extinguished
for the father who is mere ashes
for the child
for the child
I protest
I have nothing left
you will burn with me
and you will listen
Tonight the dVerse Poets Pub is kindly hosted by Punam for Quadrille Monday, where she invites us to write a quadrille of 44 words on the them of ‘protest’.
I will let the poem speak for itself.
(Image credit: Michael Noel, via Pexels).
15 June 2020
… I haven’t been around.
You know that Buddhist term ‘monkey mind’? An apt description for that mind that just can’t focus on one thing with any consistency?
You know that goldfish memory that, well, isn’t?
Can you imagine the two combined in some fishbowl-confined underwater jungle where the goldfish leaps over and under tree branches and the monkey runs around and around and around the belly of the bowl, scratching its head and gaping?
That’s me. Or rather, it’s a representation of the inner workings of my brain, and has been for a while. I like to think that I’m not alone. If I am, well I aim to remain in blissful ignorance because there’s enough to worry about at the moment, isn’t there?
BLACK LIVES MATTER
I am anti-racist. I am white. The tiny taster of horrific, brutal racism and the privilege that I have that means that in my daily life I never have to think about the colour of my skin has hit hard. It has forced me to truly take on board the fact that my experience of the past few weeks is as nothing when compared to what people of colour regularly have to deal with, in addition to the normal stresses and strains of every day life. Or the not so normal stresses and strains since CoViD-19 came knocking on the world’s door.
I don’t think that I am ignorant and have experienced enough direct ‘isms’ and ‘obias’ of my own over the past decades to refuse to accept hatred directed at other groups. Making the conscious decision to be anti-racist feels like a heavy, burdensome thing. But the burden is nowhere near as heavy as just letting racism continue, through being silent. I refuse to have that on my conscience.
On this matter, the Black Lives matter, my brain is focused. That monkey mind is more akin to one of those Japanese snow monkeys that bath in hot springs in Japan.
The goldfish? Forget about it.
A teacher, a rabbi came to this earth
courtesy of a star, a manger and a virgin birth.
Ages before, despite the temple’s destruction
oil of one day stretched out to eight –
– imagine the miracle!
Hope lights our times, shadows flee in their wake
Hanukkah, Christmas in one time combined.
Faiths diverge but converge all the same
in their wishes for peace and love and brotherhood,
if you can cut through the soundbites and posturing, that is.
I am a mongrel, one foot in the Deep Mid Winter of my past
My heart swelling to Baruch Hu as I whisper Kaddish in memory.
Y’hei sh’lama raba min sh’maya
Bitter sweet at this time of disruption
For all that is gone, for all that has broken
For all that divides in words left unspoken.
Amen.
Shalom.
Salaam.
Shalom Aleichem.
As Salaam Aleikum
Oseh shalom bim’romav hu ya’aseh shalom
Let us welcome the Malakhi, in whatever form he – or she – takes.
******
It’s been a while. Longer than I thought. Life, you know?
Last night saw the first night of Hanukkah and Christmas Eve – two miracles for the price of one. It inspired me to take some time during a small oasis of calm to share my thoughts, my feelings, to highlight just a tiny slice of the similarities in the underlying hopes of the three Abrahamix religions, not to mention in some of the words used in greetings and wishes bestowed.
Yes, it’s probably a bit clumsy (I’ve not written for a while) – but it’s all me.
Whatever faith you follow or not, I send my love to you, my brothers and sisters in this messed-up, argumentative worldwide family of ours.
