Climate Change Catastrophe Safer docking in the Red Sea and Arabian Sea, waters in Yemen, pronounced, “Saffer.” About to rot or explode! Potentially leaking gas fumes, and oil into these Arabian and Red Seas. The Houthis won’t talk to anyone but a few. The right actions to change this massive risk IGNORED. And why? Starvation 821 million, One in 9 people, children, malnourished. Yemen, Haiti, Afghanistan, Congo, Nigeria, Madagascar, Southern Sudan, Syria. In a world where Overeating and cardiovascular disease are the number one cause of death. IN A WORLD WHERE CHILDREN STARVE. Mass displacements due to flooding. Where in the world will these people go? Their home awash with loss, destruction: Brazil, 30,000 lives displaced. Jakarta, 400 million meters of rain. Pakistan 300 million lives displaced. Kenya 1 million lives displaced. South Korea, Vietnam, Nagasaki, Venice, Italy! Tanzania, Uzbekistan, Philippines, Zambia, 700,000 lives uprooted. Kilimanjaro, Arusha, Tennessee, California, Rwanda, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Turkey and all of Central America. We have to open our hearts and minds to plan for the next thousand years! We are in the midst of a real climate catastrophe. By Tess Tyler, 11/19/ 2021
Category Archives: CHAOS
Poetry from Christopher Bernard
Knock Knock: A Poem for Ukraine Knock knock. Who’s there? Ukrainian boy. I have walked from far, Over fields of snow And ice of roads And cities at war. I don’t know you. Are there any with you? My family is gone, I don’t know where. I’m here all alone. May I come in? I have a number On my hand. Can I call? Not on my land! There’s a country Down the road. Try them there. It’s far, and I’m cold. Knock knock. Who’s there? Ukrainian boy. Can I come in? I’m so tired, And the wind is so cold. . . . Why are you here? What is that In your eyes? Is it tears? Is it sadness or fear? No, it is ice, It is melting there. Go down the road. There is nothing for you here. Knock knock. Who’s there? Ukrainian boy. Can you say where I am? I saw ghosts on the road, They looked like my papa, My mama, my sister, My brother at home. Has anything happened to them? Will you please let me in? I’m so tired, I don’t think I can walk any more. I can’t feel my hands. May I come in here? What is that number Written out on your hand? When I call, there is silence At the other end. Come in and rest On my bed. No, it’s snow . . . When you sleep you will never Fear war again. No, no, I must go, How will I get home If now I don’t go? Come in and rest, Come in and rest, Come in and rest Until you must go . . . Knock knock. Who’s there? Who knocked at our door? Show yourself if you’re there! But there was no one there, Only the sound of the wind, And the snow in the air. The Sunken Palace The curlew calls in the sycamore tree. Do you hear it? A boy’s laugh follows. A rustle of gold flickers over the lake. The sky is cold and on fire. Do you see the fair one, the kind one, the holy? She is not to be seen on the tower. There is only a shadow to be seen in the arch And an iron gate as it closes. He is gone now, and she is not here. Their story, our story, is over. The palace of love was a fable. The rain Fell for long on the meadow. At the season when the moon was a song in the snow And the wind was a shout in the mountains, The ghosts of the palace where the ballroom had drowned Danced in a lake of shadows. The Sound of Falling Trees “There’s no such thing as ‘being a poet.’” —T. S. Eliot It used to be an almost embarrassing compliment. If someone called you that, you skipped a heartbeat of secret bliss, as if the most beautiful girl in class had just blown you a kiss. Now it is almost an embarrassment. “Writers in San Francisco,” New York and L.A. smile to each other with a wink and a nudge. “Aren’t they all poets? They can be safely ignored, left to PEN and AWP, unless you go in for the penniest of penny stocks. They can’t even make themselves any money, let alone the likes of you and me; they’re famous only if they die (I know it sounds bold, but it’s so true) by a monumentally gaudy suicide.” It’s not much of a compliment anymore, yet it is still a kind of destiny, a kind of fate: a compulsive need to find new words for old emotions, old and raw, and make them ring like bells in the winter air— clear and true and fading into oblivion— the crash of trees falling deep in the forest even when there is no one to hear. _____ Christopher Bernard’s latest collection of poems, A Socialist’s Garden of Verses, won a 2021 PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Literary Award and was named one of Kirkus Reviews’ “Top 100 Indie Books of 2021.”
Poetry from Geoff Sawers
Calf-deep In Water At A Street Cafe This city once had a different name for years, the name of the General. No one wants to remember it now but you will find it when you least want to on old maps on the second-hand bookstalls cast-iron drain-covers, the back of the station. The streets are hostage to a darker time love-poems whispered on the back stairs not printed in black and white. Spring floods will sweep out the city's skull that grim dust on the air hanging in a thin sudden rain. A drench of sun blots the page. Downstream the old man's words form a foam on the coastal marshes below a branch of flowering blackthorn. Golden Goose How did we ever get here? A Chinese dragon formed in a mess of hot protostellar dust no field is home no stone is more than a shattered disc caught in the auroral storms of the second of September 1859, thrown from a train I'm waiting for a wolf in the museum café orbital motion of one arc-second per hour there's a prickle of fear out in the west galleries your sixth-form diaries, under glass in a dim-lit case Nain had to lose her accent when she moved to London "It was a terrible thing to sound Welsh then. Of course." sticklebacks in the petrol tank, the manager wants you gone epiphytic ferns on a sessile oak by the drover's bank Old Brecon Bank, mackerel lines trailed into the Oort Cloud fifteen in 1920, a generation missing a startled hare racing through the gap between tu mewn, tu mas, snooker on the telly we wed a river, iron filings rearrange themselves the palm of your hand was a map of the stars that lost map of the forest, the one that had no core I still need her to help me say Ystumllwynarth there's a bear in there somewhere, Arth, Arthur cynnu'r tân, the fire in Llŷn, we shall light such a candle now I hear the wolf breathing on my neck, bad pixels streaks and blobs and stress-fracture patterns outside the museum there is literally no atmosphere the near-zero chill of the trans-Neptunian plain, smoke in tongues and the wolf lies down at your feet curls around the rings that curl round your heart Rhiannon and the North Wind Flash-bulb bursts in a cloud of white magnesium. Chameleon and chemist, she has no need to rush. Setting sun on the Irish Sea, a gentle breeze on her back. 'Faster! Faster!' the Red King cries but never catches up. Horsemen and horses die in foam beside the road. Her spine is set in lightly-swaying stone. In emerald beaded backless dress and riding boots, leafing through a satchel of Dixie seventy-eights her shoulder-blades jut out like embryonic wings. Zeno and Newton join the chase. A bugle calls the hounds of heaven spring from cages on the A470. She hasn't broken a sweat yet, leans down to pluck a flower. Three nights the chase goes on, dropping in in relays. Rhiannon yawns prettily, sketches the sunset on her right. Men drop gasping to their knees in lush green Dyfed fields. In the darkroom the print is fixed and hanging up to dry but there in gelatin-silver she is still a frantic blur glass plates no more than men could ever catch her. This wild hunt decimates only the pursuers casualties are high in erotic metaphor. One little glance and smile behind, then on she trots. Philosophy of Travel is the annihilation of distance or the echo of desire even the concept of capital the birth of each new day and its death the pompous something of something else something you never heard of an alligator's song, a high-heeled shoe hung on a swamp fence, ultramarine the tinny whine that starts inside my ear if I'm alone too long or too quiet the money of love, the love of honey. Four hundred miles between, I study guide books suggest meeting one day in a cathedral town imagine the early starts and the last trains back the loafing of cloisters, the dunk of biscuits the ache and the treasure, the listening the little gifts, the brush of fingers you know I mean the kiss. You
Geoff Sawers’ most recent publication is ‘Silver In My Mines: Peter Hay’s work for Two Rivers Press 1994-2003′(Buffalo, New York, 2022). Born in 1966, he was only diagnosed as autistic in his fifties. He lives in Reading (UK).
Poetry from Lizbeth Garcia-Lopez
The Flower Goddess She sat there everyday In her field of flowers. If she was lucky, a human would pass by chatting and laughing with a loved one sometimes they’d even take her flowers! to remember, and make themselves happy When they were done, they would leave and she would sit alone again, alone in her field of flowers. One day felt different, however, there was a weird smell in the air she didn’t mind though, but her flowers did. The next day smelled like that too, and the next, and the day after that. She never saw any humans anymore, and her flowers started to wilt away. She did all she could for them, until one day, she passed out. When she awoke again, she was confused Where were her flowers? Why were there big gray clouds coming from weird machines? Why were there bottles and wrappers everywhere? What was happening? Her flower field! Her Beautiful flower field! Why? she began to cry! Her tears dripped to the floor The Dry, Dead, Grass the land was not ready for her tears! Those machines wanted to destroy the planet. Fine! So be it! Her tears lit the grass aflame It all burned to nothing …even her Silent flames engulfed her… As The Flower Goddess ceased to exist. By Lizbeth Garcia-Lopez, age 12
Poetry from Ivan S. Fiske
Scriptures today, i'm plaiting these words with the hands of affection & rooting it in the palms of love frankly, i miss you from the day you accepted my citizenship in your heart every part of me has always thirsted for you like a baby i'm still learning how to speak for my lips holds the memory of our first kiss every time your presence resides in the chest of mine the glances of your smile fill my heart with joy truth be told, i have painted your smile all over my heart to shimmer my many scars i wish i could clay myself into a wind sail over to you & wrap you in warmness whenever you are far away from me that i may always be nearer to you if loving you becomes a sin i will nail our bond to God's Word clay you like a rib & place you back into me for eternity is our bond
Poetry from Chimezie Ihekuna
The Love for Humanity: The Hatred for War The death of innocent souls in wars makes matter worse Why should the mighty push for such human disaster over a trivial matter? When a nation of great strength wages war against 'a lesser' that once shared territorial grounds more, It creates unhealthy concerns for the rest of the world as the loss of lives and property would become seriously odd Experimenting with bio weapons at the expense of innocent lives in those nations Is stretching humanity beyond its threshold of peace to the point of embracing the purpose of unease What is the gain of disturbing peaceful coexistence If not witnessing the pain of disturbance? Let the powers that be give a second thought to their action; for the future would assert the reaction Humanity craves for rest of its rest So, it would be unpalatable to disturb that crest Truth be told, Regardless of who seem to be at fault, War should not be what is to be looked as fought There is always a ground of reconciliation an understanding of co-operation, a place for dialogue, a method of taking out lingering backlogs, an eventual resolving of differences, a viable approach to avoid in future sitting on defense, The love of mankind is paramount So, war must be in a state of surmount!
Poetry from Patricia Doyne
NEW AGE
I grew up with thunder.
Summer storms came with sound effects:
a crackling rumble far off,
or a window-rattling blast overhead.
First the forked slash of lightning.
Then: thud, thud, ka-BOOM!
If you’re outdoors, run!
Here comes hard-hitting rain!
Rain beats on the roof, fills puddles,
turns dirt to mud, floods streets.
If you’re driving, windshield wipers can’t keep up.
Look at that! Whoa!
It’s raining cats and dogs!
It’s raining pitchforks and hammer-handles!
It’s a gully-washer! A frog-strangler!
It’s a typical summer thunderstorm:
Flash! Crash! Downpour!
But that was the Midwest
This is California.
In California, storms come in winter.
Except now, when we’re all on edge:
pandemic that sneakily shape-shifts,
job loss, masked classrooms, shortages in stores,
high fire danger…
Now, when temperatures are unseasonably high,
when trees and structures are dry, dry, dry—
here comes a storm.
A freak storm: lightning, thunder--
but only a spit-in-the-wind of rain…
The lightning ignites fires-- 300, 400, 500 fires,
all burning at the same time.
From space, you can easily see California:
it’s gashed with bright orange flame-trails.
Day after day, the air is thick with smoke.
Ash rains down as far as Kansas.
Small favors:
COVID masks also protect from toxic air.
But it can always get worse.
So keep water and survival gear in the car.
If winds change direction, and firestorms threaten:
evacuate.
High heat. Dry lightning.
Two big names join the long-running drama
starring earthquakes, droughts, mudslides and
floods.
California raises the curtain on a new age.
A new normal.
Meet the ruthless new director:
climate change.
Copyright August 2020 Patricia Doyne
FACING A FRAUGHT FUTURE Our planet wears many faces. For eons, it was covered in water, a face with expressions but no features. Then rock reared up, land grew and rearranged, continents shifted. Oceans shared salt with snowmelt. Paramecia and diatoms took a bow, but became food for newcomers with shells, tentacles, fins; for monsters who breathed air and ate meat. Earth’s new face was diversity swallowed by mass extinction. In time, a new family appeared, fought its way to the top of the food chain with large brains and tool-using hands. Earth now reflected this face; worldwide communities reflected its goals. Inventions made daily life easier but more complicated, more expensive. Grasping hands appropriated resources as if there were no tomorrow. Sun that quickened the miracle of plants now fries, burns, and dehydrates. Earth’s new face wears the sneer of a bully who is insecure at heart. What changes will reclaim our planet? Make-up? War paint? Radical surgery? Who decides? Who speaks for a people who wear a thousand masks, shout out a thousand excuses? We look into this fractured mirror and see the face of the future. It is the face of a stranger. Copyright 7/2021 By Patricia Doyne
BOMB CYCLONE Iguanas in palm trees freeze, fall to the ground belly-up next to pink flip-flops frosted with two inches of snow. Water pipes crack. Coastal towns flood. Freeways conceal black ice. Wind chill nosedives from “brr!” to deadly. Flights cancelled. Schools closed. Cars stranded. Power out. The jet stream that fences in arctic air, that keeps polar gusts safely corralled— this current has warmed. Winds, water, and air pressure churn… The mystery mix blasts the homeless, freezing in doorways, blasts stranded travelers, freezing at roadsides, blasts iguanas freezing in trees. Scientists question, measure, shake their heads… Who can deny that our climate has gone berserk? Look! It’s raining iguanas! By Patricia Doyne, Copyright 2018