The news is good and bad,
sometimes hopeful
Sometimes sad
it is like history,
a perspective,
a standard truth that sometimes is true
the news of a war from a cardboard speaker
the news of the child, a new child
from an email, magnetic spots on the screen
so we wait for news,
hoping for the best,
but it is often from afar
and we’re driving in our car
or the phone rings
and when it rings,
the news is history
David Jackson
Sanitized and Homogenized Crimes
My reaction to the defacing of a Mosque in my town gets me into trouble. I’m usually in trouble but trouble can be magnified in the south. Fears can be too. The crime was presented as a “Hate Crime” to wash the White Anglo Saxon Protestant Guilty from our lips, so we can speak of “lone wolf” mystery people writing “F%$k Allah” on a wall. We can say how bad that is and feel good in our caring.
We didn’t do it.
If a Muslim had done the same crime, it would be a “Muslim Defaces God’s House”. Let’s face it. If a White Angle Saxon Protestant robs a bank, he’s a “bank robber”. If a Muslim robs the same bank, he’s a “Muslim Bank Robber”. The Christian doesn’t get his religion pasted on to his crime. It’s been sanitized. It’s a “hate crime” and we are all against that.
We didn’t do it.
The Muslim is forever having to say, “We have bad stuff in our book, but most of us don’t go by archaic laws”. We Christians never have to tell our children, “Don’t do that.” because we “didn’t do that.” Our answer is, “A lone wolf did that deed and our archaic laws could never be used to justify violence. We teach love. That other religion, they teach hate.”
Be careful if you bring up the Inquisition at this point, or the Salem Trials, or any event where we loving White Anglo Protestants folks could have ever done anything wrong. Please don’t point out that we waved the Book in the air to justify slavery too loudly if you live in the south.
When we put people in groups, we put ourselves in them too. Have I lost my flag? Some group claims it, patriotism, the word patriot, and God as theirs. When we put “The Muslims” into their box, we put “The Christians” into theirs.
I was raised a Christian, checked that box when drafted. Is that something that I can be voted out of, like “patriot”? Both of these religions have archaic laws. Both can generate hate.
We shouldn’t expect “Christian defaces Mosque”, but we should be able to translate “hate crime”.
Politics Poem by Ron Olsen
Politics
by Ron Olsen
Oh God, Oh God
They’re at it again
Brilliant discourse
Enemies and friends
Dithering idiots
Brightest of bright
Weak are eaten
Might makes right
Standing there
Against the onslaught
Poet or warrior
Sword or thought
A future created
A future so clear
Without decency followed
We’re living in fear
Ron olsen is a Peabody and Emmy winning journalist and occasional poet who lives in Bel Air, Maryland. More of his work can be found at http://workingreporter.com/poetry.html and at workingreporter.com
U S History Oliver Stone
U S History Oliver Stone
The following video reflects our time with the past. An honest interpretation of the history that created the situation we have today. The use of a what was really boiler explosion on the Maine, by reactionary press, to create a war in Cuba. The admission of the most decorated General that he served Standard oil and corporate interests in all conquests in the Philippines and China. The international racism of conquest in the Philippines that exhibited and help to create supremacy and the Jim Crow laws.
This makes of history, a broken record.
The revelation that wars are based totally on business interests is not new. That World War One was started with an excuse but was really about banking and railroads is illuminating. We know the war in Iraq was about oil. That railroad the Germans were building that concerned the English so much, went from Germany to, guess where, Iraq. WW1 and big oil!.
It all sounds too familiar this U S History by Oliver Stone.
Speak Ye Poets
The rose demands
the light on her neck reveals her skin
and the rose demands
Her hands are the gold
to hold her hands in your hands is wealth
but
the rose demands
Save me
save my people
from the tyrant
the rose commands
speak ye poets
let your voice be the wind
in a dark forest
be the single acorn
dropping to the ground
and growing there
until there is a new forest
your heart is not in your
left hand
not in your right
your heart is beside the lungs which
speak, scream, write
for peace
for sanity
for
love
Speak!
Original Art for Sale
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That’s our new site for selling art!
Oh dreamers
poets
artists
musicians
magicians of art
your pain is beauty itself
rolled off of you fingers
and into our hearts
our temporal hearts
When the rocks came alive
they made things
like children playing
except the art entered and
beauty said
share me
rescue me, art
tell me it all mattered
Letting It Out | Poem by Allison Grayhurst
Letting it out
The vision is a smoke cloud
released from my pocket, wrapping
me with its smoky warmth, breaking chaos
at its backbone.
A thousand chains of fear and grief
swoop down from the once singing sky
to crash on my limbs and drown me
with their weight.
God as full as the sea, flushing through me,
flowing around me with the starfish and the stingrays,
with the minnow fish and the barnacles,
God outside me, inside of me, holding me
in this vision, breaking the vine.
Bio: is a member of the League of Canadian Poets. Three times nominated for Sundress Publications “Best of the Net” 2015, she has over 1050 poems published in over 425 international journals. She has sixteen published books of poetry, seven collections and nine chapbooks. She lives in Toronto with her family. She is a vegan. She also sculpts, working with clay; www.allisongrayhurst.com
Art: “Requiem” by Jackson
They lie down | Poem by Allison Grayhurst
They lie down
as
children would below the blankets
on a cold, unheated night.
They fend for themselves, using the vocabulary
of prophets, the tears of the misplaced
and the belief in mercy.
They stand tall at an impasse,
draw pictures in the wind
and covet love as the only treasure.
They give light in a torrent of darkness and pressure.
They reach new plateaus of surrender
with each failed plan. And all the time
they are singing,
of sadness
of wantonness
of the joy of being loved
by God.
Allison Grayhurst is a member of the League of Canadian Poets. Three times nominated for Sundress Publications “Best of the Net” 2015, she has over 1000 poems published in over 410 international journals. She has sixteen published books of poetry, seven collections and nine chapbooks. She lives in Toronto with her family. She is a vegan. She also sculpts, working with clay; www.allisongrayhurst.com