MAP
65
Featured
Poetry
Theme:
Poets Travel Advisory: When planning your China holiday...
Continued
thanks to the poets who generously offer your poems to the MAP, and
to all who serve up your words, on line and off, written, spoken or
signed.
Upcoming
themes:
#66
- February Is Black History Month
#67
- Valentine's Day: Hey Cupid, Has your aim improved yet?
#68
- Soul Food
On
January 11, 1999, AP reported the disappearance of Zhou Yongjun, an
exiled Chinese democracy campaigner who left New York to return to
China. On Dec. 21, Zhou Yongjun phoned his wife and friend in New
York to notify them he was about to be arrested. As a university
student, he had helped lead the 1989 democracy demonstrations in
Tiananmen Square.
1.
I've shamelessly selected an excerpt from one of my own poems :
Bind
- Part III
Once
upon a time in China,
from
Han to Ming, each dynasty
collected
songs and poetry
from
courtesans and peasantry.
In
China now, Tiananmen --
a
synonym for massacre,
and
poets go to labor camps
without
a trial, without a word.
My
cousin went to China once
with
medical team of missionaries
to
save some Asian souls and bodies.
Western
Christian visionaries.
China
has a history
of
basic human rights resistance.
Cousin
says in orphanages
aiding
females was forbidden.
Men
beyond the ken of conscience
foster
pain and punish minds.
They
liberate a woman’s feet
but
keep her spirit in a bind.
©
1998 Anastasia McFadyen
2.
I took this poem by Larry Jaffe from Poets4Peace website (see Cool
Web Sites Section VII)
empty
windows in Baghdad
i
tried to get to the window
to
yell leave us alone
unshouted
screams tormented my throat
head
pounded with frustration and worse
leave
us alone i wanted to say
but
could not
voice
drowned inside me
its
almost ramadan
not
silent nights bequeathed
the
first sounds i heard
an
almost gentle wind
a
whistle a whine
gasped
before impact
explosion
silent
i
cannot hear
explosion
invisible
i
cannot see
my
children have stopped crying
©
1998 lgjaffe
3.
Patricia Fiske of Austin read this poem Friday night at the Hyde Park
Theater open mic, hosted by Graffiti:
Silent
Screams Through Veil
Smothered
in cloth and dense mesh veil
Afghan
women condemned to burqa jail
How
is it possible?
Women
doctors can not practice healing
Nor
be treated by males, too revealing
How
is it possible?
A
country has enslaved half it's population
Yet
no official outrage from our sick nation
How
is it possible?
We
rattle sabers at every drop of oil
Do
we value women less than soil?
How
is it possible?
The
media's so besot with sex scandals
It's
all but ignored those Taliban vandals.
How
is it possible?
Will
we look back, as the Germans must,
Wonder
why we didn't do what was just?
IT
IS POSSIBLE.
4.
Dillon, whose last name I don't have, read this at Quackenbush's on
Saturday:
Bloody
'94
Warm
winds blow around my head
Making
it hard to hear
The
screams of the young and old
As
they cry out in pain so loud.
Machetes
fly, they cut and kill.
The
slaughter house is taken outside.
People
run from their homes.
If
they're slow, they're caught, they die.
This
all started from a plane crash in Africa.
It
was shot down, two leaders die.
Hutu,
Tutsi, angered each other.
Civil
war begins.
Thousands
die and more run away.
Those
that are caught are slaughtered and dumped
Into
a river of death.
But
thousands make it to the east.
The
tide turns in the war.
The
first victims of the slaughter
Gain
the upper hand.
Tutsis
on the march.
Now
the people flee to the west
fearing
retaliation.
It's
off to Goma for those who are scared.
The
Tutsis win the war.
This
all started from a plane crash in Africa.
It
was shot down, two leaders die.
Hutu,
Tutsi, angered each other.
The
civil war comes to an end.
The
African nation's torn apart.
Rwanda
has pain within.
Rwanda
has internal bleeding.
Help
is on the way.
Let
the healing start.
5.
From Thom the World Poet, of Austin:
someone
wants a LITTLE war
upon
a LITTLE country like Iraq
just
a LITTLE casualty list
just
a LITTLE bomb attack
it
will fill a LITTLE media
(much
less than Clinton's penis)
there
will be a LITTLE protest
(not
enough to actually STOP it)
just
LITTLE enough to assuage our conscience
while
all those LITTLE women and children
are
planted in LITTLE mass graves
because
all their LITTLE remains
only
take up LITTLE space
like
this LITTLE warming poem
against
the BIG war upon civilians
they
will spend such BIG BOMBS on
for
such a LITTLE result
such
a LITTLE poem
such
a BIG disgrace..
6.
Mahdi Jaber read this poem at Ruta Maya in December. It was his first
time to read. It is my honor to present the poem to you.
Does
any one see my murdered country ?
This
is a chant that has woven melancholy,
on
the wings of butterflies
which
beckoned palm trees to kneel,
so
that tiered people could grasp
what
birds left for them to eat,
I
send you a message with this injured dove,
so
that it may reach you
and
perturb your heart,
Does
any one see my murdered country?
Hear
the call of the detained prisoner,
lady
of the fertile crescent is held hostage,
inseminated
by centuries of oppression
that
off sprang tyrants,
Does
any know of Iraq,
its
cities,
its
people,
other
than what the grand puppeteer allows you to see,
Does
anyone see my murdered country?
Or
hear the literary vocabulary used
to
bar the ships from the ports?
Words
like sanctions are beautiful,
As
abattoir, which means slaughter,
Pacify,
which has an inclination of peace,
But
what peace without honor,
when
mothers sell their kidneys,
and
Fathers mortgage their daughters
For
morsels of bread,
Does
any one see my murdered country?
or
are your hearts blind?
Those
Holy symbols so solemnly kissed
Branded
in your hearts only held in vain?
And
the grace that you tire my ears with,
does
it not extend beyond church walls?
Or
may be the holy ghost does not enter the no fly zone?
Does
any one see my murdered country?
where
the minarets and church bells echo in unison,
to
hymn the parade of hungry children,
Woman
with onyx tears sing for infants,
But
every cradle is now a tomb,
Men
with dissolved lips,
under
porticoes made of coffins,
write
their names on walls,
Does
any one see my murdered country?
And
for every innocent that has perished,
A
tulip and a rose,
But
I fear that this vast landscape will
be
a garden for lovers,
After
its people have disappeared,
For
then you will again hear the chant from Europe.
"
Land without people, For People without Land"
And
upon the rewriting of history,
the
molding of hearts,
and
boundaries shift to points of no return,
would
there then be peace?
Does
any one see my murdered country?
What
veil is on your eyes,
for
she bleeds as a Christ on a cross,
What
terrible deeds deserve such punishment?,
Does
any one see my murdered country,
in
its grave of shifting sand.