Humpback Song

 

Wondering wandering below the star pocked dome,

'Ere night bleeds into day and as deep calls to deep,

Marveling as evening creatures call and respond,

Whence this complexity, how this terrible beauty?

My soul, why is it so?

In the dark deep, tapered behemoth, bumpy beings,

Giant cetacean nomads glide, baleen gulping krill.

Receiving this marine manna --a gift, a divine keep,

Once sated, joy-breaching the brine to an airy biome.

Whale, why are you so?

Slowing my gait, my tired eyes close lids in reverence,

'Ere night sky pales in morn's mauves and magentas.

My spirit's imaginary lilts in resonance with the song,

Modulations of tone and timbre, phrase and themes.

My spirit, why are you so moved?

Songs elegiac and elysian vibrate depths and shallows,

Passed on, generation to generation, world without end.

Gracing seas to sky-hopping, intelligence without agenda,

Summoned from God's bestiary in mystical beneficence.

Humpback, why do you sing?

As Sol's first piercing beams prod my mind to remember,

Finding raspy voice to poorly mimic the humpback hymn,

In a sad longing to be one with the spirit of the humpback--

Guardian of weaker ocean kin, oft seen coming to the aid.

Creature, from whence this courage?

Helping seals, penguins, dolphins, even stray humankind,

Facing down sharks or orca to save fellow ocean dwellers,

For some hapless ocean prey, unbidden marine seraphim,

Thus risking fin, fluke, and life in choosing to be defender.

Humpback teach me your song.

That we may love and guard the other,

Teach us your song.

(Photo of a seal riding a humpback whale as it helps the seal avoid Orcas).

Stare Into the Whirlwind

 

Aging eyes, veneered in thin cataracts, water in the twilight,

Warm tears summoned by wind, weariness, grief, and shame,

Anguished fragility, furies at the powers, divine or diabolic,

Hoarse throated from imprecations--prayers, uttered vitriolic, 

As Job, rending spirit, resigned --yet raging, broken, and lame,

Yet into the wind, the bloody whirlwind, not averting his sight.

Stare into the whirlwind,

In the solidarity of chagrin,

In audacity raise your chin,

Steel-nerves, harden your skin.

In these days, body and spirit, dissipate as clouds in thermals,

A witness to the mass murdered in a land of distracted deniers,

Anguished fragility, wailing in turn at the altar or in the square,

From matins to vespers, in wordless sounds of groaning prayer.

This Mass of broken bodies, seas of blood need answer either,

To the iron straw superman or to the grace of the supernatural.

Stare into the whirlwind,

In the solidarity of chagrin,

Let the Spirit quell the din,

'Til the day, of new wineskins.

Stare into the whirlwind.

And breathe it in,

Breathe it in,

Sifting Beloved

 

The juggernauts continue their rapacious consumption,

Cooly reducing neighborhoods to shattered enclaves,

An aftermath of a normalcy of murder and mayhem,

Yonder, violent land theft pogroms accelerate grimly.

In Gaza's rubble, days of shelterless surviving or dying.

Western powers play at outrage, none act to condemn.

This merciless avarice bulldozing miles of mass grave.

Erasing homes and holy sites in a zionist subsumption, 

Of their place on earth.

Sifting beloved,

Sifting beloved,

Sifting.

Bereaved Mahmoud Hammad,

Beloved wife, Naama Alaa Al-Din,

Was soon to birth beautiful daughter, Haifa, 

Consumed by thermal munitions.

Burned alive into ash as well,

Son Ismail, named for the faith that God will hear,

Son Mohammed, named for the prophet, 

Son Ghaith, the rain that brings mercy,

Daughter, Jana, God's gift to Mahmoud and Naama. *

Mahmoud our brother, bearing this unfathomable grief,

While fat-boy politicians drool over this holy ground,

Where blood stains and human and concrete ashes settle,

For this honorable one, an archeology of desperate quiet,

Cherishing his lost loves, displacing fathoms of rubble.

With what Allah gave him,  hands, back, and firm mettle,

Shovel, sieve, and sorrow, searching soil for his unfound,

Fragments of family, bone and dust and persistent belief,

In their sacred worth.

Sifting beloved,

Sifting beloved,

Sifting.

"Strengthen the feeble hands,

    steady the knees that give way;

 say to those with fearful hearts,

    “Be strong, do not fear;

your God will come,

    he will come with vengeance;

with divine retribution

    he will come to save you.” (Is. 35)

* I looked up the meaning of Mahmoud's family member names in Arabic. Mahmoud's name itself refers to honor and worth, which I use in the next stanza.

Innocence

 

Somewhere behind tinted soft gelatinous windows,

Somewhere past vibrating ossicles and membrane,

A complex inweaving of synapses and chemistry,

A living soul hewn from grey matter and mystery,

Sights, sounds, taste, touch, love, and every pain,

A sifting of I and thou, as angels, as devils winnow,

The human.

Innocence, 

Incense,

Soul.

Some ones bear the weight of a race devolving,

Ancient myth and memory in prose and in poetry,

Succumb, as a binary matrix dulls in monochrome --

A petulant power ravages each soul in every biome,

'Til all is mourning and a communion of poverty,

And faith and faithfulness corroded, dissolving, 

Spirit.

Innocence,

Bereft,

Child.

One man, this man, numb, as the numbing drumming,

As devils -- of flesh or fire -- smith guns from ploughs,

Crush and crucify the imago dei --innocence executed,

Kin of other tone or tongue -- these powerless, uprooted,

While  lost clerics and pilgrims, proclaim and espouse,

The love of their own power, a gospel so unbecoming,

of Emmanuel.

Innocence,

Bruised, 

Smolders.

A few of our suffering kin...

Palestine

Ukraine

Ghana

Sierra Leone

Afghanistan

Honduras

Sierra Leone

Myanmar

Nigeria

Sudan

Yemen

Orphans

Widows

Migrants

Innocence

Lost.

Shattered

 

How painfully innocence dies in cherubic brown faces,

Some unbroken still gambol in the phosphorous rubble,

These within a mother's or kindred's tethering gaze, 

Allah's silent through munition blasts or murmured prayer.

Shattered,

Faith,

Hope,

Love.

Ammad, beautiful boy sheltering in dangerous places,

Hellfire bursts over, under, around, his tender frame,

Despondent dad gently cups Ammad's sallow cheeks, 

Asunder his gory remains. Pleas ending in blank stares.

Shattered.

Son.

Heart.

Love.

Amna, kind girl, bravely offering kin simple graces,

Fetching water when water is marked by munitions,

Remnant relatives ever mourn in her empty spaces, 

In this place of pain and nations n'er giving a care.

Shattered.

Daughter.

Despair.

Love.

Sidra, from Gaza to Rafah found no safe places,

"Gospel" guided bombs erased her shrinking world,

Died she of the blast or the shredding of her frame,

Feet frayed, spiked to a wall, hanging in mid-air,

Shattered.

Shattered.

Shattered.

Love.

Ammad Al-Najjar

Amna al-Mufti

Sidra Hassouna

Angels Burning

 

How you have fallen from heaven,

    morning star, son of the dawn!

Angel of light, resonating beatific in the presence of love,

Of God, in God, with God, unconsumed blinding coal,

Walking starfields that pined and paled in your wake.

Such grace bestowed. 

Even thou, when eyes then love aver, writhing in hate

For the beautiful, the pure. Fear, fellowship wear old,

In burning cold shadows, exiled and ever unbeloved.

Angels burning,

Stars collapsing,

Weeping,

Weeping.

Sons and daughters of stardust, earth dust and breath,

Imago Dei, defiled, defiling afore gory golden calves.

Baal, Molech, Eros, Mammon. Ravenous filth-wraiths.

The gifts corrode.

Each hubris tribe, Babel builders, spurn the ancient faith,

Each spews out the seed to engorge the worthless chaff,

In the icy darkness their daemons draw them into death.

Angels burning,

Moon blackening,

Gnashing,

Teeth gnashing.

Bread, Wine, and Spirit, rekindle the dormant gospel,

Arsenals to ploughs, the undiscovered country beckons.

Still, hope burns as a cathedral candle pierces shades.

Love, Faith, Hope harrowed.

Charlatan prophets smear as true confessions fade.

In this prism of infamy, God's love, God's heaven,

Char hellish as devils enlist sin-seasoned apostles.

Angles burning.

Temples falling.

Sorrowing.

Sorrowing.

Walking and waking and wandering,

That which I would not do,

Pulls as an ancient murky tide,

In me.

Do not show me your hands and feet.

I cannot meet your gaze.

Your benevolent gaze.

Angels burning.

Gnarled spirit lamenting.

Breaths sighing,

Prayers sighing.

"In his hands I saw a great golden spear, 

and at the iron tip there appeared to be a point of fire. 

This he plunged into my heart several times 

so that it penetrated to my entrails. 

When he pulled it out, I felt that he took them with it, 

and left me utterly consumed by the great love of God."

(St. Theresa of Avila)

Blessed

 

Blessed are poor of Spirit,

    Lampooning the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are they who cause to mourn,

    for they will be good 'ole boys.

Ploughshares melted into weapons of war.

Orphan, and mother, father, brother, sister,

Drinking the dregs, though hemlock is bitter,

 Death will quiet reaper' bomb's savage roar.

Blessed when you trample the meek,

   Removing the native borns from the earth.

Blessed those whose gluttony and thirst leads to excess,

    for they will be overfilled.

Songs of liberty lure exiles to concrete cages,

Survivor, and mother, father, brother, sister,

Seized and disposed of, like so much litter,

Erased from our lives as whitewashed pages.

Blessed are the powerful,

   And those void of all mercy.

Blessed are the stony hearted,

    for they will remake god in their image.

Bitter as the augur bells in steeples peel,

Bereaved, and mother, father, brother, sister,

Liturgies drone o'er lament -- faithful shiver --

While goons drag them from where they kneel. 

Blessed are warmongering peacemakers,

   Whose munitions slaughter the children of God.

Blessed are those who feel persecuted because of covetousness,

    for theirs is the kingdom of the prince of the power of the air.

Innocent blood, broken bodies, spirits bewail, 

Slaughtered, mother, father, brother, sister,

Palestinian life, the complicit never consider,

Zionist credo metes out death at genocide scale.

If the salt loses its saltiness, 

It is no longer good for anything, 

except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.

Blessed,

Cursed,

Dereliction.