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Seige

'I can't believe it, ' murmured old Valette, in toney Italian.'The nerve! '
His secretary's quip was earthier. He revered the old man and his crazy bravery.
'Who does she think she is? Thanks for nothing. Can she think of noone's interest but her own? A chip off the old block. Scandal! '
And so on...
'Oliver, she's your sovereign.'
Oliver said nothing. True, he didn't like siding against his queen. Say naught, regret naught. But he wanted his loyalties clear.

Looking out the corbelled window, across the harbor toward the ruins of St Elmo's, old Valette watched the crumbled western rampart and the stone-filled moat and the searching figures of the engineers on top. Like ants. He remembered the battle-those long, awful, bloody summer hours and days he would rather forget, but couldn't.
He thought of the men-how bravely they fought, how gladly and horribly they died. Looking nearer, he saw the ochre fronts of cliff-borne palaces. Like graceful outcroppings of the limestone they rose from.. Both turned fiery gold in the low sun. The in-between expanse of dozing water seemed an overspill for descending angels to bathe in. It turned back the sun's rays. Magnificent.

'As it always would be, ' he thought. Thanks to him. Anachronism, indeed.

But he didn't really think that last part. He just felt it.
Turning from the window and limping to the fireplace, he swore an expletive in Italian that must have sounded mild to Oliver's ears. Without doubt, English was the language of expletives.
On the great...

poem by Morgan Michaels
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Joan and Romeo's Juliet

Once upon a time,
There was a Romeo and a Juliet
But Juliet was really Joan
who left Romeo to lead the captives to victory
Then captured and put on trial for heresy
After judgment was rendered, but before being burned at the stake,
a peasant girl loosened Joan's chains and won her heart
They Escaped to France to
live happily ever after in eachother's arms

Romeo got elected to congress
And as he rose in power,
He set out to win back Juliet
Only to find that his efforts were in vain
So on one very dark day,
He stole Juliet's lover away…

Joan offered ransom for her lover
Romeo gave a counter-offer
And in France at sunset

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poem by God Diaries
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Lines On The Death Of S. Oliver Torrey

SECRETARY OF THE BOSTON YOUNG MEN'S ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY.

Gone before us, O our brother,
To the spirit-land!
Vainly look we for another
In thy place to stand.
Who shall offer youth and beauty
On the wasting shrine
Of a stern and lofty duty,
With a faith like thine?

Oh, thy gentle smile of greeting
Who again shall see?
Who amidst the solemn meeting
Gaze again on thee?
Who when peril gathers o'er us,
Wear so calm a brow?
Who, with evil men before us,
So serene as thou?

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poem by John Greenleaf Whittier
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My Dead Fathers Dignity

Grandparents met in Japan after the war
A secretary and a soldier
A wounded soldier
My other grandparents were from Iowa
Raised on farms
Dad was a soldier and went to Nam
He was wounded and received a purple heart
Mom was in nursing school
They met at the University of Minnesota
Dad used the GI bill
I have an older brother and sister
Mom died in a car accident when I was 17
Dad died of cancer in 2009
He was 60 years old
They dropped his health insurance
They foreclosed his house
He was wounded for his country
I was not into politics now I am
Everyone should have healthcare
Insurance companies shouldn’t rule

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poem by Joseph Narusiewicz
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Sabra Censors Smudge

Those whose survival hung on slender link
fought persecutions, pogrom purges' harm,
now build ghetto walls, scarce stop to think
from their own blindness surges urge to arm.

Those who, when weak, deemed territories gained
when Independence War was justly fought,
now seek expansion, equity disdained.
Where are the Just? In duststorms caught.

Those who proclaimed the right to self-defence
have compromised their own historic worth,
excluding some, others banned as offense
when truth is told on/of covetted earth.

Those who sought tolerance from persecution
now fall victim to the sin of pride,
from meek inherit ulimate solution
with wanton destruction worming from inside.

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poem by Jonathan Robin
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(Africa poems) Unnatural frontiers

Unnatural frontiers
These artificial borders
They cut the womb of the mother
Land into these disjointed parts
Did you hear what they say?
Here too many failed states
Have mushroomed! Dictators
Like pests are killing the people
Africa! The oracles are not content!
These artificial borders and these
Unnatural frontiers were not there
In the beginning Oh Mother Africa!
What is South Africa? How dare you
Name a country after a direction?
Mind! There is a long stretch of wire
Some colonialist administrator put it
There on purpose now how can you, Oh Africa?
Tell the whole world that is your border?
The world was free to roam in unhindered!
What's so equatorial about Equatorial Guinea?

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poem by Ngaka Motaung
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Ceyx And Alcione lV

Poor Alcione was sick with grief and couldn't sleep or eat, which was partly ok because she felt she was getting fat. But the insomnia was tough. Night after night she lay awake, praying. She fasted, lit candles and burned certain leaves that she bought off a witch. In those days they didn't have email or even telephones, which was fine in many ways. The queen of the Gods, Juno, heard her. Unable to bear it any longer (Ceyx being dead) she said to her secretary:

'Iris, this has got to stop. The poor girl. Quick, a dream. Tell her the truth-her husband sleeps with the fishes. And be quick, please.'

'Yes, M'am, ' replied Iris, sulkily. She was young and very pretty and had better things to do with her time than run messages for Juno, but she didn't complain and started off for the house of Alcione with a starfish-shaped dream in her pocketbook.

'Why me, ' she sighed, under her breath, as she left. On the way she stopped in Arizona to pick up Sleep, who having spent the last ten years dozing on his right side, had recently shifted to his left.

That night Alcione had-what else-a dream. She dreamed she was lying on the dark sea floor, the weight of all the waves oppressing her chest. When she woke she spotted Sleep at the foot of the bed. He had taken the shape of her drowned husband. He didn't look so good. Seawater oozed from every pore, like a sponge. Algaes and sea-lilies tangled in his hair. An eel coiled its heavy lenghs around his shoulders and neck. He was completely naked, having shed his clothes when the ship began to sink. He stood in a rapidly growing puddle of brine and when he first opened his mouth to speak, out came a stream of minnows. Her heart was seized with pity and terror. Over her prostrate form he leaned and said:

'My dearest Alcione, my own, I am dead and beyond your unavailing tears. I will never come back. In my triall I thought only of you. The last word of my lips was your name.

With that she knew he was dead. The next day....

poem by Morgan Michaels
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Minutes of a day's work on the Bible

Around 1608; a pleasant day in Cambridge;
eight men sit round a table. Originally there were nine:
Dr Lively who presided at their speedy start
is now departed their distinguished company;
gave his lively life to this great enterprise, some say.

Among them still, the greatest of divines and
Hebrew scholars of their day.
This, the seventh version of the Bible
through its history; ‘seven times purified’
as the Bible says itself,
through Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, Latin,
and English versions over centuries…

Since 1604, they’ve worked upon their
allotted section of the Bible; one sixth;
now they’re on the 'Canticles'; today
it’s Psalm 46: God is our hope and strength,
a very present help in trouble…

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poem by Michael Shepherd
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To My Father's Business

Leo bends over his desk
Gazing at a memorandum
While Stuart stands beside him
With a smile, saying,
'Leo, the order for those desks
Came in today
From Youngstown Needle and Thread!'
C. Loth Inc., there you are
Like Balboa the conqueror
Of those who want to buy office furniture
Or bar fixtures
In nineteen forty in Cincinnati, Ohio!
Secretaries pound out
Invoices on antique typewriters—
Dactyllographs
And fingernail biters.
I am sitting on a desk
Looking at my daddy
Who is proud of but feels unsure about
Some aspects of his little laddie.

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poem by Kenneth Koch
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Gross National Happiness

Gross national happiness now in Bhutan
is the goal, and not gross national product;
happiness great but not gross is my plan,
and the bottom line I’ve always buttocked.

Naturally there will be many naysayers
who claim that this line is fallacious,
but bottoms like summits of high Himalayas
aren’t gross when they’re firm and curvaceous.

Inspired by an article on Bhutan in the NYT on Bhutan by Seth Mydans in Thimphu (“Recalculating Happiness in a Himalayan Kingdom, ” May 8,2009) :
If the rest of the world cannot get it right in these unhappy times, this tiny Buddhist kingdom high in the Himalayan mountains says it is working on an answer. “Greed, insatiable human greed, ” said Prime Minister Jigme Thinley of Bhutan, describing what he sees as the cause of today’s economic catastrophe in the world beyond the snow-topped mountains. “What we need is change, ” he said in the whitewashed fortress where he works. “We need to think gross national happiness.” The notion of gross national happiness was the inspiration of the former king, Jigme Singye Wangchuck, in the 1970s as an alternative to the gross national product. Now, the Bhutanese are refining the country’s guiding philosophy into what they see as a new political science, and it has ripened into government policy just when the world may need it, said Kinley Dorji, secretary of information and communications. “You see what a complete dedication to economic development ends up in, ” he said, referring to the global economic crisis. “Industrialized societies have decided now that G.N.P. is a broken promise.” Under a new Constitution adopted last year, government programs — from agriculture to transportation to foreign trade — must be judged not by the economic benefits they may offer but by the happiness they produce. The goal is not happiness itself, the prime minister explained, a concept that each person must define for himself. Rather, the government aims to create the conditions for what he called, in an updated version of the American Declaration of Independence, “the pursuit of gross national happiness.”

5/8/09

poem by Gershon Hepner
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