Chinese Activist Sheng Xue Dedicates Poem In Honor Of Tibetans Who Self-Immolated

Absolutely beautiful poem about freedom, hope and the anxiety we all succumb to when our world fails us.

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Where Have They Gone, parts 1 and 2

1.
Where have they gone
The young and the proud?

Will we say their names again?
Will we sing their praises on Sundays in church?
Will their photographs hang in Willies’ barbershop windows
Alongside the heroes of World War 2,
The Norman Rockwell prints
And his autographed photos of Ted Williams and Rocky Marciano?

Will there be a celebration of their sacrifices in the town square
The mayor making a speech and mounting a plaque?
The mothers and sisters and wives crying inconsolably?

Or will their fathers hide their grief in bottles of moonshine
The bitterness growing with every drop
Their mothers asking themselves in secrecy what they’ve done wrong
Sisters feeling unprotected without big brother
Little brothers lacking a role model, what chance do they have?
Will no one waltz in the street when their names are mentioned
Or will they merely turn their grief away?

Who will lead us into the future?
Who will install that first traffic light?
Their photos in the Sunday paper big smiles all around
Where will our smiles come from without our boys as heroes?

There will be no continuity here
A generation is lost
Our sons have been ripped from their future
Johnny will not come marching home again.

Where have you gone, my heroes my heroes,
Why have you left our lives?
Where have you gone, my heroes my heroes,
And what will become of us?

2.
Where have they gone
The young and proud?

Where is Gus?
He who could run like the wind
Down the field to victory on homecoming night

Where is Eddie with the cannon right arm?
He who threw the winning touchdown pass to Gus?

Where is Lawrence?
He who made his grandmother so proud
Her slave life stories were so vivid in his mind
The first one in the family to finish school

Where are Gunvald and Bengt?
The town’s only immigrant sons,
Those two new Sons of the Town who worked so much harder,
Just to fit in,

Where is Tom?
He who always drove too fast
Son of the local sheriff,
Racing in the streets on Saturday nights?

Will their parents mourn their loss?
Will we notice their absence?

Greg, he whose Diner has already closed down,
Crippled after his hip surgery failed, and now
Gus is not there to take his place
Irene, his wife, she who couldn’t deal with the loss
The towns first civilian casualty
Of a war so far away

The 5 and Dime store won’t last long either,
Mr. Nichols, he who is getting older by the day,
Never stands outside the shop door anymore, greeting everyone,
His health is failing and Eddie isn’t coming back to take over
It’s a matter of time now they say.

Pete he who can’t climb the trees anymore to trim them,
Says he’ll have to sell his orchards and land to pay his mortgage
Gunvald and Bengt will be trimming trees only in Pete’s memories

Where have you gone, my heroes my heroes,
Why have you left our lives,
Where have you gone, my heroes my heroes,
And what will become of us?

 

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Homs, after the bombing,

Drone video footage of Homs, in Syria, after the bombing. It is beyond description.

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For My People, a poem by Margaret Walker

A brilliant poem by Margaret Walker, a work of beauty, frustration, grace, sympathy, anger, pain, empowerment, and hope. I recommend everyone read this poem, and then share it with those you love.

 

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/11053

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Ashraf Fayadh, a wonderful Palestinian poet, sentenced to die in Saudi Arabia

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-35311709

Hundreds of writers are taking part in readings in support of the Palestinian poet Ashraf Fayadh, who has been sentenced to death in Saudi Arabia.

More than 120 events are being held in 44 countries on Thursday as part of a campaign organised by the International Literature Festival Berlin.

It is calling on the US and UK governments to intervene on behalf of Mr Fayadh, who is accused of apostasy.

He denies the charges and claims that another man made false accusations.

Human rights activists also say Mr Fayadh was denied access to a lawyer throughout his detention and trial, in clear violation of Saudi and international law.

‘Unjust and morally repellent’

Mr Fayadh, a 35-year-old poet and art curator who was born in Saudi Arabia to Palestinian refugee parents, has been a key figure in taking Saudi contemporary art to a global audience, according to the International Literature Festival Berlin.

Chris Dercon, the director of Tate Modern gallery in London and a friend of the poet, has described him as “someone who is outspoken and daring”.

Mr Fayadh was arrested in August 2013 following a complaint by a Saudi citizen, who alleged that he was promoting atheism and spreading blasphemous ideas, according to Amnesty International.

He was released the next day, but was rearrested in January 2014 and charged with apostasy because of his supposed questioning of religion and spreading atheist thought through his collection of poetry, Instructions Within, published in 2008.

He was also charged with violating the country’s anti-cyber crime law by taking and storing photos of women on his mobile phone.

In April 2014, the General Court in the city of Abha sentenced Mr Fayadh to four years in prison and 800 lashes for violating the anti-cyber crime law. But it found his repentance in relation to the charge of apostasy to be satisfactory and not requiring further punishment.

However, an appeals court overturned his original sentence and sent the case back to the General Court, which sentenced him to death for apostasy on 17 November.

Mr Fayadh has asserted that the poems are “just about me being [a] Palestinian refugee… about cultural and philosophical issues. But the religious extremists explained it as destructive ideas against God.”

Irvine Welsh, who will read at the Two Hearted Queen coffee shop in Chicago on Thursday, said he hoped the worldwide reading campaign would put “pressure on governments who espouse democracy and freedom to consider their actions in dealing with [Saudi Arabia]”, according to the Guardian newspaper.

A L Kennedy, who will be attending a reading organised by PEN England at the Mosaic Rooms in west London, said Mr Fayadh’s persecution was “very obviously unjust and morally repellent”.

The Saudi government has not commented publicly on Mr Fayadh’s case.

 

This is a sample of his beautiful, moving poetry, translated by Mona Kareem,

http://monakareem.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/ashraf-fayadhs-disputed-poems-in.html

Ashraf Fayadh’s “Disputed” Poems, in English Translation

1

petroleum is harmless, except for the trace of poverty it leaves behind

on that day, when the faces of those who discover another oil well go dark,

when life is blown into your heart to extract more oil off your soul

for public use..

That.. is.. the promise of oil, a true promise.

the end..

2

it was said: settle there..

but some of you are enemies for all

so leave it now

look up to yourselves from the bottom of the river;

those of you on top should provide some pity for those underneath..

the displaced is helpless,

like blood that no one wants to buy in the oil market!

3

pardon me, forgive me

for not being able to pump more tears for you

for not mumbling your name in nostalgia.

I directed my face at the warmth of your arms

I got no love but you, you alone, and am the first of your seekers.

4

night,

you are inexperienced with Time

lacking rain drops

that could wash away all the remains of your past

and liberate you of what you had called piety..

of that heart.. capable of love,

of play,

and of intersecting with your obscene withdrawal from that flabby religion

from that fake Tanzeel

from gods that had lost their pride..

5

you burp, more than you used to..

as the bars bless their visitors

with recitations and seductive dancers..

accompanied with the DJ

you recite your hallucinations

and speak your praise for these bodies swinging to the verses of exile.

6

he’s got no right to walk however

or to swing however or to cry however.

he’s got no right to open the window of his soul,

to renew his air, his waste, and his tears..

you too tend to forget that you are

a piece of bread

7

on the day of banishment, they stand naked,

while you swim in the rusty pipes of sewage, barefoot..

this could be healthy for the feet

 but not for earth

8

prophets have retired

so do not wait for yours to come to you

and for you,

for you the monitors bring their daily reports

and get their high salaries..

how important money is

for a life of dignity

9

my grandfather stands naked everyday,

without banishment, without divine creation..

I have already been resuscitated without a godly blow in my image.

I am the experience of hell on earth..

earth

is the hell prepared for refugees.

10

your mute blood will not speak up

as long as you pride yourself in death

as long as you keep announcing -secretly- that you have put your soul

at the hands of those who do not know much..

losing your soul will cost time,

much longer than what it takes to calm

your eyes that have cried tears of oil

* These poems appeared in Fayadh’s poetry collection Instructions Within which was published by the Beirut-based Dar al-Farabi in 2008 and later banned from distribution in Saudi Arabia.

Translated by: Mona Kareem

For information on what you can do to help with his release, go to Amnesty International at this address..

https://www.amnesty.org.uk/actions/free-ashraf-fayadh-saudi-arabia-palestinian-poetry-apostasy-execution

 

I highly recommend reading this gifted poet, and of course, signing Amnesty’s petition for his release.

 

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He Groused About The Meek

Source: He Groused About The Meek

He groused about the meek
“They inherit nothing,
Not the wind,
Not the grain,
Not the shirts on their backs.”

I was five years old.
My brothers coat, five button holes, three buttons
Shoe laces broken
Tied in many places to hold them together,
The streets were my playground,
Fire hydrants were bears,
Passersby were Indians,
We shot at them with imaginary guns,

Turning and walking away,
Leading me by hand, without a word
Down streets of jailhouses
Prisons of thought,
Of carelessness
Of lives abandoned

My father teaches me of the rich
Of the bitterness of long sleepless nights
The way of life of the working stiffs

Merrily the children run down the shaded lane
Trees meeting in the middle
Branches kissing each other in the sun
While under their splendour
Life prepares the sinkholes

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Your Men Are Cascading, Oh Widows Of War

Your men are cascading,
Oh widows of war,
Cascading away from you and
Out of your arms and your lives

They are left alone drowning in the streets
With the blood of our sins on their hands
Your sons and brothers,
Are merely the dead without names
Soulless wanderers through our memories minefields

We write now not of our loves but our flaws
Our losses our pain
Our unfulfillable longing our fears
We write of the wars we will never win

We write for the days when
There’s nothing we can do
But watch our sons die in fields we’ve never seen
We write as the sadness overwhelms us with
A deadly grip on our convictions

We write of words that have no meaning
Of leaders with no sense of truth
We write of the best of men
and the worst of lies

We write of the cascade of lives
The constant avoidable mixing of our morality
into the cesspool of inhumanity
Your men are cascading,
Oh widows of war
We write because we can no longer
Suffer your sorrows in silence.

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