Bruce Taub's poem for our June 22, 2022 meeting

This was our prompt:

From Stazja McFayden's  
Poets for Human Rights e-Newsletter 2022-5:

The Greeks were considerate in naming the different kinds of love – eros (romantic passionate love), philia (deep friendship), erotoropia (playful love), storge (unconditional, familial love), philautia (compassionate self-love), pragma (committed, companionate love), agape (empathetic, universal love), xenia (guest-friendship, hospitality).

The idea was to choose one of these forms of love as theme for a poem.

Bruce chose philautia, compassionate self love.

Self Love

When I love myself

I am small and thoughtful

And don’t use much space

Or oxygen.

I am a man who listens well

When I love myself

And then am critical of my narcissism,

My need for attention and affirmation,

The immense amount of work it takes

Just to keep this tall, fumbling man with bad manners

And nose hairs

Alive and safe.

 

The impact of truths exposed

Will not always be pleasant or good.

When appraising one’s self-criticality honestly -

Confronting one’s truest truths

Is not always pretty -

All of which makes self-love a challenge

But commends the faint object of the man’s affections

To high self-regard for his accurate self-appraisal

And self-critical honesty, which can also be love.

Bruce Taub and Pearl in Glover, June 2022

You can read more of his poems on his blogspot:  https://brucertaub.com.    

At last: a poem from Steve Cahill!

 

The Killing Floor                              

Steve Cahill

I remember the soft velvet darkness

of night and the first colored cusp of dawn

the rocking rhythm of the loaded truck

and the sounds of the animals inside.

 

I remember the cattle pens and chutes

narrowing down and forcing them to go

into the slaughterhouse in single file

to the waiting men on the killing floor.

 

I remember the man with the hammer

and how he delivered that stunning blow

with the cows bleeding out while still alive

and eviscerated before they died.

 

I remember seeing their liquid eyes

watching the hooks and pulleys winch them up

while they are being flayed and dismembered

by men wearing bloody aprons and boots.

 

I remember their knives, so sharp and fast

like flashing lights along the moving line

where hundreds of cows were killed every day

packaged up as fodder for the masses.

 

I remember political functions

campaign banquets and rich donor dinners

serving tenderloin with lofty language

new promises for last election’s lies.

 

 We’re at the portal of the abattoir

—which is another name for slaughterhouse—

looking at the labyrinth of pens and chutes

—hoping it’s the way to democracy—

 

            but it’s still the same old abattoir door

            opening back onto the killing floor. 

                                                                Steve Cahill

and the beat goes on: Manning's poem in talk-back to an 1861 footnote by Horace Traubel

 

On reading Traubel’s footnote to Whitman’s

Beat! Beat! Drums!*                      Sylvia Manning

Let’s not count measure, drum syllabic beats to beat our morning mourning  song

into boxes rag-tagged with old anapests and spondee.

Let’s let ourselves ignore (deceased) critic from academe who deems beats

in your poem to be only a marshalling call to martial war.

Let’s believe through our boot soles your farmboy-carpenter voice

gone city-loud with warning of how war beats trauma into all our lives,

bridegroom and mother beseeching her child’s right to live and thrive.

Let us let ourselves believe we read these strophes and anapests, their ironical

iron warning (published exactly 160 years ago yesterday, literally, at this writing)

As Beat loud beatitude against that war against ourselves (thus you as well),

the bloodiest and worst so far, so far as we know.

Let us know you knew (certainly you would come to):

blessed, yes, are the peacemakers.

This your subtext onto ear drums, this at very least your whisper,

if not indeed loud beaten warning:  war is hell.

                                                                     [written Sept. 29, 2021]

                                                                                                            

  

*Footnote p. 283, Norton Critical Edition, Leaves of Grass, c1965 New York University:

Traubel, II, 213.

[BEAT! BEAT! DRUMS!]  "This stirring call to arms was first published simultaneously, September 28, 1861, in both Harper’s Weekly and the New York Leader.  Note the skill with which WW, by spondaic and anapaestic emphasis, imposes his martial rhythm."

Beat! Beat! Drums!

                                           BY WALT WHITMAN

 Beat! beat! drums!—blow! bugles! blow!

Through the windows—through doors—burst like a ruthless force,

Into the solemn church, and scatter the congregation,

Into the school where the scholar is studying,

Leave not the bridegroom quiet—no happiness must he have now with his bride,

Nor the peaceful farmer any peace, ploughing his field or gathering his grain,

So fierce you whirr and pound you drums—so shrill you bugles blow.

 

Beat! beat! drums!—blow! bugles! blow!

Over the traffic of cities—over the rumble of wheels in the streets;

Are beds prepared for sleepers at night in the houses? no sleepers must sleep in those beds,

No bargainers’ bargains by day—no brokers or speculators—would they continue?

Would the talkers be talking? would the singer attempt to sing?

Would the lawyer rise in the court to state his case before the judge?

Then rattle quicker, heavier drums—you bugles wilder blow.

 

Beat! beat! drums!—blow! bugles! blow!

Make no parley—stop for no expostulation,

Mind not the timid—mind not the weeper or prayer,

Mind not the old man beseeching the young man,

Let not the child’s voice be heard, nor the mother’s entreaties,

Make even the trestles to shake the dead where they lie awaiting the hearses,

So strong you thump O terrible drums—so loud you bugles blow.

Babushka, by Adrien

 

Adrien Helm, 2022

Babushka

                                                                             

Like a tree he stands

Camouflage coat brown

Against the snow.

 

Icy wind spirals

Crusty dust of drifts,

Needles against bare skin.

 

I tug the knot of my scarf,

Take gloved hands from

Pockets, pick my way forward.

 

“Son.” My word softens

His shoulders, eases tension

From his neck, swings his gun aside.

 

“Step back, grandma.”

“Your mother wants you home;

Leave my land and go.”

 

He scoffs behind his mask,

Looks away. “Listen to me, child;

You need to go.”

 

Anger born of fear blooms,

Eyes bore into mine. “Go, grandma.”

We stand, steely pillars of conflict.

 

“Da. But look, carry this in your pocket.”

I extend the handful of seeds.

“Your body will leave beauty where you fall.”

 

My back absorbs his gasp.

I think of blue skies, better days,

Fields of sunflowers.

 

                               Adrien W Helm ©2022

Warring, by Ellen Mass, in response to a prompt for poems on that subject

 

    Warring

                         Ellen Mass                                                                           

Ellen Mass in autumn, 2021

  

        When a real war is forefront

 

with beloved human blood flowing,

 

      oozing into our day,

 

like today’s contention, fed

 

blaring to us on YouTube --

 

       sacred life, lost

 

battles of enmity bring down our stars,

 

 one pitted against another;

 

      daggers drawn,

 

trampled dignity of all peoples

 

including the perpetrator

 

 

From Tigris to the Euphrates, Ukraine rivers

 

        Donets to the Don, East

 

divided by the Dnieper,

 

from the Valdall Hills to Black Sea,

 

flowing migrants, refugees flee

 

        ubiquitous warring on earth.

 

 We must see who lurks behind crazed troops.

 

Killing machines disperse through the world,

 

not just there in Central Europe, of course,

 

        because we know the other places,

 

spreading like unnoticed dandelion seeds in spring

 

 that always go where winds blow,

 

perpetuate conflict for avaricious beings.

 

They settle noiselessly into lives of you and me --

 

even me with myself, embattled,

 

 familiar in everyday life --

 

        a sad life of strife -- but secure

 

 with extraordinary gifts,

 

stocked with nutrition and shelter, unspoken munitions

 

        of death,

 

wrought ruthless upon people;

 

     disputes unsettled

 

 embedded evil for personal gain

 

 prolonged conflict and greed,

 

 

 Insistent media drones on

 

      without purpose but to terrify,

 

beat drums of war, carrying

 

carnage, suffering to heights unimagined;

 

cares not if any human is left with only one arm

 

           on a rich green earth.

 

Mercy is beseeched by tiny voice; no mourner replies.

 

Submission is the goal so no one thinks

           

                 it may be a lie.

 

Real time history of what just happened!

 Doesn’t really matter in 21st century

 

governed and blessed by madmen and

 

       profit-seeking machines.

 

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