Poetry Corner: March for Our Lives

POETRY CORNER

– 3/28/18

Hosted by Kathabela Wilson

​​With all my heart I present this beautiful poetry collection of poets speaking their mind on recent events. This is the cumulative grief, determination, and love of several generations. It is hard to react immediately with such powerful clear thoughts and words to what we are all feeling, but our poets do that here. I wondered if I would be able to do this theme justice, but these poets hearts were full, and they were eager for the chance to speak their minds! I’ve left the conclusion to Karla Decker, with her perspective over decades, fully spoken. It is an international collection as we join hands across the globe in this effort, from India, Australia, Canada and USA.

~ Kathabela

​Mike Duffy​

d c kids-
a teeny oasis
of frozen prairie

dc kids-
too young
to bloom

​Mike Duffy​ told me: “I love these kids!” He lives in Seattle and Canada and is a true artist-adventurer who interprets with his short poems the excitement beauties and unusual juxtapositions in nature and human life. Here he notes the daring of young blooms, even against strong odds and difficult situations and the “teeny” (teen-aged) youth that take the lead with vitality and earnestness on a frozen prairie and make their strong statement.​

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Bill Martin

bleary-eyed elders
​bruised and numb from arrows
​pointed toward ourselves
​hurt and hurtful, loud yet bungling
​a​ child points the way

Bill Martin is a math professor and poet in Worchester, Massachusetts. He says: “I had just come back from the ‘March for our Lives’ event in Worcester. The leaders were high school and college students; older folks were there to follow. It occurred to me that, while baby boomers like me knotted ourselves into the usual, well-worn rhetorical dead ends, the youth just wanted to see the problem solved, the terror (and it really has grown into a form of terrorism) to end.​”​

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Pat Geyer​​

we will be seen

we will shout
to be heard…

i tell you,
unthreatened our youth
too can speak​

Ο

on a thin branch
hanging in the balance
blood red guns…
steady we hold on
as we march for our lives

​Pat Geyer​​​​, in East Brunswick, New Jersey, says: “​We needed to speak up and we did. Adults took responsibility and our youth spoke out responsibly. The children of this country can no longer go to school in fear that each day could be their last.​”​

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Radhamani Sarma

a mass rally
through hot summer runs
slogan of peace
and no more shells and blood
reverberate all around here

Poet Radhamani Sarma lives in Chennai, India. ​Radhamani ​says: “​A positive take in the deep recess of my mind- a group of honest veterans or peace loving people,​ ​afflicted after witnessing a brutal killing and bloodshed,decide to go on a rally from morn till evening,unmindful of hot sun, with a banner – no more blood shed, no more fight and no more guns- all round me going on. what a salutary move​!”​ ​

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Gerry Jacobson

gates open
the circle widens
embracing me –
interlocked hearts
in the cold wet night

Gerry Jacobson says” “In Australia where I live, the government imposed strict gun control after a massacre in Tasmania in 1996. And bought back a million guns and destroyed them. There hasn’t been an incident of that kind since, to my knowledge.”

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Karla Decker

tears
six moments of silence
for those not here

fed up
streets fill with youth
making noise
overhead a dove
dips her wing

Karla Decker says: “There isn’t much about a shooter rampaging through a school shooting children that inspires awe. But ‘awe’ is too small a word to describe the response to it, response to it by young people who were the targets. These young people aren’t showing off how articulate and passionate they are, it is showing us WHO they are. And they are leaving the rest of us, who no matter how inured to such stories we’ve become, awe​d.”

[spoiler title=’More from Karla (Click to expand)’ style=’steelblue’ collapse_link=’true’]

I am an old lady now. But I have been spending many hours of late noticing the ​​ similarities between what is happening now and what happened when I was in college in the late 50’s. How puzzled we were when Myrtle Kastner, a passionate friend who joined with a couple African-American classmates to sit in the Woolworth lunch counter attempting to get served.

It passed through our minds “who would want to eat what Woolworth’s lunch counter served.” We thought we were pretty smart and aware but we missed the point completely. The understanding of this situation came to us slowly but powerfully over the years.

I moved to Omaha, Nebraska in the early 60’s. Protests had already occurred in other cities by this time. I remember asking a city bus driver if there was much racial tension in Omaha. He laughed and said, “Not in Omaha! We get along great! THEY know their place and WE know ours. They stay in their area and we stay in ours. We get along great.”
It was an eye opener for me. And it was only a few weeks later that “their place”, North Omaha, burst into flames. ​ ​

And then the Viet Nam war.

Women’s Rights!

My mind gets fuzzy remembering all the issues but it was constant, led by young people who would be heard. Young people who did bring about change.
And now here we are again. And what is so remarkable about this reincarnation is the age of those speaking out. Not the college age kids who were the instigators in the 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s. Today the kids are in high school. And they are amazingly articulate.
And I was blown away by the eleven year old, in awe of the granddaughter of Martin Luther King who is nine.

We are in astounding times. There will be changes. Changes brought about by children.

I hope we have learned an important lesson we may have overlooked the last time. We must stay vigilant, ever alert or our grandchildren, or in my case, my great grandchildren will have to do it all over again on down the road.​”​[/spoiler]

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♣ We welcome and encourage your response especially in the form of short poems. You may reply by leaving a comment below.