Let the Children Cry Mashup poem from The Cry of The Children by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Do ye hear the children, O my brothers,

      Ere the sorrow comes with years?

They are leaning their young heads against their mothers —

      And that cannot stop their tears.

The young lambs are bleating in the meadows;

   The young birds are chirping in the nest;

The young cats are meming in the internet;

   The young flowers are blowing toward the west—

But the children, O my brothers,

      They are crying bitterly!

They are crying in the playtime of the others,

      In the country of the free.

Do not tell the poor young children, O my brothers,

      To look up to Him and pray —

So the blessed One, who blesseth all the others,

      Will bless them another day.

They answer, "Who is God that He should hear us,

   While the bullets singe the air 

While you take this bitter fear and trap us

    In concrete prisons without cheer?

Would you have us never see the sunshine,

   Or enjoy the light of day?"

Yes, they are worn with tragedy, unrelentingly maligned

But they're not bowing to the greed of the NRA.

They look up with their pale and sunken faces,

      And their looks are terrible to see,

For their grief abhorrent, draws and presses

      Down the cheeks of infancy—

"Your guns," they say, "took the life of our dear friends

   How can you justify these means — or defy our ends

We need gun control," their voices ring out clear

   They need to know — this time, will you hear?" 

And for all the little children whose blood is on your hands

   Will you stand up and do the right thing

Words are so very cheap. Now, in this time of tragedy

   We should let the children weep.

      Let them weep! let them weep!

"How long," they say, "how long, O cruel nation,

   Will you stand, to move the world, on a child's heart, 

Stifle down with a mailed heel its palpitation,

   And tread onward to your throne amid the mart?

Our blood splashes upward, O our tyrants,

      And your purple shews your path;

But the child's sob curseth deeper in the silence

      Than the strong man in his wrath!"

A.J. Ponder with many apologies to  Elizabeth Barrett Browning  (The Original Poem "The Cry of the Children is here. It was written to protest horrific child labour laws, but it's protesting the same people - people who profit off suffering, or use God's will to justify the unjustifiable)

I've been absolutely blown away by how well the young adults of Parkland Florida have bravely stood up to tell their stories and call for sensible gun control. And I've been absolutely horrified by the abuse they've received online. These young adults should have had time to weep, but knowingly or not, we've been preparing them all their lives for this time.

Let me be very clear, I have family who love their guns - I am not advocating taking their guns away. Nor are those teens. They are calling for sensible gun measures. There's no point blaming the FBI or local law enforcement for these events when their hands have effectively been tied by poor legislation. Gun control is a part of being civilized, just like wearing seat-belts. It's a little something that is regulated, not to undermine freedom, but to recognize the sanctity of life.

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” MLK 

A.J. 

Have a great week everybody. Go out and do great things, the world needs you. :)

Chicken

Are all our baskets broken
that we cannot fill them with our eggs?
Are all our chickens coming home to roost
among the snake-filled nests?

Do we have an intrinsic worth?
Are we free to keep our heads?
Or are we nothing more than feathers
to fill a suffocating bed?

Can we see into the future
when our present is so caged?
Can you take the shit they give us
or have you found your rage?

We can tear down those cages

And we can find our worth

And together build a future
The like we've never seen

Or we can crawl back in our cage
And dream of what might have been

A.J. Ponder

Have a great week everybody. Here's hoping we can all rise to the challenges life is throwing us.

“We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin

George Gordon, Lord Byron,“Darkness” (1816) is the holloween poem this year

I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space,
Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;
Morn came, and went - and came, and brought no day,
And men forgot their passions in the dread
Of this their desolation; and all hearts
Were chill'd into a selfish prayer for light:
And they did live by watchfires - and the thrones,
The palaces of crowned kings - the huts,
The habitations of all things which dwell,
Were burnt for beacons; cities were consumed,
And men were gathered round their blazing homes
To look once more into each other's face;
Happy were those who dwelt within the eye
Of the volcanos, and their mountain-torch:
A fearful hope was all the world contain'd;
Forests were set on fire - but hour by hour
They fell and faded - and the crackling trunks
Extinguish'd with a crash - and all was black.
The brows of men by the despairing light
Wore an unearthly aspect, as by fits
The flashes fell upon them; some lay down
And hid their eyes and wept; and some did rest
Their chins upon their clenched hands, and smiled;
And others hurried to and fro, and fed
Their funeral piles with fuel, and looked up
With mad disquietude on the dull sky,
The pall of a past world; and then again
With curses cast them down upon the dust,
And gnash'd their teeth and howl'd: The wild birds shriek'd,
And, terrified, did flutter on the ground,
And flap their useless wings; the wildest brutes
Came tame and tremulous; and vipers crawl'd
And twined themselves among the multitude,
Hissing, but stingless - they were slain for food:
And War, which for a moment was no more,
Did glut himself again; - a meal was bought
With blood, and each sate sullenly apart
Gorging himself in gloom: no love was left;
All earth was but one thought - and that was death,
Immediate and inglorious; and the pang
Of famine fed upon all entrails - men
Died, and their bones were tombless as their flesh;
The meagre by the meagre were devoured,
Even dogs assail'd their masters, all save one,
And he was faithful to a corse, and kept
The birds and beasts and famish'd men at bay,
Till hunger clung them, or the dropping dead
Lured their lank jaws; himself sought out no food,
But with a piteous and perpetual moan,
And a quick desolate cry, licking the hand
Which answered not with a caress - he died.
The crowd was famish'd by degrees; but two
Of an enormous city did survive,
And they were enemies; they met beside
The dying embers of an alter-place,
Where had been heap'd a mass of holy things
For an unholy usage; they raked up,
And shivering scraped with their cold skeleton hands
The feeble ashes, and their feeble breath
Blew for a little life, and made a flame
Which was a mockery; then they lifted up
Their eyes as it grew lighter, and beheld
Each other's aspects - saw, and shriek'd, and died -
Even of their mutual hideousness they died,
Unknowing who he was upon whose brow
Famine had written Fiend. The world was void,
The populous and the powerful -was a lump,
Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless-
A lump of death - a chaos of hard clay.

The rivers, lakes, and ocean all stood still,
And nothing stirred within their silent depths;
Ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea,
And their masts fell down piecemeal; as they dropp'd
They slept on the abyss without a surge-

The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave,
The moon their mistress had expired before;
The winds were withered in the stagnant air,
And the clouds perish'd; Darkness had no need

Of aid from them - She was the universe.

I was instructed in no uncertain terms that because it was halloween this Tuesday, that it was essential to post an apropriately themed piece.

I can't help but think a modern version would have the sun burning. But that would totally ruin the halloween spirit ;)

Have a great week everyone, I hope you have a great week, and enjoy the fun of All Hallows Eve - or manage to avoid it - whichever you prefer :)

A.J.

The SEP

Look!
Can't you see?
We're sitting in the middle of an SEP

We only look like we're breathing
from the outside

In here
the atmosphere's
twenty K's
of
freezing
and group think
has you believing,
hydrogen is water
and air
is simply there

It's a diffusion of responsibility
that cuts at the frozen heart
of a problem
nobody
wanted

A.J.
with thanks to Douglas Adams (An SEP is from Douglas Adam's Life, the Universe and Everything. It's earned a place on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somebody_else%27s_problem as well as having a wiki page: http://hitchhikers.wikia.com/wiki/Somebody_Else%27s_Problem_field)

This is a fractured piece of something I began a few weeks ago. It began with Count your Spoons, and may or may not finish on a piece called Soloman's Wisdom.

If you're unfamiliar with the terms, Group Think and Diffusion of Responsibility, also have their own Wikipedia pages. (And Frozen Heart is also apparently the name of a song from Frozen, which is probably quite apt, although I'll admit, a complete accident.)

Have a great week, I'm planning to have a bit of down time myself, and check out some great Tuesday Poem blogs, I know there are a few sites I need to catch up on, including Helen Lowe's and Helen McKinlay's, because they are always so inspirational, not to mention fantastically supportive of NZ poetry and fiction :)

A.J. 

Find my stories and support my writing on ko-fi 

And tell me which poems you'd like to see in my upcoming poetry book—2024? https://ko-fi.com/ajponder

  

 

 

Tuesday Poem: Jericho-The snake has killed the dove

There's life on one side -
on the other there is death,
so where were you
when I took my final breath?

The bricks have all been broken
& the mortar's mortal set -
but where were you?
What - did you think you'd get

to say all your last goodbyes
after the bird has flown the coop
and the snake is at the door?
Or do you think you can just

sloop off and never see the sign,
the solid staff
the snakes entwine
the silent epigraph

that's carven on the wall.
Yes, there was a time
when-
but now that time is done


where were you,
my love-
my dove-
When the walls came down?

A.J. (demolished chimney shots will hopefully be put into this post tomorrow)


It's been a fantastic week, busy, busy busy, with a great launch of Twisty Christmas Tales and some fantastic reviews - including - KidsBookNZ "Three excellent anthologies for children" So why not have a little twist on the festive season this year with Twisty Christmas Tales: available at good book shops and on Amazon  http://www.amazon.com/The-Best-Twisty-Christmas-Tales-ebook/dp/B00OWXKEAW


The Tuesday Poem, is a great source of poetry from NZ and all around the world, why not stop by and see what it has to offer at www.tuesdaypoem.blogspot.com