The Cry. Leah Hokanson. (So Held By Sky: Five Gabriola Poets. 2020)

 

The Cry 

Leah Hokanson

I have wondered about the cry 

     that could end all cries 

I wonder if it’s possible

     to cry so deeply, and just enough 

I imagine us holding one another

and staying until the end 

                      

     the end of this epic cry

Days, weeks, months  

it would last – the necessity of it

     this cry that could last for years

And we would stay with it

There would be no need to get along

     or get over, or get over it

we would hold each tear’s testimony 

     to what got lost, what couldn’t stay

We would find our way to the end

     decades, perhaps, or a century

long enough 

and no longer

What is the cause of cruelty?

"It's called the spirit of abstraction, a term originally coined by Gabriel Marcelin his essay "The Spirit of Abstraction as a Factor Making for War," and is defined as the practice of conceiving of people as functions rather than as human beings. In early American history a large segment of the population labeled African Americans as "slaves," reducing their identity as human beings into an abstract idea only, freeing slave owners to consider slaves their property. Hitler convinced a majority of Germans to conceive of a segment of their population as "Jews," abstracting their identity as human beings into something he convinced the German people was so inferior he was able to wipe out 6 million of them (not to mention half a million gypsies as well). Americans, in turn, abstracted the Japanese people into "Japs," a derogatory term that reduced them from human beings with hopes, loves, families, and fears into the "enemy" on whom it was therefore eventually permissible to drop two atomic bombs."

Alex Lickerman, MD. Psychology Today.

And is there any way we can stop the spirit of abstraction where everything is made into something like entertainment or economics?

I have seen great organizations demolished because of abstraction. We are currently so good at labelling people and events, making us all part of a pecking order.

Even though we know our planet is under threat of more extinctions as we watch "interests" mobilize distractions from abstractions. It's really in its most diminished form the desire for so much power we can destroy everything. Or the ultimate proof of power is the ability to destroy.

As compassionate individuals it's easy to feel we have no power at all when we read of the customer who beat up a Walmart worker for asking him to put on a mask.

It's the final humility in the mind of someone who has been consistently reduced as a unit of labour, a trend, a consumer, an ego, a fragment of the GDP.

Year after year, the system makes humanity more abstracted, useless, and unemployable. This is no accident. This is the psychology of the pecking order. But it is very difficult to just "suck it up!" forever until we dissolve into a body bag.

Socialism is seen as threat because it acknowledges human dignity and that society is made up of people who have needs. The most urgent of these is the need for dignity.

"Four" a poem by Janet Vickers

 

Cover: So Held By Sky: 5 Gabriola Poets
Image taken by Sonja Arntzen

I propose, among all the other proposals 

that we adopt a new movement which I call Four.

It must examine new ways of seeing the Universe 

because our mind has been clogged with 

the pecking order, not the old ways of nature 

or ancient scriptures but 

ways harnessed through 

blade without chalice, reflection, or conscience

—Universe without soul.

If you add up numbers 1+9+8+4 which equals 22 

and 2+2 which equals 4, and the year we are in

2+0+2+0 — it comes down to number four.

Not that everything was destroyed in 1984 

but Orwell’s warning — boot on face forever

or reconcile the mind with the heart

the past and with the future.

How can the number four lead to wholeness? 

Four directions, four seasons, four horsemen

sword, famine, beasts and plague

could be end times but orthodoxy won’t help us

unless we put earth at the centre 

where it has always been our mother.

(this poem appears in the chapbook 'So Held By Sky: 5 Gabriola Poets' who are Sonja Arntzen, Leah Hokanson, Dave Neads, May Partridge, Janet Vickers)

Politics of Cultural Despair - Chris Hedges

" The most difficult existential dilemma we face is to at once acknowledge the bleakness before us and act, to refuse to succumb to cynicism and despair. And we will only do this through faith, the faith that the good draws to it the good, that all acts that nurture and protect life have an intrinsic power, even if the empirical evidence shows that things are getting worse. We will find our freedom, our autonomy, our meaning and our social bonds among those who also resist, and this will allow us to endure, and maybe even triumph." Chris Hedges

I place the person who cares, who works and who gives to her community above those who have some political or social status. They contribute to civil society, community and the economy.

Homo Sapiens

 

What is the meaning of the word "Sapiens"? According to Wikipedia sapiens is a Latin word meaning wise. 

Dictionary.com says wisdom is "the quality or state of being wise; knowledge of what is true or right coupled with just judgment as to action; sagacity, discernment, or insight."

Eleanor Roosevelt wrote "No one can make you feel inferior without your consent."

Aristotle said. "Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom."

Chess is a game of strategy played by clever people and TV dramas are about fast moving plots. Broadcast news casts are a collection of headlines that a radio producer decides is the most important news.

The news is impressed with celebrity, the very rich and famous, and the Royal Family — but the wisdom of celebrity is not often worth broadcasting. Headlines need drama of the "gotcha" variety. Knocking Humpty Dumpty off the wall. It competes for viewers and listeners.

Explorations of what makes us wise is little use in neoliberal economies. If fact business is built on shallow consumerism. The more gullible we are, the more we need symbols of success, the better for those who hold some power over us.

Everyone knows that wisdom is what we need to survive. Wisdom is how our species became homo sapiens because we learned how to care for those we depend on. This reminder in the Houses of Parliament or Board Meetings will be dismissed.

Our economy can live without us for a short while if we should die off from boredom, disease or hunger.

Universal Basic Income

"Once we realize the vastness of the cumulative common resources that our ancestors have bequeathed to us, it transforms our conception of wealth and value. Contrary to the widespread view that an entrepreneur who becomes a billionaire deserves his wealth, the reality is that whatever value he created is a pittance compared to the immense bank of prior knowledge and social practices—the commonwealth—that he took from." 

Universal Basic Income: The Moral Birthright of Every Human Being. Jeremy Lent

You Are an Unscripted Future

be a servant to your dreams

include everyone and everything

forget leading actors and their victims

hierarchy will not matter after the collapse.

Put away your chess board

go to the top of the mountain

and look down on what you have destroyed

forests, lakes, grasses, air

(don’t be squeemish about your errors

and addictions, 

human-up)

if you are offended by the accusation

— imagine a time where nothing else can be destroyed

where nothing is felt or seen

and where the wind has no-one to talk to.

Are Monsters Humans Who Have No Conscience?

 

"Neoliberalism has been neatly described by William Davies, a professor at Goldsmiths College, as “the disenchantment of politics by economics”. It sees politics as an ineffective or illegitimate means of social improvement. Decision-making should be transferred to “the market”, a euphemism for the power of money. Through buying and selling, we establish a natural hierarchy of winners and losers. Any attempt to interfere in the discovery of this natural order – such as taxing the rich, redistributing wealth and regulating business – will inhibit social progress." Monbiot, Monster Makers

Abundant Feminine

 

Abundant Feminine

Here is evidence of abundance

(for now)

the promise of birth with its pain,  comfort

and demands 

Many a sperm and egg are lost

but those that come together

must enter the body of consciousness 

and enter the world crying

if it is to live. 

The sacred feminine swerves from death

to love whatever breathes 

when it becomes difficult

when it exhausts us

into compassion and the weeping

that brought us here.

You and I are the dance  

complexity born of centuries which demand 

attention and love beyond economy and jobs 

and toxic greed.

We—chicken, ox, fish and ape

are more than a corporate factory. 

(from Sleep With Me: Lullaby for an Anxious Planet (Ekstasis 2020)

Sacred Masculine

Masculinity and Femininity as proscribed by popular thought and advertising has become a problem mainly because so much violence and abuse is treated as natural. 

But I think ideology including gender has been designed to serve the system of class and nationality.

I am not saying that violence is a construct of our natures but that is has been massaged to serve those at the top of a hierarchy.

Telling young boys that boys don't cry, is not just telling them that feelings are sissy, it takes away the ability to feel and to learn from feelings.

In war terrible things are done to men and women in the cause of 'winning'. Centuries of this have achieved such a vacuous sense of greatness, masculinity, isolation and trauma — that people who have built societies are stuck back to the Roman Empire.

Misogyny ultimately enables men to do destructive things to their society, because to think and feel is ridiculed as sissy (feminine). It enables the abuse of daughters and sons. It alienates men from their sense of worth as part of family a caring with complex natures.

So I wrote this poem. It is a troublesome poem but the point is to repeat an idea from Spinoza (“The more clearly you understand yourself and your emotions, the more you become a lover of what is.”), as well as women who are thought leaders today— that masculinity is responding to the moment with presence and awareness.

To make America great again is not to force every other nation to kneel in fear or submit to it. 

Britain was not made great by 'conquest', killing the natives of land that it wanted for its exploitation. Civilisation is not made by punishment and threat. 

The aristocracy is not made great by keeping the majority in poverty.

Power that demands submission is not an everlasting power. Life that is diminished by military rule is not sacred.

Sacred Masculine

Even though gender is a construct beyond 

the reproductive organs — I need to respect 

the hero, the sacred masculine

as it has been witnessed here.

The man who builds a wooden box 

for tomato stakes come summer

who takes an afternoon nap

before he prepares supper

who knows when I am sick before I do

who keeps the TV volume down

when I take a nap.

Who held, fed and changed our first born 

while I went to the theatre,

who survived highway-to-office battles

endless sales calls, belly skirmishes, 

insight to quit the manager’s chair 

before slipping into an alcoholic night. 

Who never wanted to be a stranger 

to his children.

The sacred masculine holds the ability

to fix gate or vacuum cleaner, find best hotel, 

weed garden, cook supper, coach soccer kids, 

listen to friends’ wars (won and lost)

buy birthday cards, potatoes or eggs

allow the ‘other’ a seat on the subway

without spreading. The sacred masculine 

adapts to the world as it informs

the warrior of weapons required.

.

Tickling the Scar by Matthew Hollett

The winner of the CBC poetry prize for 2020 can be found here: 

 https://www.cbc.ca/books/literaryprizes/tickling-the-scar-by-matthew-hollett

I am grateful for the CBC judges for choosing a poem that points out, in a few lines, the cruelty of care homes where the system demands that its shareholders who cannot smell the urine, be paid according to their expectations.

Was it so cruel before the pandemic?

Is the focus on profit and shareholders a problem for our system or a problem of the human will to justice. 

Remembrance Day 2020

 

Remembrance Day

It is a lie to think boys sent to the front lines

were willing to sacrifice their un-lived lives 

to win something they didn’t plan.

It was assumed for them.

The pecking order barked out rules—no options 

once you signed. You were a prop for the gun

and you couldn’t even choose where or when to shit.

You started out honourable—just learned how 

to shave, found camaraderie among others

who wanted to be men not given the white feather

from village wives.

If being a man means living up

to others’ expectations with your face

new to the razor blade, limbs looking for love

mind questioning the fraction of a unit

you had become for some purpose

never revealed to you—does it mean you proved it?

I want you to know, even though it’s too late

that I love you, and your virgin heart.

How to Fight Terrorism

I am republishing this due to anxiety felt as we witness a change of politics in the country to our south. The refusal to concede defeat from the Trump Administration and to plan to disrupt with violence from  various supporters (white supremacist groups), is, in my opinion, terrorism.

How can we fight that instinct to keep blowing up the blown apart?  Invest in peaceful, healing initiatives that make violence redundant.

1. Invest in mental health services to give those at risk the help they need before their illness isolates them from society.

2. Re-establish the primary needs of people - shelter, nutritious food, education, living wages and time for family.

3. Support families by providing health services, family planning, women's reproductive education.

4. Sex education that covers the real experiences of young men and women on top of the scientific knowledge about human sexuality.

5. Encourage children to develop a social conscience by listening to what they think, to honour their ideas and to talk about the world of economics and politics in a way that helps them grow into engaged citizens. This can be done at dinner times or other regular times that the family is together.

6. Value life before profit and power. Look people in the eye, take time to listen, take time to care no matter how small the offering may be.

7. Welcome refugees - they are in crisis and people in crisis can recover if others help them find peace. The earth is more than just real estate - it is home.

8. Give up the notion that competition is the only way we become better people. Competition might help us improve at sports, and certain skills but a life dedicated to "winning" is limited to egocentric obsession and narrows the world view.

Terrorism begins with  the idea that power is a zero sum game. That the intrinsic value of our lives depends on proving ourselves. Proving to be capable is worthy but when society is written out of our experience we learn to see our worth in comparison to others, in how much we earn and what we own. If being great depends on oppressing others who have less power, or making more money or up-selling products, we have disposed of our human values such as art, music, analysis, care, nurture, problem-solving and the building of sustainable futures.

Jonathan Sacks - March 8, 1948 - November 7, 2020

I have been following the work of Rabbi Jonathan Sacks - not intrusively, not thoroughly, but mostly on his writings about this current age. 

Sacks was nine months older than I and his education and intellectual abilities far outweighed mine, however I loved reading his books as he addressed things that deeply concerned me of late. 

The transference of values from justice to economics. The crises we are enduring today has come from the abdication of leaders since the 1980's which venerated wealth, personality and entertainment more than responsible government.

Yes, we are better off today (if we are white and able-bodied) than we have been during the centuries of patriarchal warmongering, but I see our civilization eroding through a lack of morality or good ethics. That is to say, simply - caring more for sustainable life than  immediate gratification.

Human rights have appeared to be dissolving into panic, hate and greed. Religion has been blamed. But Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, in my opinion, used his extensive knowledge to root out the voice of heartfelt reason above the clamour of greed and vanity that rules our political world.

Condolences to the family and friends of Rabbi Sacks.

Eagle

 

You rise above it all

the traffic, our arguments

on these crusted roads.

You see more in one flight

than I will in a lifetime

crammed with questions

scanning maps

I still can’t see what might enter 

the intersection ahead.

Our views are foggy

unclear, one dimensional, a narrative 

that relies on what came before 

as if our language 

can explain everything

even your talon clasping death dance

for a mate. Is that love?

Should I be willing to die for love?

One day

you might have this planet to yourself

and will not have to stay clear of those 

shiny birds that break the wings of others

or fear your pantry poisoned by oil, 

or forests uprooted for pipelines 

because we are unable to see 

more than one dimension at a time.

Elections - what to do about them

There is a great deal of hype here.  Sure it's an election where there is abuse, threats of violence and contempt for the people of America.  We know this is going to affect Canada in some way, and some nations in Europe.

I wonder if it's a bit late to worry about the future now. Politics has been eaten, chewed and is now being spat out. Civil society is threatened. Images of thugs with guns appear on newspapers and magazine covers. Threats of civil war, social collapse are marching in boots through major cities. 

It's the sort of crisis that makes some of us want to stay in our homes and watch I Love Lucy all night.

But here's the problem. The conversation doesn't include everyone and it certainly doesn't cover the voice of the majority who love their families and friends and who just want to pay the rent and buy food. It is only interested in sound bites and fog horns; media outlets that love right wing parties, blow the horn for punishment, prisons and authoritarian rule.

So it's up to us to continue to build community and support systems that nurture and re-build after all the hate. It's up to us to plan and think about how to ease the suffering of those who feel alone fighting to survive the various enemies headlined in corporate as well as social media. 

We can't change all the anxious minds who have been shredded by endless propaganda. We need to rebuild with kindness and responsible action doing what we can, based on our individual and collective talents. 

Are We Allergic to Good People?

 

"When they arrived, the enveloping wilderness frightened them. In response, their main ways of knowing it were mowing it down, shooting it if it moved, taming it and simplifying it in their minds."  David Suzuki.

"They" are the Europeans, deemed heroes in the history books of Canada. 

Good people are like the wilderness. They don't  arrive with a marching band, not usually the ones who win high praise on the front page of a newspaper. 

In fact good people may spell death for the tabloids, looking for salacious stories of bad behaviour, that cast suspicion on celebrities and politicians without checking the facts. The slander against Princess Di, John Lennon, Jeremy Corbyn makes 'journalists' look like dragons scratching for anything that might turn a person into a villain.

Then there are the stories of folks in high positions who have been charged with sexual assault by their staff or students yet get off free while their victims must hide from threats of attack by people they don't know. 

There are those who report corruption in high places, then tortured in prison for speaking out.

I have noticed brave souls who speak truth to power in their communities and then expelled. 

Missing and murdered women who are forgotten after the forces in place designed to protect them turn away and do nothing.

Why is the wilderness so scary? Why is doing the right thing for the sake of the hungry and needy so ridiculed and shamed?