the scrolls of the dead are long ago
cast upon the ground
unread and gone to earth
it has all been said before
explanations of the wrongs
warnings of famine and floods
calls to change
of chains and how to break them
the sea is dying
the water rising
we might
find a bloodless sharp spark
that will set off
the chain reaction
I see the red line of endings
sweep across the planet like radar like lightning walking
or will we just wash down and shrivel
black like summer's ghost pipes and be gone
shout loud your best words
oh the starving ones
waken a soul in this sea of humanity
come back prodigal son
wealth is not in gold but in the heart
summer green returning for another hundred years
would that be good?
can an answer not be found among yesterday's papers?
it is time for the old men to open their eyes
and see
do not doubt
there is money enough
in the coffers of the governors
the banks of canada
the airlines that fly carbon footprints all over the world
to clean the water
send the doctors
home the lonely and uncared-for
to help the sick
to be heart
but the scrolls of the dead
are long ago cast on the ground unread
and gone to earth
I wrote this poem on the 27th August and sent it for another's look-at. One always loves one's own work! Another set of eyes is a helpful perspective.
Then, on September 2, Bernie Sanders wrote his famous (by now, I hope!) piece about the world of wealth and power, poverty and denial. * It's just that, it's what I have been seeing and saying: but only in the last two years, since Covid, since George Floyd, since reading about the 1885 Montreal Smallpox year, which was just like 2020 - 2021, since reading Consumed, about the sway over the consumer by the corporations that make the consumed crap.* The grocery store aisles are row after row of processed, mass-produced, largely nutritionally-negligent "foods", which the consumer buys. But then most of us are poor, everyone has to work for pay. So no-one has time to cook real food, and there is no grandma, aunt or uncle to lend a hand (everyone works!), and we have to work, to buy the pretend food in the grocery store. It's a consumer's "catch 22". (The book Consumed is an excellent read, even for a quick dip: the ideas begin to expose "manifestations" as you read the daily papers, or walk into a "grocery store".)
I am ashamed that I did not see this, that I bought into "the american dream", the "blessed are the poor" crap that hollywood sells us. If you worked harder, fought harder, didn't follow the line of least resistance, were true to yourself, followed your dream hard enough, then you too, could be a millionaire. [And btw, the school systems, which if they were really about "caring for the children", would hire five times as many teachers and pay them a LOT more, just feed into the assembly line of workers and consumers. They teach them what to think not how to think.]
This, importantly to me, also means that I am a failure because I never made any money. But yeah. Faced with so many people in need, not even far away in poor, desperate Pakistan, but right here in Canada, beside me, I have no financial wherewithal to aid them.
Enough.
*****
The poem was born of the image: a curled scroll of birch bark fallen on the ground and becoming earth. Which is an anagram of heart - surely we have all known this by our second month into poetics. But I remember, I think, thinking: well, so. And moving on. That was when words were just words, (just the stuff of which most thought is made, that we think, think, think all the time) and the power and magic (of which only the fairy tales spoke) of a word written, spoken loud, even whispered, was not really believed in. But look. The lies d.t. has told, and how many millions believe him or go along for the ride. There's money there, to be caught by the standers-by. Or power. The lies of the government, "we care about the people.", and the lies of the oil companies, "We care about the environment." All those giant corporations that flaunt a pink ribbon and give pennies to the charity AND write it off as such!
We have to find a way to make all of our small voices loud. We have to somehow break through and save ourselves and our planet.
Thank you for visiting. It isn't always poetry.
Mumma Yaga
Aja Barber, Consumed
Michael Bliss, Plague: A Story of Smallpox in Montreal
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