Month: July 2012

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Well-worth the read for all you poets out there — and just as good for those that aren’t. Nice!

Caveat

A moody child and wildly wise

Pursued the game with joyful eyes,

Which chose, like meteors, their way,

And rived the dark with private ray:

They overleapt the horizon’s edge,

Searched with Apollo’s privilege;

Through man, and woman, and sea, and star

Saw the dance of nature forward far;

Through worlds, and races, and terms, and times

Saw musical order, and pairing rhymes.

 

Olympian bards who sung

Divine ideas below,

Which always find us young,

And always keep us so.

Those who are esteemed umpires of taste are often persons who have acquired some knowledge of admired pictures or sculptures, and have an inclination of what is elegant; but if you inquire whether they are beautiful souls, and whether their own acts are like fair pictures, you learn that they are selfish and sensual. Their cultivation is local, as if you should rub a log of dry wood in…

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Feeding Molek (for 100-million-girls blog)

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The rock still stands —
growth of bushes,
briers, and half-dead flowers
covering its north side —
the south side shows
its grooved-smooth-gray-top,
this ragged side, chipped,
well-worn from use.

~ * ~
For thousands of years
it was a place of
fresh-born scrub-bushes
and twisted-tiny
crawling roses. The rock
at noon, the hottest hour
of the day, so it
would pull the seeping blood
deep into its skin.
Faster than room and space made —
bodies slain and pushed aside —
they lined up with,
the crying children
held tight to breast, shoulder, face —
whispering, “remember the honor,
necessity. You must die.”

In this way they fed Molek
the blood of their children
for days-on-end, one-by-one.
Crying babies, death knell ringing
across a summer sky while
the hot-wet-smell of blood
filled the breeze, floated away.

~ * ~

One hundred, two hundred, three
thousand, four thousand, more —
slaughtered into dark-gray silence,
quiet like the years
passing after them.
Two thousand years,
countless days, and
100-millions-girls later.

~ * ~

They come to the rock,
clear the way for sacrifice —
the blood, child blood, warm blood
splashes on the crawling roses.
The lines grow long, filled
with crying children
held tight to shoulder,
breast, face — whispering,
“remember the honor, necessity.
You must die.”

In this way we feed Molek
the blood of our children
for days-on-end, one-by-one.
Crying babies, death-knell ringing
across a summer sky while
we pretend it’s an illusion —
turn away, hide our eyes.

The rock still stands —
the growth of bushes,
briers,
and half-dead flowers
covering its north side;
its south side chipped,
well-worn from use —
waiting.

~July 2012

This poem was written for the 100-million-girls website. This site was created, and is managed, by my friend Sheree Rabe. Sheree is a poet, an attorney, and now a human-rights activist that I met via Twitter. She has a wonderful poetry site HERE, but it’s her 100-million-girls site HERE that prompted this poem. The site is dedicated to creating awareness and change in the world, and to stop the mass slaughter of young children in our world. PLEASE take time to visit her site and consider helping in this endeavor. If you’d like to know more about Sheree’s poetry, 100-million-girls effort, or if you’d just like to say “Hi” — you may do so in the following ways:

Sheree Rabe
3267 Bee Caves Road
Suite 107, PMB 281
Austin, Texas 78746
Sheree@shereerabe.com
My blog is at http://www.poetonpoetry.blogspot.com
Facebook Page:  http://www.facebook.com/poetonpoetry
Find me on Twitter @poetonpoetry

OR

BLOG: www.100milliongirls.blogspot.com 
FACEBOOK: www.facebook.com/100milliongirls 
TWITTER: @100milliongirls
PERSONAL WEBSITE: www.shereerabe.com 
#shereerabe

Artwork Credit:   Artwork by (c)  Tirin, aka Tilde Carlsten. Please visit her blog (offering a variety of interesting topics and great artwork HERE.) Thanks and gratitude to Tirin for the use of this picture.

Citations:

Wikipedia contributors. “Moloch.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 11 Jul. 2012. Web. 21 Jul. 2012.

Molek – explanation from Wikipedia:

As a god worshipped by the Phoenicians and Canaanites, Moloch had associations with a particular kind of propitiatory child sacrifice by parents. Moloch figures in the Book of Deuteronomy and in the Book of Leviticus as a form of idolatry (Leviticus 18:21: “And thou shalt not let any of thy seed pass through the fire to Moloch”). In the Hebrew Bible, Gehenna was initially where apostate Israelites and followers of various Baalim and Canaanite gods, including Moloch, sacrificed their children by fire (2 Chr. 28:3, 33:6; Jer. 7:31, 19:2–6).

Moloch has been used figuratively in English literature from John Milton‘s Paradise Lost (1667) to Allen Ginsberg‘s Howl (1955), to refer to a person or thing demanding or requiring a very costly sacrifice.

Memory of Fire, 1976

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journey-svetlana-novikova

Two fireplaces remain
in this house, built in the Twenties.
Their elegance long-lost,
forever-gone,
each leftover mantel
a home for knick-knacks, small
framed pictures, newly received letters.

The living room boasts a fancy
oil heater – modern,
square box of fire —
heat roaring behind tiny doors,
the ring burning bright.
Brown-box filled with fresh oil,
proudly standing
on the hearth, winner
over the old fireplace it hides —
Better than wood and coal,
used sparingly – this precious oil –
on the coldest of days.

Loyal, old dinning room stove
stays true to plain and useful.
It’s black-iron belly – gorging
itself on wood and coal,
a ritual breakfast-dinner-supper.

Each day – You
hot-top, flat-for-use practical friend.
You, I loved and understood,
as you joined me in play —
melting-and-mixing crayons
in old tin cans. Trying to find
that certain-perfect and unique color – Like
a favorite pet: I fed you, cleaned you, played
beside you on cold winter nights . . .
anticipated your warmth
on cold winter mornings.

No fireplaces remain
in this ghost of a house
wavering and faded in my old child’s mind.
Each mantel long gone,
along with the heart pills,
chipped collectable plates,
half-cut school pictures, and
several frayed pieces of unfinished-hand-tatted-lace.

 

~July 2012

 

Artwork Credits: Special thanks for the use of Journey by ©Svetlana Novikova. Please visit the artist at her website or at Fine Arts America to find out more about her work, or to purchase a print, poster, or greeting cards. Also, you can see her information on our Featured Artists Page.

 

Photography Prints

Declaration of Internet Freedom

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internet icon

 

 
 

PREAMBLE

We believe that a free and open Internet can bring about a better world. To keep the Internet free and open, we call on communities, industries and countries to recognize these principles. We believe that they will help to bring about more creativity, more innovation and more open societies.

We are joining an international movement to defend our freedoms because we believe that they are worth fighting for.
 
Let’s discuss these principles — agree or disagree with them, debate them, translate them, make them your own and broaden the discussion with your community — as only the Internet can make possible.
 
Join us in keeping the Internet free and open.
 
[You can interact with the following text on reddit, Techdirt, Cheezburger and Github.]
 

DECLARATION

We stand for a free and open Internet.

We support transparent and participatory processes for making Internet policy and the establishment of five basic principles:

  • Expression: Don’t censor the Internet.
  • Access: Promote universal access to fast and affordable networks.
  • Openness: Keep the Internet an open network where everyone is free to connect, communicate, write, read, watch, speak, listen, learn, create and innovate.
  • Innovation: Protect the freedom to innovate and create without permission. Don’t block new technologies, and don’t punish innovators for their users’ actions.
  • Privacy: Protect privacy and defend everyone’s ability to control how their data and devices are used.
 

SIGN THE DECLARATION

Individuals: Go to the action pages at Access,CREDO, EFF and Free Press to add your name.

Taz (commonality)

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This dog plays
at the same game:
drop the ball
roll the ball
fetch the ball
again.
Day after day:
drop the ball
roll the ball
fetch the ball
again.
It is his career,
not so dissimilar
from mine,
day after day
in the end:
drop the ball
roll the ball
fetch the ball
again.