Venetia's posts with tag: search for humanity
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I have maintained for several years, that genocide and violence have been the human norm. This is a constant theme in many of my poems. I have been challenged to prove my assertion. I am in the process of creating a genocide timeline.This timeline will cover (hopefully), the 5 thousand years, of genocidal, recorded history. Please feel free to suggest additions to me. It is a work in progress, as I will be working backwards from 2008. I must add, that it is time that we become more than human and that the norm must become, the aberrant. For any history buffs interested in this project, please contact me about becoming an editor, in order to add to the timeline. You have to register first, in order to become an editor; the link is at:
  Timeline Sign-up. 
HOWEVER, my timeline can be viewed at: Genocide Timeline, A .
I posted this poem, several weeks ago and find it appropo in light of this project, to repost: We write of peace. while engaging in war...declare our love of the other, passionately, with a bewildering contradictory sincerity...eons ago, man picked up a rock and bashed another in the head; today we can, with cold calculation kill from greater distances and the hundreds and thousands of broken bodies lie dead...we have advanced from rocks to missiles, while we arrogantly insist, to have evolved pass our barbaric antecedents...continue to engage in hostilities and violence...a violence that has been unremitting and is the chosen method of problem resolution...our 5000 years of recorded history, reads like an epic saga of blood, gore and terror...we are like the sophomoric adult, who refuses to grow up and play nicely...the child who refuses to share his toys...with a hatred and disdain, of the other, that seems to be hardwired, in our genes...but...we are filled with outrage, when we view news stories and the evidence of this violence and the lie, is revealed...I say to you, my dear reader, my loving friends, my skeptical detractors, that we are the problem...you and I...and we must be the solution...the politicians have no payoff in solving these problems...this taxonomic squabbling rewards them richly...the gun runners, the robber barons...these bottom feeders and scavengers...it must be you and I, the ordinary person who must state quietly, or loudly, with conviction, unequivocally - no mas, no more, nicht mehr, nient'altro, não mais, אין כל יותר, niet meer, 没有, 더 이상, sόχι άλλος, لا الكثير...homo sapiens sapiens must become more than human or surely, we will all die...we must eradicate that genetic instinct to fear the other...we must breed out the fear of being different, from our genome...we must alter, on the microscopic level, the emotional level, the need to reject other tribes...we must become more than human...
We watch the woman as she approaches the bus stop
shoddily dressed, grime etched in her skin.
She holds her paper cup out,
rattling and jiggling the few coins;
maybe
hoping to entice more paltry sums,
not meeting our accusatory gazes
as she begs for alms.
We step away with a grimace, a flaring of nostrils
on our collective corporate faces;
afraid of contagion and contamination,
embarrassed by her evident
travails and decent into madness.
The voices in her head
seemingly drown out all other sounds.
and our rejections
We know
she is trapped in a schizophrenic nightmare,
friends have become enemies,
enemies are friends,
demons cavort,
in the rooms in her head.
Conversation provokes nothing but
delusions and hallucinations,
questions escalate into recriminations,
and hysteria;
frustrating I am sure
for her loved ones, if she has loved ones,
wherever they may be.
Guiltily, from the corner of my eye
I observe as she paces back forth,
gesticulating madly;
her words falling out in a convoluting mix
of verbs, nouns, adjectives and adverbs.
a veritable Tower of Babel.
eventually subsiding
into inertia.
I,
can do nothing
we,
elect to do nothing;
bearing witness
as she deteriorates
further into a lonely world.
Befriended by none but her demons
she moves on, pass us
seeking more opportune vistas.
shuffling down the street.
jiggling her paper cup,
begging for alms.
We,
returning to our newspapers
cell phones and conversations
emit a sigh of relief.
I pray that I never become blinded,
ignoring our common humanity,
I pray that I know that it is better,
to love the honorable agnostic,
and despise the god-fearing monster.
Lord, oh Lord, I pray,
that I realize words can cut and murder,
no less than the knife,
puncture and fracture,
no less than a bullet,
demolish and destroy,
no less than a tank,
reducing all of us.
I pray that we forever stop hurling,
the millions words we use,
to identify the other,
vanishes,
because I am he and she is me.
 | Flotsam | Oct 1, '07 9:44 PM
for everyone |
Refugeed flotsam
in the sea of man
I was
tugged by conflicting tidal emotions
escaped a continent divided by despair
to whirl
seemingly, directionless
my sextant, shattered
the sailor's almanac
missing its sheets
I had not given oaths or loyalty
to creed or cult -
the anchored companions and lifesavers,
my family and friends
hope and dreams
peace and contentment, my goal
this life, too short
to choose sides or be land-locked
by rhetoric or politics
the empty blathering
of the insincere and facile
Too often, forced to make choices
between gods and man
right and wrong
self and others
daily
no matter what moors us
to this life
I choose to continue
floating, exposed and adrift
purposely self-proclaimed and propelled
flotsam
in the sea of man
She sits in the jungle garden
pulling weeds filling a corroded wheelbarrow,
with verve and vim reminiscent of her youth;
yanking them out with a determined zeal
the entire focus is on the guilty plants.
Neighbors walk by, picking up the pace
as they avert their faces
(if you don't make eye contact does it mean she is invisible?)
She is nothing to them
unkempt and old
with that certain decrepit aged Camembert de Normandie smell.
You know the one,
pungent;
it reeks of age and experience,
informs you flagrantly, that one closer is to death
than birth (you fear).
Her face,
too etched with lines and crowned with dingy colored gray hair;
no Renoir, to soften her lines and wrinkled skin,
Rubens, to plump and round out her flesh;
what master would want to immortalize her?
Finished weeding, she stands,
dusts her pants off,
peers around catching a glimpse of me
spying out my window.
She smiles and winks;
I pretend not to see her
after all,
she is just an ugly old woman,
with no friends and family
to drop by for a plate of cookies and milk,
or companionship.
inspired by charli
I wanna dream, I wanna fly, jumping up and leaping into today. Face to the sun, moon and stars, arms spread wide and full of wonder and delight, bolting from mundaners, stick in the mudders, walk a straight liners. I wanna amaze and astound the straight laced and the two-faced, all the corporate type, tight asses. I wanna shine a light into the minders, condemners and cripplers of seekers, binders and hobblers of dreamers. I wanna see behind closed doors, fling them wide open, ripping down shades of traditions and sly perditions. I wanna huff and puff until all the stale air is released, inhaling deeply a bracing breeze of change, exposed once again to the impossible, the improbable. I wanna look at the world with a child's eye, instead of giving way to the arbitrators, the oh so righteous and sanctimoneus. Just for once I wanna dream, I wanna fly.
We watch the woman as she approaches the bus stop shoddily dressed, grime etched in her skin. She holds her paper cup out, rattling and jiggling the few coins; maybe hoping to entice more paltry sums, not meeting our accusatory gazes as she begs for alms. We step away with a grimace, a flaring of nostrils on our collective corporate faces; afraid of contagion and contamination, embarrassed by her evident travails and decent into madness. The voices in her head seemingly drown out all other sounds. and our rejections We know she is trapped in a schizophrenic nightmare, friends have become enemies, enemies are friends, demons cavort, in the rooms in her head. Conversation provokes nothing but delusions and hallucinations, questions escalate into recriminations, and hysteria; frustrating I am sure for her loved ones, if she has loved ones, wherever they may be. Guiltily, from the corner of my eye I observe as she paces back forth, gesticulating madly; her words falling out in a convoluting mix of verbs, nouns, adjectives and adverbs. a veritable Tower of Babel. eventually subsiding into inertia. I, can do nothing we, elect to do nothing; bearing witness as she deteriorates further into a lonely world. Befriended by none but her demons she moves on, pass us seeking more opportune vistas. shuffling down the street. jiggling her paper cup, begging for alms. We, returning to our newspapers cell phones and conversations emit a sigh of relief.
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