I found today’s poem for National Poetry Month on the socials; most likely on Bluesky. So short, so intense; a shiv between the ribs, straight to the heart.
The poet, Rick
Lupert, is from Los Angeles and very active in the poetry scene there.
“poem”
America,
so Pretti.
America,
so Good.
Oh, sun,
melt this ICE
until we are
America
again.
©2026 Bas Bleu
Today at sundown, Yom Hashoah begins. This is the day commemorating the Holocaust. And in a time where RWNJs around the world are attempting to enucleate anything and everything from the past that does not comport with what passes for their worldview, it’s more important than ever to remember history, lest we be doomed to repeat it.
It's also Gratitude Monday, and my selection for National
Poetry Month is therefore Avrom Sutzkever’s “1980”. Sutzkever was born in what
is now Belarus; raised first in Siberia, then in in Vilna, Lithuania, and began
his literary career at the age of 17, in 1930. Following the German invasion of
the Soviet Union, he and his family were moved to the Vilnius Ghetto; he and
other writers hid works by Herzl, Chagall and others behind walls, saving them
for the future. Following the Germans murdering his mother and his newborn son,
Sultzkever and his wife escaped from the ghetto, and he fought as a partisan
against the Nazis. After the war, he testified in Nuremberg at the trial of the
man who murdered his mother and son; he and his wife lived for a while in Poland
and then Paris, before moving to Palestine (as it was then).
Sultzkever wrote first in Hebrew but shifted to Yiddish.
During an Aktion in 1941, Sutzkever escaped to the
countryside and was hidden by a peasant woman named Yanova Bertushevitz; she
and her husband kept the poet in their cellar and managed to smuggle food into
the ghetto to his family. (I must insert a note here: last week Israel issued a threat to any Christians or Druze in Lebanon who might consider sheltering Muslims/Arabs from invading IDF forces.) Eventually his worry about the danger to his
protectors and his family led him to return to Vilna, but he did not forget her
gift to him.
“1980” expresses Sutzkever’s gratitude for her courage,
kindness and humanity. It’s therefore the right poem for today—eve of Yom
Hashoah and Gratitude Monday—and also for the times: we all need to be reminded
that, even in a hateful and violent environment, we can choose to be human,
kind and courageous.
Because whoever saves one life saves the world entire.
“1980”
And when I go up as a pilgrim in winter, to recover
the place I was born, and the twin to self I am in my mind,
then I'll go in black snow as a pilgrim to find
the grave of my savior, Yanova.
She'll hear what I whisper, under my breath:
Thank you. You saved my tears from the flame.
Thank you. Children and grandchildren you rescued from death.
I planted a sapling (it doesn't suffice) in your name.
Time in its gyre spins back down the flue
faster than nightmares of nooses can ride,
quicker than nails. And you, my savior, in your cellar you'll hide
me, ascending in dreams as a pilgrim to you.
You'll come from the yard in your slippers, crunching the snow
so I'll know. Again I'm there in the cellar, degraded and low,
you're bringing me milk and bread sliced thick at the edge.
You're making the sign of the cross, I'm making my pencil its pledge.
Translated by Cynthia Ozick
©2026 Bas Bleu
For today’s National Poetry Month entry, we’ll go to Denmark. I did not know Inger Christensen (1935-2009) before now, but I really like her stuff. She didn’t view poetry as “truth” but as “a game, maybe a tragic game—the game we play with a world that plays its own game with us.”
Word.
One of her major works, Alfabet, combines the
alphabet and the Fibonacci sequence, which deserves major props, and it’s very
much in the “game” arena.
I’m giving you “From April: IV”, which has very
striking—grotesque, even—imagery.
From April IV
Already on the street
with our money clutched
in our hands,
and the world is a white laundry,
where we are boiled and wrung
and dried and ironed,
and smoothed down
and forsaken
we sweep
back
in children’s dreams
of chains and jail
and the heartfelt sigh
of liberation
and in the spark trails
of feelings
the fire eater
the cigarette swallower
come
to light|
and we pay
and distance ourselves
with laughter.
©2026 Bas Bleu
Today’s entry for National Poetry Month comes from a woman who was trying to find words to explain the dangers of the world to her young children, and to give them hope, as well.
In the summer of 2016, a writer named Maggie Smith sat down
at a coffee shop in Ohio and wrote “Good Bones” on a yellow legal pad. Three
days after the mass murders at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, it was published
in the literary journal Waxwing, and went viral (not something that
often happens to things published in literary journals), because it expressed
the pain and bewilderment of the world—in 2016 and since.
So much more now to keep from our children.
I think we should hold this one close, during these times.
“Good Bones”
Life is short, though I keep this from my children.
Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine
in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,
a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways
I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least
fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative
estimate, though I keep this from my children.
For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.
For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,
sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world
is at least half terrible, and for every kind
stranger, there is one who would break you,
though I keep this from my children. I am trying
to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,
walking you through a real shithole, chirps on
about good bones: This place could be beautiful,
right? You could make this place beautiful.
©2026 Bas Bleu
Our earworm for National Poetry Month today is from the Irish-American Celtic punk band Dropkick Murphys. Now in their third decade, the Quincy, Mass.-based Murphys are still living their principles: pro-union, anti-fascism, community building.
For 2026, they reworked their “Citizen C.I.A” into “Citizen
I.C.E”, so here it is.
©2026 Bas Bleu
Something contemporaneous for today’s National Poetry Month entry.
I know nothing about the poet—I found it yesterday on Bluesky. He may be this Michael F. DuBois, writer/artist/filmmaker/poet. But I do know: this is the power of poetry.
©2026 Bas Bleu
Women in pretty much every culture live lives of quiet resistance, learning to persevere possibly as early as through their mothers’ milk. No matter where you are, part of the tradition is almost certainly to make women less-than [whatever men are].
So we have learned to resist in small ways as well as
large, despite being told over the centuries to shut up and make sandwiches.
Poetry, of course, is one way of doing this. Poems are subject to
interpretation, and somewhat like ciphers, unless you have the key, you can
miss the message.
This is certainly the case with Iranian women poets. They
call on the rich heritage of Persian poetry to frame their depiction of life
under the ayatollahs, finding brightness where they can, facing darkness with
resolution. The weapons of poetry—language, form, words—can strike with the
force of a club, or slice like the sharpest Shamshir.
Siminbar Khalili, who wrote under the name Simin Behbahani,
was one such. Coming from a progressive and literary family, she produced a
body of work that earned her the sobriquet “The Lioness of Iran”. It also
earned her nominations for the Nobel Prize in Literature twice, in 1999 and
2002. (The Laureates for those years were, respectively, Günter Grass and Imre
Kertész.)
As you might imagine for anyone known as a lioness,
Behbahani made authorities uncomfortable. In 2010 at age 82, she was refused
permission to leave the country; arrested and detained as she attempted to
board a flight to Paris. She was released, but without her passport. If they
thought to contain her strength, they were mistaken. She died in 2014, having
never been allowed out of Iran, but her poetry remains as a source of strength
and hope for us all. Viz: today's National Poetry Month entry.
“My Country, I Will Build You Again”
My country, I will build you again,
If need be, with bricks made from my life.
I will build columns to support your roof,
If need be, with my bones.
I will inhale again the perfume of flowers
Favored by your youth.
I will wash again the blood off your body
With torrents of my tears.
Once more, the darkness will leave this house.
I will paint my poems blue with the color of our sky.
The resurrector of “old bones” will grant me in his bounty
a mountains splendor in his testing grounds.
Old I may be, but given the chance, I will learn.
I will begin a second youth alongside my progeny.
I will recite the Hadith of love and country
With such fervor as to make each word bear life.
There still burns a fire in my breast
to keep undiminished the warmth of kinship
I feel for my people.
Once more you will grant me strength,
though my poems have settled in blood.
Once more I will build you with my life,
though it be beyond my means.
©2026 Bas Bleu
The first time I heard of Ken Saro-Wiwa was in the last week of his life, when Peter Jennings announced that the Nigerian environmental activist, writer and television producer had been hanged by his government for his protests against the multinational petroleum corporations that were destroying the resources of his homeland.
Saro-Wiwa was an articulate and unflagging advocate for the
basic human right to a safe environment, clean water, the sharing of natural
resources—which made him dangerous to the conglomerates and the military
dictatorship in Lagos they’d paid for. His voice and his pen struck more terror
than any firearm he might have wielded—had he ever chosen to, which he did not.
Dictatorships and multinationals—the bigger they grow, the
more enraged they are by anyone not falling into line.
Saro-Wiwa’s non-violent campaign led to his arrest on
trumped-up charges of murder; he was tortured and executed in 1995 at age 54,
along with eight other leaders of his Ogoni tribe.
Families of the nine filed suit against Royal Dutch Shell
the following year for human rights violations in the matter of their deaths.
In 2009, just as the case was about to go to trial in Manhattan, Shell settled
out of court, paying out $15.5M. The company continues to deny any wrongdoing,
issuing one of those statements you hear every fucking time some guilty-as-hell
politician, businessman or corporation settles out of court solely “to put the
matter behind all parties.”
In this case, one of Shell’s mouthpieces intoned, “While we
were prepared to go to court to clear our name, we believe the right way
forward is to focus on the future for Ogoni people.”
Man, these oleaginous scumbags only seem to have one
songbook to sing from, and it’s the same, sour tune every time.
It seems appropriate to remember this particular man as the
US-Israeli war on Iran has sent the global oil markets into chaos—taking the
world with them. You can’t escape the pall of oil in 2026, so we’re all at the
mercy of whoever holds the Strait of Hormuz, which right now is a really
pissed-off Iran. (How much of this is being done by the Kleptocrat to manipulate
those markets is up for debate, but it’s definitely a factor in his greedy,
ignorant, rotting brain.)
Saro-Wiwa wrote “The True Prison” in 1993, when he’d
already been imprisoned twice without trial. He was arrested again in 1994 on
charges of incitement to murder in the deaths of Ogoni chiefs. He was in prison
for more than a year before his execution in 1995. There was outrage around the
world at his hanging, but it didn’t seem to stop anyone from doing business
there.
You remember about the oil, right?
There are so many lines in this poem that make me want to
weep—for Saro-Wiwa and his people, and for me and my people, both then and now.
Do these not resonate with you—cowardice masking as obedience, security agents
running amok for such low wages, lies pounded into a generation’s ears? He has
cut to the heart of the tragedy with not a single word too many.
“The True Prison”
It is not the leaking roof
Nor the singing mosquitoes
In the damp, wretched cell
It is not the clank of the key
As the warden locks you in
It is not the measly rations
Unfit for beast or man
Nor yet the emptiness of day
Dipping into the blankness of night
It is not
It is not
It is not
It is the lies that have been drummed
Into your ears for a generation
It is the security agent running amok
Executing callous calamitous orders
In exchange for a wretched meal a day
The magistrate writing into her book
A punishment she knows is undeserved
The moral decrepitude
The mental ineptitude
The meat of dictators
Cowardice masking as obedience
Lurking in our denigrated souls
It is fear damping trousers
That we dare not wash
It is this
It is this
It is this
Dear friend, turns our free world
Into a dreary prison
©2026 Bas Bleu
I confess that it’s often easier for me to crumple under the cumulative weight of what’s going on in the world than it is to be brave and positive. That’s why it was important for me to take part in No Kings protests—even though I be a solitary being, when I joined with hundreds and thousands and millions, I added to the strength. So I am grateful for every reminder that little voices add up to a roar and that there is light in the darkness when we look for it.
For today’s Gratitude Monday in National Poetry Month, let’s
have something from the 13th Century Persian poet we know as
Rumi. (Today's Iran, Persia.) “The Guest House” is very frequently quoted during mindfulness retreats,
so it seems appropriate for today. It reminds us to invite into our lives and
souls dark things as well as light, because everything—every thing—has
something to teach us. And—I hope—to make us stronger for the necessary.
“The Guest House”
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.
Be grateful for whatever comes.
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
©2026 Bas Bleu
For Easter Sunday in National Poetry Month, let’s have something from the Harlem Renaissance. Festus Claudius McKay was born in Jamaica in 1889. He came to the USA to study at the Tuskegee Institute in 1912 but quickly moved on to Kansas State University. The racism he encountered in this country shocked him. In 1919 he traveled to the UK, where he was active in socialist circles. He returned to the US two years later and wrote for various progressive publications. From 1923 to 1934 decade he traveled and worked around Europe, North Africa and the Soviet Union. When he returned to the States, he settled in Harlem.
A relentless atheist for most of his life, McKay fell out
of love with communism (although remaining a social activist and anti-racist)
and converted to Roman Catholicism. His writings—novels, poems and other
pieces—reflect his experiences as a bisexual Black immigrant man in a nation
that was (and still is) afraid of most of those descriptors.
Today’s poem is from 1922, published in his Harlem
Shadows, so it predates his conversion by a couple of decades. But you can see
that, even as an atheist, McKay was swayed by thoughts of the resurrection.
“The Easter Flower”
Far from this foreign Easter damp and chilly
My soul steals to a pear-shaped plot of ground,
Where gleamed the lilac-tinted Easter lily
Soft-scented in the air for yards around;
Alone, without a hint of guardian leaf!
Just like a fragile bell of silver rime,
It burst the tomb for freedom sweet and brief
In the young pregnant year at Eastertime;
And many thought it was a sacred sign,
And some called it the resurrection flower;
And I, a pagan, worshiped at its shrine,
Yielding my heart unto its perfumed power.
For my Easter flower, I give you a dogwood blossom. Not, technically a flower, but a bract; the cruciform bloom is sometimes seen as a symbol for the cross, and thus a precursor to the Resurrection.
©2026 Bas Bleu
