Between the sword and the block

When I was a teenager, Khalil Gibran’s The Prophet was all the rage. I confess I did not read it, but my lack of support notwithstanding, Gibran is the third-best selling poet of all time. (Shakespeare and Lao Tzu were ahead of him, if you’re asking.)

Gibran was born in Lebanon when it was part of the Ottoman Empire and moved with his mother and siblings to the United States around the turn of the last century. He was a gifted artist as well as a poet; another of those super-creative types.

Today’s entry for National Poetry Month, “Pity the Nation”, was published in 1933, two years after Gibran’s death. I think you’ll agree that it is heartbreaking, and that we are living that heartbreak today.

Again.

Still.

“Pity the Nation”

Pity the nation that is full of beliefs and empty of religion.
Pity the nation that acclaims the bully as hero,
and that deems the glittering conqueror bountiful.

Pity a nation that despises a passion in its dream,
yet submits in its awakening.

Pity the nation that raises not its voice
save when it walks in a funeral,
boasts not except among its ruins,
and will rebel not save when its neck is laid
between the sword and the block.

Pity the nation whose statesman is a fox,
whose philosopher is a juggler,
and whose art is the art of patching and mimicking.

Pity the nation that welcomes its new ruler with trumpeting,
and farewells him with hooting,
only to welcome another with trumpeting again.

 

©2025 Bas Bleu

 

No hiding place

Since National Poetry Month this year is about how we find a way not only to rid ourselves of the fascist locusts that have swarmed our government, but also to build a lasting foundation for democracy, inclusion and justice, our first earworm is Curtis Mayfield’s “People Get Ready”.

(I’d have said “rebuild”, except I don’t know how much of the old structure is left. When Republicans openly call for anti-constitutional measures, we crossed a rather terrifying line some time ago.)

Because I think we’re in that stage—reeling from the Daliesque environment that has settled around us, each of us wondering, “Well, but—I’m one person; what can I do?” I feel that myself. But fortunately, there are people much smarter (and more organizationally adept) than I who are already working on actions that we can take en masse. And the “masse” part is what is important: not only are we stronger together, and thousands of voices are heard better than one, but we are also safer in the face of authorities who do not hesitate to take extra-judicial measures to silence opponents.

“People Get Ready” has some Gospel components, but it’s definitely a song for our times. “Faith is the key” isn’t necessarily limited to faith in God, or in Christ; we need faith in our cause and in our strength. The movement is open to all—open the doors and board. Moreover, I like this warning, which all the Bible thumping Rs might want to consider:

“There ain’t no room for the hopeless sinner

“Who would hurt all mankind just to save his own”

Okay, no they won’t. Tough toenails, then.

There’s an embarrassment of riches when it comes to performances of “People Get Ready”. I do like Jeff Beck and Rod Stewart, but for this time and this place, it’s Eva Cassidy, a woman who exhibited such grace, resilience and joy in her tremendous talent. Let her inspire you.

 

©2025 Bas Bleu

 

Laugh like you've got gold mines

An essential component of resistance, resilience and persistence—all three—is hope. You have to believe that there is light, no matter how long and dark the tunnel is, so that you can fight, protect yourself and continue. There is no quick fix for the mess we're in, so we've got to be ready to play the long game.

In Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl observed fellow inmates of Nazi concentration camps and concluded that those who had something to hope for—a fiancée, a home or (in his case) an academic paper to reconstruct—on the whole survived, while those who didn’t, died, all other things being equal.

During his captivity in the Hanoi Hilton from 1965 to 1971, Lieutenant Commander Bob Shumaker constructed a home for his family, line by line and brick by brick—in his mind, as POWs weren’t allowed writing materials. Eight years later, he built the house, laying the bricks he’d seen in his mind. “Everyone has to have a dream to preserve in prison. Mine was to have a house for my family,” he later said. It’s what kept him going.

We who find ourselves imprisoned in the Project 2025 hellscape also need hope to sustain us as we organize to resist for however long it takes. Today’s entry for National Poetry Month is therefore Maya Angelou’s “And Still I Rise.”  As your eyes fly across the page, feel the cadence, the rise and fall of emphasis, the sibilance and glottal stops.

Then watch her recitation below and experience it even more fully.

“And Still I Rise”

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may tread me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops.
Weakened by my soulful cries.

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't you take it awful hard
'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines
Diggin' in my own back yard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I'll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I've got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history's shame
I rise
Up from a past that's rooted in pain
I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.

 

©2025 Bas Bleu

 

We've met subhuman rights before

Can’t have National Poetry Month without e.e. cummings. And today I’m thinking of how he might describe our current leadership. Greedy, corrupt, cruel, criminal; this is what we're dealing with. And yep—he’s got us covered.

a salesman is an it that stinks Excuse

Me whether it’s president of the you were say
or a jennelman name misder finger isn’t
important whether it’s millions of other punks
or just a handful absolutely doesn’t
matter and whether it’s in lonjewray

or shrouds is immaterial it stinks

but whether it please itself or someone else
makes no more difference than if it sells
hate condoms education snakeoil vac
uumcleaners terror strawberries democ
ra(caveat emptor)cy superfluous hair

or Think We’ve Met subhuman rights Before

*     *     *     *     *     *     *     *

Oh, indeed. Indeed we have met them.

And then there’s this one, which describes Li'l Donnie Two-scoops, his aides, his entire Cabinet and every GOPig in Congress:

a politician is an arse upon
which everyone has sat except a man

 

©2025 Bas Bleu

 

Syntax of mutual aid

April, as a poet has said, is the cruelest month. Given the current climate of cut-price jackboots marching over education, scientific advancement, international alliances, human decency and the arts (among other elements that mark a civilized society), we need to hunker down around things like the Pythagorean Theorem, Baroque polyphony, the Oxford comma debate, Expressionism and, yes, poetry, as a way to keep bright the fires of sanity, grace and compassion.

So let’s think of National Poetry Month this year as a necessary component of the spirit of resistance, persistence and perhaps a few victories over ignorance, fear, greed and buffoonery. We are faced with an unprecedented assault on our civilization; sadly and shamefully, that assault is coming from within our own walls. So we need every resource to organize and resist this evil.

To get us going, then, let’s have a poem from British-born Denise Levertov. Levertov was the daughter of a Hasidic Jew who left Russian Poland (half of Poland having been part of Russia until 1918) after World War I and emigrated to England, where he became an Anglican priest. The entire family campaigned for human rights, which on its own would have kept her from being allowed into the United States under the current administration, but she came here in 1947, so she spent most of her career as an American.

Levertov was one of many writers and artists who spoke out against the Vietnam War. She was among those who did more than just speak out—she withheld tax payments, and she was one of the founders of the group RESIST, a philanthropic non-profit that funds grass-roots activist organizations. RESIST was created in 1967 in response to the anti-war proclamation, “A Call to Resist Illegitimate Authority”.

So let’s start out the month with something appropriately titled.

“Making Peace”

A voice from the dark called out,
             ‘The poets must give us
imagination of peace, to oust the intense, familiar
imagination of disaster. Peace, not only
the absence of war.’

                                   But peace, like a poem,
is not there ahead of itself,
can’t be imagined before it is made,
can’t be known except
in the words of its making,
grammar of justice,
syntax of mutual aid.

                                       A feeling towards it,
dimly sensing a rhythm, is all we have
|until we begin to utter its metaphors,
Learning them as we speak.

                                              A line of peace might appear
if we restructured the sentence our lives are making,
revoked its reaffirmation of profit and power,
questioned our needs, allowed
long pauses . . .

                        A cadence of peace might balance its weight
on that different fulcrum; peace, a presence,
an energy field more intense than war,
might pulse then,
stanza by stanza into the world,
each act of living
one of its words, each word
a vibration of light—facets
of the forming crystal.

 ©2025 Bas Bleu

 

Gratitude Monday: three things

It’s the last day of March in the year 2025 and I’m grateful that I’m not the richest man on earth who has spent the last week going on every platform to which he has access whining about how people who criticize him (whether for his DOGiE or his EV efforts) are mean; evil, even.

Also that Greenlanders noped out of any kind of photo op for Usha Vance, so she and her lame-ass husband had to content themselves with an appearance at some kind of Space Cadet base on the island. (Vance still managed to wave his willie about taking over the country, but he couldn’t do it directly to the inhabitants.)

Also: Spring.

 

©2025 Bas Bleu