Alien Nation

I’m feeling very still.                            

~from  David Bowie’s  "Space Oddity"

Can you hear me, Ender? This is your Uncle Tommy,

from a different generation of pinball—

I just hunted commies and child molesters—but

you!  You saved our entire planet from destruction.

I’m giving you my wizard gear.  No really, I

can’t see it, never could, you know. They can’t heal me,

never could.  And so, in a way I know what you

are going through killing an entire species

without even knowing it was in front of you.

We push buttons faster than our invisible

targets, collect pay and return to the barracks

day after day.  And there is a thrill, don’t deny

it and it won’t deny you.  Ender? Do you hear?

Do you see, Uncle Tommy, how it now needs me?

One lives, and if I can help her survive my guilt

and my boss’s hubris, I will be the speaker

for her dead, I will serve her the rest of my days.

No video or games, only self-reliance

and alliance.  We’re not gonna take it, break it—

those were your words once upon a time, but I won’t

take this endless war machine, the rape of childhood

and faith.  See me?  Feel me?  Touch me?  Heal me?  No way.

Never again, Uncle Tommy, no amount of

wealth would be enough reward for ripping out my

soul and abandoning my heart.  Forgive me, I

thought it was merely play.  Now get out of my way.

Written for Kerry Says ~ Can You Hear Me?

at Imaginary Garden with Real Toads with 

apologies to The Who and to Orson Scott Card.

Copyright © 2014  S.L.Chast

Boycott

At four, I opposed fried eggs and cold tomatoes

uselessly—it takes more than one child to frustrate

a persistent parent. Then, when the school budget 

failed and book use cost bucks, Dad refused to pay, but

I was the only one hurt by his defiance.

I grew up knowing people boycott when compelled

to resist, when done talking; group action is more

effective than individual acts; powerless

people sacrifice most in the process;

and Montgomery’s bus boycott was successful!

We had fewer news sources in the fifties, or

I was protected in my white town from

learning about Rosa Parks and Montgomery’s

challenge to institutionalized racism

until two or three years later, but I was thrilled.

My home showed little evidence of such freedom.

The fact of it made me want to be an adult

who voted and created change and held power

in my public hands.  I was ready to boycott

grapes and to march against the war in Vietnam.

Boycott, sitting down and marching work better than

bullets do, though they take more time and patience

too.  Yet boycotting pleases the little girl in me

who was so young when she first began to see change

is possible with refusal to pay and play.

Written for my prompt 

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Boycott

Copyright © 2014  S.L.Chast

Dreaming

oh I must be dreaming

thinking of poetry club in its honest laughter

being told that I could not rap that I couldn't keep a beat and

how painful when topics just don’t belong in the song

I smile just thinking of the days we laughed at my otherness

in the safety of a room in an unsafe school in a crazy world

where children paid the price over and over for no reason at all

but oh I must be dreaming

because I have a dream I use for a prayer

that religions fade and the holy wipes memories 'til people in a daze

shake hands and hug neighbors to their hearts and take down walls

before any other work at all comes to mind and never mind because

this day is a spiritual celebration of the revelation that all men are brothers

and sisters too with nothing to prove and everything to gain by playing

this new oh I must be dreaming 

game, insane, really shooting up the brain

with love and restitution, no retribution and no Americanization despite

the rising sensation of enough food and shelter for all, no helter skelter,

no more early death because we tossed the economic underpinnings 

of disaster that hid behind religion when poverty was the real killer and truth

could kill poverty any time the walls fell and the bell rang the knell

on CEOs bringing in the bacon cut from the hides of children and now

oh I must be dreaming 

at national boundaries people hang out welcome signs

and dismantle military lines, bullets, shrapnel and land mines before

inviting mother nature to produce chem free food that first does no harm

and second makes us full of stories to give each other before sleeping safely

at last, the only blast, a late party with music and dance celebrating peace 

and while we sleep the green grows tall, trees take over roads and slow down all

whispering new charms at last: no speed, no rush, no scarcity, let’s move right on.

Written for Anthony's Poetics on DMT

at dVerse Poets Pub

Copyright © 2014  S.L.Chast

After Imagination, Truth

Imagine there are no countries (it isn't hard to do)

Nothing to kill or die for and no religion too

Imagine all the people, living life in peace.

~from John Lennon’s “Imagine”

My buddy Jesus, human and divine,

answers my questions with calm persistence

from close enough to touch, hear, and follow

literally and in my growing love—

faith and heart full—I meet him daily.

Around the world, we meet him one-on-one

simultaneously, a paradox not

insane but inspired: Faith surprises me

in its urgency to see new light in

parables and spread it through poetry.

My name means lily and that’s what I see

cut and alive in the vase centered on

my table—peace and tiger, water and

day—one or more each attentive minute

“I am that I am” visits me this way.

Pushed to the edge of our times, I hear us

cry I am only what I am toward

the sky until I realize we know

instinctively and wisely that we, like

Jesus, represent God in our lifetimes.

We may be more, but this at least we know

authentically within creation

when we reach toward each other with sword

or olive branch, when we conspire with earth

to survive, when we connect with nature.

Copyright © 2014  S.L.Chast

Home Again

Welcome blessed rest of home after depth

and intensity of spiritual gathering—

two backstages that balance and support

our performance in all definitions—

industrial and productivity

scales and the immeasurable drama

that is living in view of neighbors and

co-munities with no self-consciousness.

Consciousness and its traps!  Look to flora:

Do diverse species judge each other as

classes of humans do?  Does dandelion

encroach on daffodil or slight wild garlic?

Home, we reflect on breaking visible

conventions of invisible judgments as

spirited community desires—home,

we practice new eyesight and creation.  

Retreats are welcome but temporary

places of recharging for performance—

large or small and near or far from resting

backstage, our home time is short-lived, too, when 

spirit leads us out to gatherings and 

gardening, to tending and attending 

lessons and witnessing injustices—

serving greater purpose than history.

Copyright © 2014  S.L.Chast

The Door to Love

Playful Hermit Crabs
Feature

Daily worship is endless sound: crunching
footsteps, cicadas, air conditioners
murmurs in walls or my heart beats stored for
playback in my throat, wrists, mind and seashells

Daily worship opens doors to love’s knock
and even hermit crabs like me answer
if only to see what love looks like from
a second-hand home, a used perspective

In my peripheral vision, love is
color, surprise bouquets of it in sun
shine, scents of it rising in moonless nights,
surrounds of it touching like ice cream and tongues

At my door, love invites me to come out,
visit creativity and rejoin
creation. Love plants in me a desire
to end my isolation from the source.

Love asks Why borrow a home when you could
come home? Why listen to an echo of your own
voice and beat when wholeness is possible?
Why worship alone in a hard-walled shell?

Routine daily worship leads to surprise
but can't make me recognize it as Grace,
the touch, taste, sight, sound,  and smell I've wanted
wanting me, love knocking at my own door. 

Posted at Open Link Monday where Kerry welcomes us to the Imaginary Garden.

Copyright © 2014  S.L.Chast