Big Earth Ball (2017)

Ball Of Confusion (That's What The World Is Today)

Lawn party for the March 1970 solar eclipse, me 
sitting on a blanket in an army jacket and long skirt,
embroidering inserts to bell jeans and holding thick
negatives for the sun show when . . .
“Uncle John’s Band” plays from dorm windows lining
the quad and both the stoned and the merely happy
rise in swooping dance, eyes closed, inner harmony . . . 

We needed a break from anti-war demonstration,

the Black platform and certainty of right and wrong. 

Clarity grew from confusion, a sharp diamond set

in too much all at once . . .

“Say it, A Ball of Confusion” “The first days are

the hardest days, don’t you worry anymore . . . “

The disco ball had not yet turned, rock ruled ~

Temptation to “Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out”

was hard to resist: I cut all my classes that spring, 

started smoking, played hours of duplicate bridge

in the Student Union . . . 

parted my long hair straight, wore wire-rimmed

glasses, carried Sartre’s Being and Nothingness 

in my pocket, took on Nausea and avoided the gaze

of those who just didn’t get it:   We walk in space.

We build things to destroy people and we walk in space.

We walk and look up at the sun, see its angry glare . . .

Who cares if we go blind?

Sight from blindness grows as clarity from confusion

“You know all the rules by now and the fire from ice”

Darkness rises as the moon bites into the sun.

Posted for Poets United Poetry Pantry 

because of tomorrow's solar eclipse.

This poem is slightly revised from 2 August 2012, over 5 years ago, when I wrote it for dVerse's "Poetics ~ ‘His’tory, ‘Her’story & time machines" hosted by Brian Miller.  

(Oh what a prompt!  What a post!  I miss Brian.  

Almost every poet who blogs was there, and 

most of you read this poem at that time.)

"Big Earth Ball" is about the March 7, 1970 Solar Eclipse. I was a freshman at Clark U in Worcester, MA.  We could look up that year's events in an encyclopedia, but here's what I recall: 

1970 was the year "Uncle John's Band" appeared on the Grateful Dead's 4th studio album "Workingman's Dead," and the year the Temptations recorded the hit single "Ball of Confusion (That's What the World Is Today)" for the Gordy label. Both songs helped shape my take on  world, sun, and moon on that grey day. "Turn on, tune in, drop out" is a 1967 quote from either Dr. Timothy Leary or Marshall McLuhan to popularize a psychedelic counter-culture (of which I was not a part). On 21 July 1969, the  Apollo 11 moon landing with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin was televised live, and we heard Armstrong say his famous words "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."  I watched in a little bar near the Hunter Mountain ski resorts where I was during the 1969 Woodstock Festival (but that is another story).   !970 was the year the Vietnam draft lottery began and set male students on edge. Protest against the US involvement in Vietnam and its undeclared war there had escalated since 1964 and was particularly heated by 1970. It was one year after Black student protests took over the campus, and finally gained them some scholarships and courses. On May 4th, 1970 ~ 2 months after the solar eclipse of my poem ~ the  U.S. National Guard killed four young people during a demonstration on the Kent State campus in Ohio. "As a result four million students go on strike at more than 450 universities and colleges" (Wikipedia).

My blog poems are rough drafts. 

Please respect my copyright. 

Copyright © 2012 S.L.Chast

Revised © 2017 Susan L. Chast

When Climate Change Became Real

source

By the winter of 2020,

swimming was a required subject in

public and private primary schools.

Worldwide flooding was increasing daily,

and concerned parents gave children extra

water time, extra wilderness training.

The goal was survival, with or without

gills, but the more time submerged in water

the more possible was transformation.

The gills came at puberty, along with

an ability when underwater

to absorb plant life and small bio forms.

Some say prejudice caused the water’s rise,

and some say climate change acted alone,

but everyone wants their children to thrive.

For my prompt 

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Flood

My blog poems are rough drafts. 

Please respect my copyright. 

© 2017 Susan L. Chast

Winning Our Civil War

Civilization—

light that tamed darkness—

seems villainous now

that fascism reigns.

Taking down statues

is a weak response

to dissolving statutes

that protected all.

Instead, let’s drape them

in black mourning cloth--

reveal the scars they

made in bright plazas.

We’ve pretended that

symbols have little

power, and we pretend

no more, but stand up

and drape our cloth as

another layer

of grief and volume

replacing silence.

In public—here and now—

we reveal disease

is the heart of hate

and hold hands to heal.

We shall not be moved

into white liberation—

never again let

our neighbors be used.

To be civilized

we need both darkness

and light.  We will end

civil wars and last—

or continue to

fight democracy

and lose the last shred

of our sanity.

Note: Draping with black cloth is an action borrowed from the earliest World AIDS day (December First, since 1988), where the action symbolized what we lost in senseless AIDS deaths. Draping statues that honor our white supremacist past, symbolizes the opposite—that we still have to lose a limb or more to rid ourselves of racism.

My blog poems are rough drafts. 

Please respect my copyright. 

© 2017 Susan L. Chast

Exposing the Seams

source

Grandmother taught us to hide our stitches

when hemming, darning and tailoring—

her lesson as deep as Mom’s not to shoplift.

We picked out offending threads with grubby little

fingers just as we brought tiny lifted things

back to salespeople, shame-faced and contrite.

We did the same with our skin, hiding the scars

of stitches and cysts, covering the pock marks

of childhood diseases, and composing poker faces

for emotional and spiritual wounds healing and unhealed,

trying to hide our isms, hushing quickly when

“our slip is showing” or we “air our dirty laundry.”

Yet now we learn we must air wounds to mend them,

walk our grievances in upper class streets to create change,

expose the harm to our nation’s soul to remain human

or rejoin humanity.  If some of us tattoo our bodies freely,

making art of wrist cuts and face slashes, who can blame us?

We broadcast beliefs and relationships like billboards.

We work as hard to expose wounds as we did

to hide them.  We watch them turn to scars and medals

or disappear, marking progress and sealing memberships.

And now I own my grey hair and wrinkles, my gender

and liver spots, my whiteness and color, I learn how

they add to or reduce harm and good in the world.

For Sumana's 

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Kintsugi: Art of Mending

My blog poems are rough drafts. 

Please respect my copyright. 

© 2017 Susan L. Chast

If They Be of Use

July 7, 2017: A wildfire burns on a mountain near Ashcroft, B.C.

DARRYL DYCK/THE CANADIAN PRESS

Take these tears if they be of use
in quenching your forest fires.
They’re too salty to quench a thirst.

Cry with horses, trees and eagles
Cry with those who can never cry
but run and burn, call out and die

while we hold buckets on the side
to catch the teardrops as they fall
and try to make our buckets full.

But water evaporates faster
than we can gather it, and salt
left behind is dry as plaster.

Who can wring out the clouds and steam,
to draw the water needed here?
Oceans overflow, but not near.

Take our actions as true prayers

if they be of use, though unformed.
They're all we have to counter fear.

My blog poems are rough drafts. 

Please respect my copyright. 

© 2017 Susan L. Chast

The Holy Water Cycle*

In code, we call our planet earth.

Indeed, that’s what I stand upon

and keep sight of, even when

in water.  I who seek the shore

for solace forget we could call

our home ocean, the larger part,

which overwhelms and mystifies.

Is gravity enough to keep

water in place? I wonder, then

marvel at the water cycle

and its sun-driven processes*

in words that roll off of my tongue:  

From any reservoir, water

evaporates and condenses, 

precipitates, infiltrates,

runs off surfaces and gathers

again, molecules waving to

each other and bringing their trash

with them, baggage renewed each day.

Our bodies are also water

reservoirs, yet we focus on

the solid parts and overlook

our correspondence with the earth,

code name of our planet home.

Each minute we undergo it.

The water cycle. I want to

sound those two words as holy.  As

they are: Water Cycle.  Music

in my eardrums.  I hear the pulse

clearly when water’s in my ears,

when my fingers are in my ears.

This most amazing invention

of God and nature, unceasing

water cycle.  I don’t always

love it like I should when I thirst

or when my bowels want to burst—

and yet I would pledge allegiance

to it in a minute if faith allowed.

Faith lets me affirm holiness

and so recognize water cycle

at the core of my belief, God

exists. What grand design! Water

Cycle.  The words are code for life

on earth, for gills to breathe and for

seasons that transform it into art.

Nature is the first artist, first

Bible—creator of all we

long to imitate in science

and art and faith. Whew!  Talk about

survival and we talk about water.

Talk about air and we talk of

water.  Talk of dry land and talk

water.  Water Cycle.  Water

music.  Walking on water.   Prayer.

If you don’t stand up whispering

water cycle with reverence,

I have failed at this holy dance.

Today I am inspired by We Should Never Have Called It Earth by Kate Marvel, Contributing Editor at On Being, and also a quote by Nichola Tesla that is viral on FB:  

“My brain is only a receiver, in the Universe there is a core from which we obtain knowledge, strength and inspiration. I have not penetrated into the secrets of this core, but I know that it exists.”   ― Nikola Tesla

 *Water cycle at Wikipedia

My blog poems are rough drafts. 

Please respect my copyright. 

© 2017 Susan L. Chast