Poetry: Positive Feedback & Tree Waltz

by Linh Nguyen

Positive Feedback

ever wonder why we destroy something so beautiful?

that river where our blood runs
beating in measured harmonies
to life surrounding, singing in glory

that forest of trails where we once walked joy escaping through quaking leaves,
each footstep lighting stories,
inspiring movies, music, and poetry

that ocean of our origin, waters of wisdom
of foam-swept jewels and deep blue treasures,
adorn with coral reefs and ancestral anemones,

dancing in sea-life

that laughter and bright-eyes spark,
windows to our souls, shadows to our selves,
images of our "God"

all, that gives answers to who we are
stunted by solipsism, gored through greed
hushed by bombs and bullets, silenced,

stolen and buried in graveyards
of steel, plastic, concrete, chemicals, walls,
dividing, growing, burning, feeding, revealing...


ever wonder why we destroy something so beautiful?

Tree Waltz

every tree rises within us,
their branches reach for our breath
growing within each heartbeat
calling forth the song
in each inspiration,
lungs filling to form
what cannot be seen,
but felt, here
in the wave that moves us
dissolving in exhalation
into a dance forming within a pause
and flowering in-between

finding shape in curving branches
how they hold what has fallen
awakening our skin to snow
our sternum to strangers

as resonance rises through our roots
and drums the dead to life
buds open in the listening
to wisdom hardened in heartwood
whispering through aging rings
secrets proffer in tactile invitation
the bliss of fractal unison

is it in the silence or the
language of her that moves us?
hands to air, to snow
to embody the music of the unseen
to hold in prayer
the forgotten songs of
which we waltz to

when war of words stain the cell
and pompous pixels pain the heart
peace arrives in a waltz
with trees

What Will They Tell the Children?

by Angela Nolan

What will they tell the children?
In the generations to come.

Amerika is festering
And the world festers with her.
The wound is old but the boils and pus are worsening.
Blood is pooling just below the surface – a dark purple snake.
The orange one will quicken the fall
But it was coming anyway.
We eat too much, we consume too much, we waste too much.
Too many don’t care or are still lost in a dream of manifest destiny
That was never real in the first place.
What a ridiculous notion that one is favored over another in the eyes of the creator.
Who made up this nonsense?

What will they tell the children?
In the generations to come.

When Amerika falls it will be a devastation
But might it save the world after all?
For to succumb to the death urge of our society is to die before living.
It is to starve in the lavish lap of the earth’s abundance.
It is to be silent when every nerve in your body is screaming, “NO!”
It is to hail the chief and not step out of line.
It is to give up your woman’s body as sacrifice to the irreverent god that made it ugly.
It is to watch the natural world and too many people die unloved.
It is a procession of insults too numerous to count.
It is degradation, humiliation, trauma, pain, and loss.
It is feeling oneself as the shame of the world.

What will they tell the children?
In the generations to come.

They will tell the children that people had to take sides.
They will tell them that neutrality and inaction were participation.
They will tell them that passivity and hopeful thinking were inappropriate with wolves at the door.
They will tell them how women and people of color were dehumanized and who did it.
They will tell them there was a point when it wasn’t too late and we missed it. By a lot.
They will tell them there was only one true response.
There was only resistance – pure, visceral, instinctual, and right.
We were taught to be compliant.
And then we were taught to be grateful to our oppressors.
And then we were.
They will tell them the light at the end of the tunnel was the train.

The children will know the difference.
By our words.
By our stories.
By our defiance.
Beyond grief now. Beyond hope and optimism and happy smiling faces.
We live in the betwixt and between – the festering season.

The season when everything fake is real and everything real is fake.
The season when despots and petty tyrants have their way.
The season when the snow stops and the ocean’s rise.
The season when love doesn’t conquer all, or even a little bit.
The season when misogyny is on parade and people cheer.
The season of forgetting history, again.

What will they tell the children?
In the generations to come.

They will tell them that some chose to think with all their hearts, and minds, and spirits.
They will tell of ones who put their bodies on the frontline and of those who wrote about it.
They will tell that most people on earth only wanted to live in wellness and peace.
They will tell that the evil ones were few but gathered all money and resources for themselves.
They will tell who resisted, and who sat back and watched.
They will tell how oil, and money, and gold were everything.
They will tell how the water was contaminated, the earth raped and bled dry.

Which side do you want to be on?
When they tell the children what happened
In the generations to come?

Earth At Risk 2014 Videos Available

Earth At Risk, sponsored by Fertile Ground Institute in November 2014, featured many of today's most important activists and thinkers in environmentalism, anti-capitalism, anti-imperialism, anti-colonialism, radical feminism, and anti-racism. With keynote speakers Derrick Jensen, Alice Walker, Vandana Shiva, Chris Hedges, and Thomas Linzey; plus multiple panels, the event was full of insightful and inspiring discussions.

Besides Derrick Jensen, Deep Green Resistance members Saba Malik, Kourtney Mitchell and Doug Zachary spoke on panels; and Dominique Christina performed two sets of her award winning slam poetry.

Will Falk wrote a report-back on the event: Earth At Risk 2014: The Proper Diagnosis. Until now his writeup was the only way to experience the event vicariously for those of us who missed it, but Fertile Ground just made all 12 hours of the presentations available.

View the videos below, or visit our member appearances page and enter "earth at risk" into the filter box to browse only the presentations involving DGR members. You can also download audio files of those panels and keynotes.

Enjoy, and please share widely!

The Seed of Greed, and Want

by Christopher L. Calkins

The Seed of Greed

Greed!
Where does it come from?
It comes from a seed.
Could it really be a dirty little seed?
The seed of greed!
How can this be in the heart of humanity?
I look out on the horizon, it seems so far to me,
surrounded by a society infested with the seed!
The seed of greed.
Who? What? No, not me!
It is that dirty little seed.
The selfish seed that turns a want into a need,
and need into greed!
The seed that our society so freely distributes like a weed!
Look and you will see
a world infested with the weeds of greed,
dropping their seeds, disguised as needs!
How can this be?
All from a seed, the seed of greed!

June 1992

Want

I did not want it this way!
I do not want it this way!
It doesn't matter what I think.
It doesn't matter what I say.
The rich keep on making the rules
while we the working people toil through the days.
Paying, paying, paying,
for the crooks who stole it all,
away, away, away!!!

2003

We Are Not This Culture

Michelle Jones / Deep Green Resistance

We are not this culture. We are not this society. The culture has hijacked us. This society has imprisoned what we really are.
We are water, and land.
We are the space between the trees. We are the wind and the leaves. We are sound.
We are the energy between glances of animals, running, chasing, hiding, playing.
We are animals, laying on soil, sitting in soil, walking on soil. The soil informing us of what ground is. What our bodies are.
We are sun, the warmth radiated over thousands of miles, traveling, traveling across water and land.
We are power.
We are the rain, falling, falling, landing, streaming, rushing, penetrating.
We are billion's of living beings cooperating flooding, swapping, picking up, putting down, merging, dividing, touching, loving, hating, dying and being born again.
We are the relationship of beings.
The relationships of life.

On the road to home from Standing Rock

Jennifer Murnan / Deep Green Resistance Colorado

Thin Blue Line
Flagged two times
Curious?
“The Line is what police officers protect, the barrier between anarchy and a civilized society, between order and chaos, between respect for decency and lawlessness.”
Blue line
Slap down
Smack down
Dogs dripping blood
Mace
Tear gas
Pepper spray
Pushing
Violating your way
Breaking past
Red and Black and Brown and
Even White Protectors
Faces
Bodies
What's left of human sanity
of human sanctity
Hellbent
for the river
What happens
Blue line
If you succeed?
Do you

Breach?
Or do you free fall
dragging all
into
a bottomless pit
of blood and oil?

Civilization conquers all.

---

A Prayer and a Promise

To the red and brown and black and even white protectors
faces and bodies who know no lines
those between the blue line and sacred water of life
All that remains of human sanity
of human sanctity

Peace be with you
Love be with you
Courage is in you
You are all that your ancestors prayed for
Without you our future ceases to be

Thank you

We are coming

The Desert Star

by Unblind

There once was a little boy, who lived in the Middle East.
His family had been murdered when bombs rained in the streets.
He huddled silent upon the rubble of his crumbled home,
Suffering, starving, terrified, he survived there on his own.

Fire lit skies from ravaged landscapes burned into the night,
But when the smoke clouds cleared a lonely star came into sight.
Deep from within his broken heart, the boy wept out his wish;
End the massacre of his people by the hands of the Western Rich.

There was something magical in that star,
No one could understand it.
Even the boy didn’t realize that his wish would soon be granted.

What then followed was not what he had perceived,
Something far more incredible would make the world believe.
An army of one million spirits taken by the war,
Rose up from their graves that night to walk the earth once more.

They marched in silence hand in hand, mother father, child,
Through the endless battlefields that spread for miles and miles.
When the invaders' outposts had finally been reached,
The spirits simply stood there until the gunfire ceased.

The soldiers were all dumbfounded as they looked on in disbelief,
There they stood hand in hand the spirits of their casualties.
One by one the soldiers dropped their heavy guns,
Staring at the ghostly faces, they realised what they had done.

Thinking of their own families and of those who they loved best,
The soldiers stripped off their uniforms, turned and headed to the West.
War machines stood empty, with weapons in the sand,
Smoke cleared to blue sky as peace fell upon the land.

The little boy stood there smiling, for his wish had come true,
Now he stared up at his mother’s face and asked;
“Can I come with you?”

The spirit embraced her child and gave him one last kiss,
She took his little hand in hers and granted him his wish.
His soul followed the others as they floated to the light,
Free from their deaths misery, they each glowed with renewed delight.

Wide-awake the world now sees,
Through the eyes of others new found empathy.

---

also see Unblind's "Older But Not Wiser..."

Older but not wiser...

by Unblind

I love you Dad, I really do.
So, it kills me to feel this way about you.

There was a time when we could converse, talk late into the night about the universe.
We shared stories, sipped drinks and poked fun at the world, we agree on so much it was great to be heard.
Your opinions were from life and they were your own, you gave me advice when I felt so alone.
I valued your views and made mine the same, never could I of guessed that that would some day change...

We barely talk now when we get together, the only safe topic seems to be the weather.
The stories you share now all come from TV, there's nothing about you, us, or your family.
Your opinions aren't your own, in fact they're quite sour, we can't talk politics or we argue for hours.
Your views no longer make sense they are based on the news, we're at odds now even my kids are confused.

I love this planet, you used to love it too. Can't you tell from the villains and those who speak true?
You challenge every thing that I say, yet you don't take a minute to see things my way.
It hurts to be belittled by someone you trust, I guess we're done talking....

I'll just leave you to rust....

River's Song: A Poem

Calliope Braintree is the protagonist of two novels by Anne Pyterek, whose work explores rape culture from both the personal and planetary perspective. The poem River's Song was "written" by Calliope as a tribute to the Chicago River, poisoned and channeled by industrial humans but still living a life of her own.

I am the Atoms and the Space in between, the Unmanifested heard, felt, smelt, tasted and seen I am Anger and Forgiveness all in one stream. For I am the Source,

I am the Dream... I am the scent of holy things, the sound of shadowy, unseen wings... ominous... foretelling black endarkenings. I flow slowly, ever to the Sea.

I am Wildness, Authenticity.

Download the whole 40-page narrative poem for free: River's Song: A Poem.