What a year we've lived... but there has to be light at the end of the tunnel and let's hope it's not a fast-moving train with no brakes on (LOL). There has to be hope, and the courage to act on it. As the saying goes, "when it's dark enough, you can see the stars."
I will try not to take too much of your precious time this beloved day. I have only three offerings, for joyous consumption and solidarity. Enjoy!
The first course is a 15-line narrative poem by Sean Lause, titled The Gift, which connects the past and present around one of the simplest moments we can imagine. Here's the poem, followed by a brief commentary on it:
The Gift
By Sean Lause The day my mother dropped a net
of oranges on the kitchen table
and the net broke and oranges
rolled and we snatched them,
my brother and I,
peeled back the skin and bit deep
to make the juice explode with our laughter,
and my father spun one orange in his palm
and said quietly, "This was Christmas, 1938,"
said it without bitterness or anger,
just observing his life
from far away, this tiny world
cupped in one palm,
I learned I had no way
to comprehend an orange.
Interesting, isn't it? I had two main takeaways after reading it:
(1) It has an exciting Bildungsroman quality to it, and one can easily imagine a re-write of it as a novel or novella with a gripping plot and characters, an endearing diction by a narrator who was tempered even though he and his brother had fun "disrupting" filial moments, and an imagery with an insightful dialectical twist ~~ see how a tasty and desirable thing like an orange that sparked a bit of dramatic and hilarious
expression by the two brothers also had such a reflexive and humbling impact on the characters?
(2) Mothers, and women in general, play such a primal and triggering role regarding inter-generational filial bondage and the onset of epiphanic moments. In this poem, although the mother's voice is silent (as she doesn't partake in the dialogue), she is the one whose action set the stage for everything memorable and game-changing that followed.
There is a lot more to say about this poem, but I must keep my promise to be brief. I'll just close on it with the poem's affirmation that paradigm shifts can have small beginnings ~~ and there is no need to wait for the older stakeholders of the status quo to die first, as Max Planck postulated.
Now, the main course: Savor the beautiful dance moves by a group of street children to the song by the amazing Ugandan musician, Eddy Kenzo. The song is Sitya Loss, and the video can be accessed at this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mw8gO-ro6Zs
Please view the video; it will add years to your life expectancy (smile). Part of the joy lies in how the orchestrated competition and conflict among the kids ends up in synchronized and coordinated dance moves at the end. Viewing the video, I couldn't help thinking: Hmm... "I've seen the future and it works" (a quote from Lincoln Steffens). There is hope. By the way, the kids dancing have become a huge success as a dance and musical group, called Ghetto Kids, with philanthropic support (see a BBC coverage of them here: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-29026644).
And the dessert is.... a poem by yours truly that appeared in a recently published multilingual anthology of poems edited by the Hazara-Norwegian poet and peace activist, Kamran Mir Hazar. Enjoy! ):
This-crime-nation
by akwasi aidoo
We move in clear voice together
With verse metered to the heights of Hazara
Pain and lodge this PoemPlate loads of
Justice against your dream batterers and
We move on this-crime-nation to account
On account of stretches countless in cutovers
Marked by limbs of Hazara dignity kidnapped and
Massacred timeless in fashion steady
In lands -istan and -an where faith, peace-named,
Calls but denied for dogma traded & maimed
They try & try… maiming dry and you cry… but
We cheer your rising spirit on the endless lands you share
We salute with hands clasped the wise
Ways in your dignity & spirit even when your smile
Is robbed in full view of our naked eyes & ditched a mile
Deep beneath their troughs of dis-crimi-nation & pillage
They condemn you, the irrepressible kite runner, but
We, the PoemTeam, sprint across oceans
"For you, a thousand times over" and declare:
Beyond this-crime-nation, the Hazara and peace shall rise again!
In closing, let's please
spare a thought for the San Francisco poet, Justin Chin, who passed away this week
...
Love & Peace,
Akwasi
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