Earth Day Ritual performance piece

http://emergingvisions.blogspot.com/2007_04_01_archive.html


It's really a simple story Beings find planet. Beings treat planet badly. Planet goes about her business. Beings start to realize that they need planet, and had best learn to make friends rather than futilely keeping up enmity.

Gaea: A Ritual Performance

layers of imagery, music, tribal drums, futuristic dreams

Gaea was there, in the beginning. Gaea was all. Gaea was wise.
How could we not have seen, in the blindness of pride, of avarice,
of service pledged to false gods?

The journey was long.
The journey was cold.
The journey was lonely.

Asleep in a box with wilderness dreams. Or awake on the watch, wondering what was to come.

Thus it was those false gods bespake us: Out of the cold vastness of space and time,
out of the fear that was all the companion we knew,
out of a need to make it all Someone else's responsibility,
out of a need to believe all would be well for our kind.

Our planet was dying.
We did what we could to survive.
Survival we find
an appopriate end
to any means.
Survival will give us
the time we need
to find a better way
to survive.

The strongest of us,
the proudest of us,
the meanest of us,
would not allow us to die.
We took off in our ship with the barest of plans

to find another land
where our kind could live ...
expand.

Now,
hybrid children evolved
from refugees
fleeing a hostile star.
Skygods and Earth Mother of ancient lore.

It's time we relinquish fear and hatred, accept Gaea as partner and home
that we may all live and thrive.

The land, when we found her was so warm and inviting.
We felt safe, supported, encouraged to grow.

We ate of her fruit and her herds.
We built with her trees, stone and clay.
We drank from her cool crystal streams which we soiled with our waste.
Gaea was saviour and womb.
We repaid her with rape.

We didn't understand,
thought her merely land,
thought ourselves masters from afar.

Gaea sent storms to bring us to our senses, wild winds and seas.

Gaea tried to shake us off: Earthquakes, Floods, Famine, Plagues
sending us scattering into hiding. Intermingling with her primates, Gaea's children.
Without question or shame, we murdered what we could not steal.
Without honor or remorse, we laid waste to our host, to our adopted home,
then cursed her for not giving more.

By accident or design, chimera adapting to Gaea's marketplace creating
new ways to define our origins from outer space
We lied to our halfling children, denigrated their Gaean kin,
twisted their virtues into a false concept that we called "sin."

What Gaea did to us? Cruel, evil, in need of the whip.
we seal over her bounty
into mad parody of Mother Ship.
Unforgiving of the mess of living, the miracles of life.
In our ignorant pride we gave ourselves law to decide
propriety over fate
turning
in our minds
mother love
into a mirror of hate.

Frozen in fear and rage, children swept out in the storm,
trapped in a self-made cage we had hoped to protect us from harm.

Gaea, we cry, why do you treat us so angrily?
What will it take for us to wake up and see it is we who are wrong?
To hear and be aware of Gaea's song singing in our blood?
To learn the cycles, the seasons, the reasons for fire, wind and flood?

To redefine our race, to find out that our place is here among our Gaean kin?

The telling of new tale must begin.

Gaea opens to sunshine to ease our agitation
Easy winds, easy gushing of summer rain
Feeding the greedy young grains,
growing along the plains, the flowers of the storm.
Feeding the beasts of the field,
continuing the cycle, as all is revealed.

Love is the web,
craftily spun by great mother spider,
Gaea's familiar,
weaving magestic grace
no longer concealed. It was never our place
to control, nor others' to steal.

Gaea creates in intricate arrangements,
feeding us all of us all, a transformative stew.
So much energy wasted; painful lies to find our way through
our beings to create such beautiful
children, reaching out to become and be free,
enjoying our destiny,
as Gaea's beloved.

Arising in the circle, giving voice to pain -- grateful to Gaea's grace, dancing in her cleansing rain,
we sing in voice united:

It would be so nice (paradise)
You and I
Floating in the sunlight
Ready to break free
To be
Exactly who we are.

(c) April 9, 2006 Laurie Corzett

A Photo Poem

Photo Poems or Image Poems

Hi
Does any one have any information on a useful source for photo poems or image poems. I have been searching the net for information, but so far have only come up with sites that talk about poems written to an image or photo. I'm sure there are also photo poems that don't have any text at all. But then of course, that raises the question - is it then poetry? I'd love to know what others think.
Maureen

A Literary Bone to Pick

ABR's Review of WESTERLY Vol 52 2007
Georgie Arnott's review of Westerly in ABR's April 2008 issue (there's even a date typo on the cover!) is less impressive than the poetry content she talks about. It's not hard to see that the four poets she praises are all from the Eastern States. Not one mention is given to a West Australian poet. Considering the recent struggles by Westerly to gain funding to continue/ or increase journal issues, and the tight squeeze for WA poets to get published in their state (although this writer sees the new literary journal 'indigo' as saviour!), this review, regretfully, shows a lack of sensitivity by focusing on the East! To all "WA reviewers" - we need to review our own magazines for ABR!
Helen Hagemann