Questions for the poet

Questions for an interview. This is a good summary of my creative process and journey.
I've written for the past thirty some odd years and my journey ... love, adventures, travels, concern for the planet, my commitment to creating a more sane and peaceful world have all been part of my inspiration for writing. Though my core instinct is to write poetry, I've written scores of songs, a musical revue Beatnik Café, short stories, the work for the Jazz Beat Blues Poetry Ensemble ( with co-musical direction by Bill Shontz) a book on working on an end-stage AIDS ward, stories and articles on travel, and children's stories. The unifying link is my love for the richness and conciseness of poetry.

I wake up every day and write for two to three hours in my journal. From that early morning start,springs poems or stories. The poems could be something as simple as life on Blue Heron Pond, politics, or life. If I'm on the road, which is often, I try to write consistently, but I find that I am making quick verbal sketches on paper.

2. You have been a homeopath, a community activist and a performance artist. When did you know or suspect that you wanted to become a poet as well?

I've written consistently over the past thirty years and the writing has chronicled my journey. Poetry had always been my first love and instinct. It didn't arise from the desire to "be a poet" but from a deeper well: necessity. Even if I never wrote a word of "poetry" again, I would always be a poet. A poet is not necessarily defined by what you write on paper, but it is a way of being in the world and seeing. William Blake said it best in "Auguries of Innocence"
To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour

I have always been involved in community development/ Social Transformation in one form or another. In the l970's I was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Yemen, in the early l980's I worked in Morocco with Catholic Relief Services, then worked with grass roots Social Change groups developing programs to sustain activists, as a graduate instructor in Cross Cultural Communications, and health care as a Nurse Practitioner and Homeopath. In the early, l990's I worked for a year on an end stage AIDS ward and the result of that was a book Journal of the Plague (which will soon be available as an ebook on my website www.vermontpoet.com).

Though I have taught at a college level and enjoy offering a "master class" to students, I thoroughly enjoy the two days a week that I do homeopathy. Working with someone to transform their health is immensely satisfying. I follow in the tradition of many writers and poets, like William Carlos Williams, Ibn Sina (Avincenna), etc. who were physicians and poets.

My work as a performance poet is also focused on addressing issues of Social Change like the "Amerika Uber Alles" video on my website or other work from GOD SEX POLITICS. The new book Vermont My Home on Blue Heron Pond is about finding my sense of place and strength as a poet.

The Vermont My Home and the illustrated poems at www.vermontartpoetry.com are poems and stories that celebrate the Green Mountain State. The last poem in the book "Care Well" is about the imperative to care well for this planet.


3. Does your work as a poet enhance your work as a performance artist and/or activist? If so, how?

My creativity may express itself as poem or a song, in English, French or Spanish, and rarely in Arabic. My creative process is a seamless curtain, sometimes a story that I have improvised on stage will reappear in a written story. I rarely see poetry as something written on a paper. For me, a poem is alive as the wind, as the colors of a tree, and as the vibrancy of life. Over the past few years, I've been developing large art poetry banners for public spaces. As you go through a public space like an airport, the poems and colors are alive in fabric or other medium

I am most alive and creative when my identity as a poet, healer, and secular mystic meet. All roles require clear logic and the window of insight open to the metaphysical process. Also, as important, is to be awed and humbled by the enigmas of life, and to realize that love and caring are the most powerful medicines. Whether one is working in social change, health, poetry, art, etc..when a profound love and compassion are at the center of that process, there is a true transformation, both for the doer and the receiver.

I do not limit my creativity to the arts or performance, and creativity and imagination are the predominant themes in my life. I view my entire life as a creative process. This creativity may come as the Creative Director for the Sweet Pond Eco Community or with our foundation www.GRACECARES.com which provides grass roots community development projects to third world communities.

I have an insatiable curiosity and consider myself a "learning junkie," the world is my university. I could be very happy to be on the road as a vagabond.

My Journey in Illiteracy: Knowledge is Light – Amar Al Noor

I have a doctorate, two master’s degrees, and a wealth of education and certificates, but I was until recently, illiterate: Illiterate in Arabic. Though my native language is English, I had lived and worked in the Middle East, and learned Arabic mostly by ear. I could read enough for street signs, the basics of a menu, and enough to fake it, but I could not really read or write much beyond the most basic level. While that may be impressive to a Westerner, this reluctance or laziness to sit down and thoroughly learn the basics of writing and grammar prevented me from taking my Arabic to the next level. Easy simple mistakes were overlooked because any Westerner making even the most rudimentary attempts at speaking Arabic was considered laudable, but I was faking it. In part, I had been working in a hospital and community setting, I only had to speak and teach, not really write, and though my Arabic was grammatically awkward it was enough to get by and communicate. When I lived in Morocco the language of the street was Dirja, and it gave me less impetuous to learn to read and write. I have only recently confronted the reality that for the most part I was illiterate. In Arabic they say, Knowledge is light.
Now, as I am working with primary grade books, I am forcing myself to write and study every day, and discovering the foundations of grammar that I had glided over. To my surprise, I discovered that my grammar wasn’t as bad as I thought and though solid Arabic grammar is arduous to get down, mine was fairly on target for someone who had learned mostly by ear and with only an occasional glance at a book. In English, I read and write at a University level, Spanish and French at a proficient level, but in Arabic I am the big kid in the back of the classroom slowly forming letters with the correct diacritical marks, words with the correct case ending, and learning to write clear sentences. Though it is slow going, the writing actually, well almost, look like real Arabic.
It is ironic that I have a profound admiration for Classical Arabic/ Koranic script from the time of the early Fatamid period to the inscriptions on the walls of Al Hambrah, but never had the desire to emulate it or learn to decipher the Suras (verses from the Koran) beyond a basic level. The Classical Arabic poetry is pure music, even if you don’t understand a word of it. I was listening to one recitation and I turned to a friend who was a well-educated Yemeni and asked "What does it mean?" He said, “Ï don’t know either, but it is beautiful.”
In the old city of Cairo I was studying the writing on the outside of a mosque from the 10th Century and trying to decipher the (Kuphic) script with a guide book, and it was a delight when the shop owner next to the mosque, who had never bothered really looking at the building, began to be excited as he read the inscriptions with me.
After my recent trip to Egypt, I was inspired to learn the real structure and grammar of Arabic. Though I do not speak Egyptian, my basic standard Arabic was more than enough to get by and hold a conversation. When I a man came by selling cigarettes, he looked a bit shocked when I said (in classical Arabic), “No, I don’t smoke and that stuff will give you cancer.” It is the well-chosen phrase that is sometimes most helpful, but it is far more effective to be able to write that sentence.
I am unraveling my Arabic illiteracy and though I may never get much beyond grade school level, I am enjoying the process of writing clean simple sentences. As I confront the extreme bias in the West, US and Europe, against Islam, and take pains to explain the profound achievements of the Islamic classical world, I am also realizing I needed to hold myself accountable for my own lack of education or maybe it is something as simple as laziness. But, knowledge is light, and I am enjoying the slow dawning illumination of learning to read and write.

O' New America

O’new Jerusalem, beacon of light
on the hill,
filled with the promise unspoken.

O’new awakening of the sleeping
dreams,
alive with hope again.

O’New America radiant with
possibilities
aspiring for its true soul.

Justice

Prisoners:

There are thousands of remote islands in the world, with food, water, and the basic necessities of life. Bare, harsh, vital. I was reading of a prisoner in solitary confinement for 24 years in NY state, I am glad they keep him apart from us, but $75,000 a year or more to keep this person locked up for the rest of his life is not a prudent cost. Instead, give him the choice: Death, confinement, or an island in the Pacific. On the island in the Pacific a thousand miles from civilization, he can fish, eat coconuts, and live out his life at no further cost to the state. What would he choose: The caged savage? The primitive? Or eternity? I would also like to take all the CEOs who have raped and looted their companies: Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Enron, and the War Profiteers like Halliburton,Bechtel, etc., and also place them on that same island. The prisoner and the CEO’s would make make perfect company; though I am a little concerned about the prisoners safety.

$700 Billion Pig Fest Wall Street

Strange dreams last night:

All these fat cats at
Lehman Brothers,
Goldman Sachs,
Merrill Lynch, etc..
all the corporate
gangsters who are
knee deep in the
muck of this latest
corporate debacle

are shackled together
in old fashioned
stocks in front of
Wall Street.Yes,
like in Colonial
times, don’t bother
with prison so
they can hide
away in shame.

Men and women
of Enron, CEOS of
Exxon, Haliburton
and so on all lined
up to join them in
the stocks.

Fat white cats shivering
naked in the autumn
air, arrayed in a circle
around Wall Street,
while the cold wind
blows off the Hudson.
Everyone who lost
money in the stock
market could drop
garbage on their heads
or simple piss on
them.
At feeding time,
long pig troughs so that
the fat cat CEOs
would be cheek and
jowl to munch the slop.

I hope the pigs don’t
get sick from the
contagion.

Some Outrage for the Genocide in Palestine?

It is strange all of this rancor against President of Iran Ahmadinejad, which may be deserved, but at the same breath do we talk about the genocide of the Palestinians, their imprisonment in the walled ghettos of the West Bank, and their isolation in Gaza? As reported on the BBC on 24 September, international communities have condemned Israeli Settlers who illegally have and now continue to take the land of Palestinians. Last night videos of Israeli settlers attacking Palestinians homes while the IDF (Israel Army) stood by.
I would hope that people save some of their outrage against the President of Iran for the genocide against the Palestinians. I really do not see much difference between the Israeli government actions against the people of Gaza and West Bank, and the actions imposed on my Jewish ancestors during and before WWII. For thousands of years, we Jews were persecuted, driven out of our homes, and ironically, thrived in the Islamic countries. We were welcomed. While in Europe to Be a Jew was cause for murder. The holocaust in Palestine is happening before our eyes
Perhaps, when there is a true independent state for Palestinians and the means to genuinely survive, we will then remove any rationale for someone like Ahmadinejad. Iran had a democratically elected President in l954 who was overthrown by the US. The Shah, a puppet leader, created a surrogate US colony, it was a police state that ruled for decades that persecuted and killed its own people. It is sad that when a reformist government was in power before Ahmadinejad, the United States refused to recognize and make rapprochement. When this last invasion of Iraq took place, the Iran government made a public statement that all US fliers if they landed in Iran would be repatriated to the US. Within a week Bush declared Iran as an "axis of evil." This eventually lead to a more hard line regime.
The US Government who is one of the worst propagators of state sponsored terrorism is condemning Iran? The US? Guantanamo? Abu Ghraib? Renditions? The deaths of perhaps hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilian deaths, responsible for the $4 billion dollars in military aid to Israel that supports the genocide of Palestinians, and people wonder someone like Ahmadinejad has any legitimacy?
One can understand why Iran might be disappointed in the West. Hey, maybe if we get rid of our own version of Ahmadinejad, GW BUSH, and replace it with someone who is reasonably intelligent, Obama, then maybe we can have genuine progress with Iran.
Let's save some outrage for the genocide against the Palestinians.

Walking the Black Line: The N Thing and Obama

Walking the Black Line: That N thing and Obama

In the movie Blazing Saddles Mel Brooks lays the racist arguments right on the line. The Black sheriff is riding into save a town that is being threatened by outlaws. The people are excited and then they find the “The Sheriff is a N…” Bells ring and no one can hear it. When he finally does arrive, they want to shoot him! Though it appears he is the only one who can save the town, they are more concerned that he is a, N… .

The NY Times recently wrote of Obama’s debating style as, “Cool, detached, and intellectual.” After eight years of a president who can barely speak a cogent sentence; an articulate and intelligent person should be a welcome change, but this is America in 2008: The sound byte reigns supreme, and the Republican convention, like the Nuremberg rally, is filled with obeisant patriotic chants, in this case, USA, USA. As Einstein said about blind patriotism, any one who marches in a parade denies the necessity of the development of the cerebral cortex. In this election, it is imperative, though unlikely; we will get to a substantive debate about the future of the USA. In the meantime, Russian warships are challenging the Monroe doctrine, and the US like Rome in the late 2nd century is watching its world power shrink. Welcome to the 21st Century.

People are primitive pools of emotions, passions, and tribalism. Most of humanity’s march over some 4 million years since we bid farewell to our primate first cousins, has been a brutal struggle for survival, us versus them, tribe against tribe. Despite some rudimentary signs of progress, humans have not really evolved in the fundamental way that will ensure long term survival. Wars, tribalism, us versus them, ideologically driven… Nigger, spic, honkie, redneck, fascist, and so on. We define: other and like us: Friend or foe.

Barrack Obama blows the conventional paradigms out of the water and yet through the lens of red, white, and blue – and too many, we are stuck on the N thing. Yes, the sheriff may be black, but the question is: Does he have the energy, commitment, the intelligence, integrity, and character to lead the nation? The answer is yes. If we can get past the subtext about race and look at the man, we will not see a color blind or white washed version; we will see the full spectrum of the man. A man who is white, black, African, mid western, urban, grew up poor and middle-class, earned his way through college, who forsook a very lucrative law career to be a community organizer, and though he didn’t fight in the trenches, he fought in a more dangerous place, the Illinois Statehouse.

Yes, the Sheriff may be black, but he’s our only choice.