Category: history

Pedal On

February 28, 2020.Reading time 1 minute.

We were supposed to turn our swords into plowshares
our spears into pruning hooks,
I thought, as the bombs fell,
as the city fell,
as the dream fell,
through miles of explosions, carnage, blood
This was the wrong stuff haunting my dreams
Pedal on
Pedal on, pedal on
Pedal on
for miles through the end of nightmare streams
flowing like toxic sludge,
clogging the living artery
where hope
in heart-attacked, arrhythmic disturbance
beats on
Don’t stop in this dystopian flow
I never want that again
Don’t end it here
Beat on
Dream on
Pedal on
a road less traveled, rarely journeyed on
few find it
Pedal on
Take up the garden hoe, put down the gun
LOVE your neighbor
LOVE mine
Pedal on
Pedal on, pedal on
Pedal on
to clearly streaming consciousness,
visions stellar
Peace
Take up the garden hoe
and plant
Pedal on
through miles of mountains, valleys, stream
This is the right stuff filling my dreams

~

My response to the prompts from the following wonderful bloggers, taken collectively in Stephen’s Level UP Challenge:

Tuesday Writing Prompt Challenge: Tuesday, 25, 2020

Eugi's Weekly Prompt – Stellar – February 24, 2020

https://lifeafter50forwomen.com/category/what-do-you-see/

(New!) Wednesday’s Level UP Challenge, 2/26/20 and Tuesday’ Writing Prompt Challenge Round UP

~

It is also my cry out after yet another mass shooting, this time in Milwaukee, not far from my home.

~

©2020 Tanya Cliff

~

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Cardinals

February 17, 2020.Reading time 1 minute.

The sun travels along the arch of a low horizon—the short path
of a winter day
when cold air aches
pressing into our bones
Later, ice-glazed tree limbs crackle
in the midnight winds
heard outside our shut-tight glass
Snow falls, covering
paths, dead leaves, and seeds
In the frigid morning, the birds seek
a meal to sustain them
They gather on our deck
where the filled feeder hangs like a beacon
juncos, chickadees, nuthatches, titmice
jostle with their larger brethren
the hairy woodpeckers with their zebra-striped backs
and the hungry cardinals,
their flaming feathers, a florescent highlighter against the snow,
marking the places where the seed falls
They write their stories in footprints as we watch them:
the male cardinals wait while their partners eat their fill,
then battle with each other for the choicest remains
Chivalrous? or cavalier?
Crimson heroes to their girls
Red villains to each other
Can a man be both things?
Do the history books tell?
For the cardinals, the chronicle of this winter journey
will melt, the empty seed shells scattered
will dissolve
into fresh earth and green grass
But we will remember both hero and villain,
their footprints transcribed in letters
of our poems and prose

~

©2020 Tanya Cliff

~

Teach Me of Odysseus

April 8, 2019.Reading time 1 minute.

teach me of Odysseus
in poetic words bled
ten years
churned in the waking wake
of departing the nightmare
what did Odysseus see in the rear-view mirror?
the sacking of Troy was no small thing
was Helen worth it?
how would Hector respond?
Achilles?
perhaps Patroclus or Paris might weigh in?
any insight?
I sigh
The Iliad has been repeated over and over and over again
Men, Nature’s most destructive force,
the innards of the Trojan Horse,
spill out and spoil every pristine thing they touch

but teach me of Odysseus
how does man leave the fatal shore?
what demons must he destroy?
what storms, prevail?
how red the wake?
before the safe harbors of home
he makes

~

Words and Photography ©2019 Tanya Cliff ~ to contact me

Posted in poetry & free verse.

Beyond the Wall

January 21, 2019.Reading time less than 1 minute.

scars untouched
like stars unseen
in the neglected wastelands
exist
where no cultured eye sees
pain persists
beyond the wall

see no evil
hear no evil
speak no evil
touch no unclean thing
hide
behind the wall
of
ignorance
bigotry
greed
and
pride

there thrive
fattened
off the fattened meats
hoarded

while the wall is boarded

hunger exists
pure
real
aching
a chorus in the wilderness
of empty-belly pleas
that reverberate off a civilized wall
unheard

scars untouched
radiate pain
through the midnight wasteland
the loveliest stars
by industrial giants’
smog-clouded,
wall-protected
eyes
unseen

~

Words and Photography ©2019 Tanya Cliff ~ to contact me

Posted in poetry,  free verse, & human rights.

Quotes #2

August 9, 2018.Reading time less than 1 minute.

The old printing press laughed at me and mocked my technology,

“The novel is still written one letter at a time.”

~

IMG_1557

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Words & Photos ©2018 Tanya Cliff ~ to contact me

Posted in quotes.

Bookmark the permalink.

~

Note: Photos taken at Stonefield Village, part of the Wisconsin Historic Society

2018 – My Hope

January 4, 2018.Reading time 1 minute.

2017
birthed
a colicky infant
who, although spoiled and overfed,
produced a continuous line
of
mostly incoherent
squawks
from his high nest

by spring
he had grown into the playground bully
amassing toys,
hoarding even,
to make his sandbox castle great
AGAIN

by summer,
or buy,
his overgrown form
preached from a pulpit like a profit-god
A MASS
that sounded
oddly
like his former spoiled, soiled
colicky
chirps

by autumn…
I don’t know what he said.
I bought earplugs
to relieve my throbbing
MAGAraine
suffering
head

2018
I HOPE
has birthed infants everywhere
who will cry from the collective pools
of
starvation
poverty
and
neglect
AND
that the children of spring
will remove the genetically-modified cotton
stuffed in our privileged ears,

so that we who have will

listen

&

share

~

Words and Photography ©2018 Tanya Cliff ~ to contact me

Posted in poetry & free verse. Bookmark the permalink.

The Barbarian’s Fiddle

December 7, 2017.Reading time 1 minute.

I sat in a room
with a noisy crowd
who hated all things “Asian”
haunted, they were
by world war ghosts
and
communist libations
they speared the Barbarian-Yellow Goldfish
in their community pond
and
siphoned the living waters
leaving sandy bottoms –
the dried grains of bigotry
kicked and whipped
into a blinding storm

Their Dust Bowl creation
ever threatens to choke the next generations

I made two strings sing
in
melancholic
tragic
vibrato
that mimicked the human voice
Persecuted

The room fell momentarily silent

I played on

Suffering
is
an
endless
tune

until, interrupted by an old man
coughing up affected phlegm
that he spat into the Dust Bowl
slightly settled through his falling tears

I paused

He inquired as to what beautiful instrument
had seduced his soul to
blissful
despair
An erhu, I sighed
It is Asian –
otherwise called the “Barbarian’s Fiddle”
Its two, long strings carry the vibrations
of generations of tears splashed down onto the collective pool
by those you persecute by referring to them as
“slanted-eyed Chinks”

He snorted and laughed
He kicked some dirt in my face

I played on

Suffering

an endless tune carried in the vibrato of two Asian strings

~

Words and Photography ©2017 Tanya Cliff ~ to contact me

Posted in poetry & free verse. Bookmark the permalink.

 

With Reservation – Revisited

November 20, 2017.Reading time 5 minutes.

 

“Words do not pay for my dead people.”

Shall we talk
about
it
awhile while we travel the miles
of
defiled
land
slaughtered
animals
murdered
people
that
lead
to a
place
you will be
graciously confined
called
a
reservation
but
you
don’t
need
an
application
just
lose
your
apprehension
and
stay
put
here
awhile while we hand out the piles
of
stingy
food
rationed
goods
white man’s
ways
that
you
are
being
graciously supplied
without
hesitation.

“Good words will not give me back my children.”

Yes, but you fled
showing great
premonition
against our
demands,

AND

we require
your
supplication
without
RESERVATION.

“Treat all men alike. Give them all the same law.”

Sure, just submit
to our
imposed
economic
spiritual
cultural
bounded
limitations

until we discover the next resource we want.

“Give them all an even chance to live and grow.”

You ARE free to live
and grow –
within the
restriction
called
a
RESERVATION
and
all
its
white man’s
imposed
economic
spiritual
cultural
bounded
rules!

“Let man be a free man – free to travel, free to stop, free to work, free to trade where I choose, free to choose my own teachers, free to follow the religion of my fathers, free to think and talk and act for myself – and I will obey every law, or submit to the penalty.”

Sigh.

We’ve talked
about
it
awhile
while you traveled the miles
to
bitter
tears
stolen
lives
broken
hearts
that
you
have now
been
forever (until we discover the next valuable resource we want need)
graciously subjected to
called
a
reservation
but…

“You might as well expect the rivers to run backward as that any man who was born a free man should be contented when penned up and denied liberty to go where he pleases.”

but…

“I am tired of talk that comes to nothing. It makes my heart sick when I remember all the good words and all the broken promises.”

but…

“All men were made by the same Great Spirit Chief. They are all brothers…”

but…

“Words do not pay for my dead people.”

~

All the words in quotes above were taken from a speech given by In-mut-too-yah-lat-lat (Thunder traveling over the Mountains), more commonly known as Chief Joseph. He was chief of a tribe of the Nez Perces (Wal-lam-wat-kin band of the Chute-pa-lu), a group of people who had maintained peace with white people since they had first met and helped Lewis and Clark in 1805. It was always his goal to live peacefully with the white people. After a few young Nez Perces men took revenge on a white settler group who had killed their own fathers and brothers, Chief Joseph’s tribe became the target of military action and revenge, in spite of his appeals.

~

I am revisiting “With Reservation”, first published last year, in recognition of Native American Heritage Month and the continuing battle in my state (Line 5) and others to recognize treaty rights and improve the living conditions of and opportunities available to Indigenous groups. We have a long way to go.

The United States celebrates something we call “Thanksgiving” this week. In schools, students are taught the story of Native Americans who helped Pilgrims during a difficult season and the meal they shared to celebrate the harvest. In truth, colonialism resulted in the decimation of hundreds of nations and millions of human lives. Those who didn’t perish faced the loss of culture, dignity and ancestral lands. The destruction to natural resources that Europeans wrought on the so-called “New World” has included everything from buffalo to water. The persecutions and resource grabs continue to this day.

~

The complete original post can be read here.

~

Words and Photography ©2016 & 2017Tanya Cliff ~ to contact me

Posted in poetry, noDAPL & human rights. Bookmark the permalink.