Cindy & Katrina...America's Wakeup Call

The hurricane has only begun...
the war-makers and their apologists
have plundered our nation’s human resources
so arrogantly
that the dead of Iraq and Louisiana and Mississippi
will haunt them, hopefully, for the rest of the century.
And now, when we need the helping hands to recover
from global warming super-charged storms and floods,
where are the hands and the shelters
and the generators and the water pumps
and the medical crews?

Cindy and Katrina have bypassed
all of the politicians, pundits, generals...
speaking so plainly that we should all understand it now:
sometimes the tides of nature
and human history align themselves
in such a way that the paradigm of the old order
no longer functions.
Something has become unleashed
that can’t be contained.

It’s a defining moment right now...
those who will push us into the abyss
with more war and neglect and lies,
and those who will stand straight up
and face the new reality with
a new vision.
The choice is ours.

--- e b bortz

puerta del sol...many stories

puerta del sol...many stories
madrid...1990



--- e b bortz

plaza mayor without the generals

plaza mayor
without the generals
madrid...1990


--- e b bortz

morning & sunset

morning...akka / akko
1991

--- e b bortz


sunset...ashqelon
1991



--- e b bortz

poetry without walls

poetry without walls
pittsburgh 1997

photo by Sandra L. Hazley

continuity

koh samui, thailand...1989

--- e b bortz

han river blues

seoul, korea...1990

--- e b bortz

forget the monuments

how about a hundred forests
for the resisters and objectors
of conscience
a national statement regarding this
obscene war
and previous ones

and for all the restless bodies
from arlington national cemetery
the souls who have reconsidered
in death
all their missions
let’s plant a tree next to their gravestone
let them rest
without banging drums
bugling snarling politicians

peel off the names of the dead
place them beside the names
of the prisoners

--- e b bortz

(published in ActionOrange, December 2009)

earth note 91

no-name key didn’t have
a soul
awake
when we rolled up the road
past the cabin with solar panels
on the roof...no power lines
even the dogs were sleeping
endangered key deer
pranced right out to the road
took a look and headed
back toward the mangroves

put our kayaks out
from a mucky bottom
dead seaweed
& other plants
at the end of their cycles

maybe the gulf waves noticed
as they picked up a few whitecaps
we headed for the next no-name key
a bit smaller
more alive
the water clear
all the way down

--- e b bortz

earth note 1

bowels of red rock shattered
sharp and loose
piling up near swan lake
north minnesota outcasts ripped from bosoms
hot and firm
rock bleeds red shadows
red dust stained white birch bark

fresh and blue the spring air turns
cold crystal
snowmelt running
past the outcrop land made waste
‘neath dusty iron claw machineprints
draglines trucks loaders
gnarl
trample
assault

north wind answers
ice tears

--- e b bortz