Sunset Ramadan
(5 June 2016)
I have memories
Of a Ramadan, a
Rosh Hashanah, too
I like the Christian
Holidays, but others
From these faiths
Invited me
To ritual and cuisine
And, best of all,
Community
Love permeates
Actions when they
Are in spirit
Inch’Allah
And our God is
Pleased when we
Are one
Shalom
Here’s News (and a Haibun)
(1)
Here are three news leads from The Guardian:
The United Nations has for the first time signalled its “human rights obligation” over the deadly cholera outbreak in Haiti that has claimed the lives of at least 30,000 people.
‘It’s only working for the white kids’: American soccer’s diversity problem [headline]
Yesterday, a report came out that said more than 1,000 migrants and refugees have died just in the last week while crossing the Mediterranean.
(2)
Everyone on all sides of things is falling down. UN peacekeeping. Soccer, the world’s sport. Migrants we don’t count who die. Doesn’t help my own precarious feelings about stability or sanity in the world. Doesn’t help the fragility in me or mine. On this side of apocalypse (only frightening for some), what might we save? In order to retain poetics, I’ve refrained from news of politics today. I doubt anymore the answer’s there.
(3)
Black box of the plane
Black box of refugee’s boat
Black box of sea’s depths
My recommender!
https://mandibelle16.wordpress.com/
https://mandibelle16.wordpress.com/2016/05/31/award-epically-awesome-award/#comment-10341
Rules:
Display the Award in your post, mention your nominator [above], link back to them [link-post above], answer five questions, and nominate five to ten others.
Questions [my replies beneath my nominations]:
Nominees
[feel free to respond to the nominations with writing; feel free not to; feel free simply to bask]:
Stray Coffee Breaks (who manages a cuppa with two puppies afoot), https://straycoffee.wordpress.com/
A Reading Writer (who’s been writing about coffee and love, too), https://areadingwritr.wordpress.com/
Invisible World (read Hashna!), https://invisibleworldd.wordpress.com/
Moonskittles (start by simply enjoying the name), https://moonskittles.wordpress.com/
Only 100 Words (for narratives and challenges), https://only100words.xyz/author/sonyca/
Sabethville (for limericks and important translations), https://sabethville.wordpress.com/
AngieInspired (like Archimedes, moving the world), https://angieinspired.wordpress.com/
Question Replies:
I responded to the questions given, though I imagine others could re-work the questions to suit themselves or to put forth to others. There’s seems to be good precedence for this in the blogging world.
Thanks, Mandi!
Thanks, blogging community!
Harambe
Hold anger around
Visit with the silverbacks
To promise mourning
Sanctuary
Because one is still
Does not mean that one is safe—
Life in one cell is open to
Mutation, loss of parts, disease;
Life within a prison cell
Suffers from same dangers
In detention and in
Isolation
(Even with others in proximity),
Under death-order and maybe death-
Watch;
How,
Fixed under a demon’s yoke
Whose cause is politics,
Who for an idea
Has been taken out
Of actual existence?
Toward the Southern Pole
(Closer than most of us will
Get), there is a Russian Orthodox
Church—
Ten bodies with ten souls within
May worship;
The rest know that the church is
There:
Triptychs of spirit and of hope
Inside
At the end of the world,
Where there is likelihood
Of living through oppression
Wrought by nature or assignment.
What sanctuary in the prison cell,
Where trapped mind and abandoned
Spirit are closed maybe for a
Final time,
Where fear
The only inner company?
Andy awaits
Release of one kind or
Another.
http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/23100
Kidnapped Briton spends 700th day in illegal detention
A British man who is held under sentence of death in Ethiopia has spent his 700th day in unlawful detention, after he was kidnapped and rendered to the country by Ethiopian forces in 2014.
Promise to Tame and Wild
The manatee, the tapir,
And the platypus are
Abducted
The black-and-white
Ursus of China cannot
Find bamboo to eat
And the smaller one
Inhabiting wild Australia
Needs eucalyptus more
And more from us
What are we doing?
We make captive that
Which impulsively is
Unaware of borders
Save maybe the divine
We slew the passenger
Birds that only send
Messages now as
Phantoms (I’ve seen
The statue)
We tame, we kill—a
Time for everything
The brave dog who
Saved the children of
Nome (I’ve seen that
Statue, too)
How about time for
Leaving what’s created
Not by us in better
Care, surrendering
Our Eden-promise, if
Need be,
Rather to leave alone
What we cannot care
For with respect for
Great and small
Ask Any Soldier
“When your friend
Gets killed, part of you
Gets killed”
A testimony and
Remembrance for
USA Memorial Day
Which I can only
Guess is right since
I have friends gone
In other ways, and
They and those parts
Of me yet feel lost
To lose through war
When targets seem
A random strategy:
Colors, shapes, tribes
On a map or guessed
At over a hill
Loss of life or partial
Life must feel
The height of
Unselected cruelty
On a pillar of
Senselessness
If a citizen salute
Might count, then
Listen to one
Expressing in
Tribute to
Patriot sacrifice
And personal
Complexity in
Service
Thanks is not enough,
So memory is offered
And legacy of
Better nations
C L Couch
(quotation from the AHC channel)
Neighbor House Afire
I saw the newspaper article:
It looked like someone else’s
News
But it happened to them
Before newspaper-reading,
I received the message;
Something caught fire in
Their garage then, needing
Room, the fire flexed
Garage gone now—the car,
Too, the house and who
Knows what else damaged
Fire out, three days now
Insurance is good, my friends
Tell me
All are well; the cats were
Rescued first by the one
Human who was home
Now in alternative shelter,
Plans by all in unison are
Made (except the cats who
Make their own), even while
Breathing takes over again
Pray for my friends—they’re
Raw in crisis
And I won’t presume to know
All that they need
Psalm 45
singing this song for you
I don’t mean to sing about the
Other, compelling as that value is
I don’t mean a covered-over me,
Secret subject I would rather
Talk about
I mean you, first—my friend,
Lover, maker, and my better
Half (so to say) except that you
Are all
Now, secondly, to you, who you
Are extended from the words
Were it not for you, there would
Be none of this
For all you are and what you are
Not
The rest is not silence (should
Shakespeare wonder), not if
There’s Interacting
We are at this moment closer to
The one who, all-relating, started
The first process, requiring more
Than one
clcouch123 
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