Marshal Gebbie

Marshal Gebbie Apr 2022

In the quandary the future holds for us now, that climatic extremes become exponentially more extreme, that deterioration of the natural order of things accelerates to the point where mankind can no longer comfortably exist, where rising coastlines inundate dramatically and inexorably, where food can no longer be grown on the Eastern side of the nation, where the western side of the nation is inundated with continuous rainfall, where land values plummet on one side of the nation and soar on the other, where the population is forced to flee unwillingly, screaming outrage, from one area to saturate another. That social disorder breeds the seeds of revolution in the face of the chaotic inequities being suffered at the hands of governments no longer capable of coping with it all.

The sage words of Sir David Attenborough echo down the corridor of sudden shuddering inevitability in that the scenario described above pertains to NOW not further down the track, not to some distant future….it pertains to our brittle, susceptible world of NOW!

Environmental analysts are screaming the message that deep ice sheet temperatures are rising dramatically, glacial thicknesses reducing forcing mass calving into warming oceans. Oceanic salinity is reducing and oceanic current velocities and directions of mass flow are radically changing with catastrophic effect on weather patterns globally.
Ionosphere particulates and mass atmospheric pollution is changing the nature of our skies, increasingly they metastasize to phenomenon’s of extreme which flail oceans and land mass with violence and unprecedented wrath.

In 1997 the Kyoto Conference conferred, (with a sense of great nobility), in that 90% of the nations of the world were represented and agreed, after exhaustive debate, on a programme of emission control and environmental conservation….they all congratulated themselves and each other on the intention of the monumental climatic task ahead…..and went back to their home shores and did precisely NOTHING!
After paying lip service to the great speeches made, after preening themselves with the glowing mantle of adopted environmental responsibility, they went back to their respective governments and conceded to immense political pressures and kick backs of Big Oil, Big Money and the Banks.
Political concessions had to be made for GROWTH, ideology was cast aside for the immediacy of Nationally urgent issues…. MONEY….the economic necessities of the moment…(In time we will get around to the Kyoto crap and that irritating child, Greta Thunberg)!
In Truth…..
The responsibility lies with the main polluters, China, India, USA, Russia, Europe, Japan and Brazil. All unwilling to acknowledge, all unwilling to submit to the pain of real emission control. All unwilling to realistically unite to combat the environmental Armageddon, now, at their doorstep.
Russia, for example, is more willing to start a war with neighboring Ukraine, killing thousands of fellow Slavs, brutally destroying infrastructure and priceless artifacts, sending millions to flee in terror to the West……instead of dealing with the monster in the room of thawing permafrost over the vast steppes of Siberia or combating the enormous sinkholes that are occurring with profusion in the East of that land. China will not communicate productively on environmental matters with the West despite rampant, continuous air pollution in Beijing and the problematic encroachment of desertification from the West. Brazil allows the systematic felling and burning of vast areas of its rain forest annually for the development of commercial palm oil plantations… thus destroying forever a significant amount of what represents the lungs of the planet, the Amazon rain forest.

The planet will force the issue, it is applying an in-ignorable force now….EVERYWHERE…..ISN’T IT?

The two primary polluters must come together to show the way, The USA and China have to get into lockstep, forget their combative ideology’s, forget their nuclear standoff, Come together as survivalists…for that is what they are. Formulate an immediate plan to combat the atmospheric pollution, the runaway acidification of the expanding oceans, the steady implacable rise of the temperature of the air we breathe. Combine their technological and monetary wealth to develop new research into the immediate replacement of fossil fuels………If they achieve this, the rest of the planet must fall into place behind them, they have no choice. But the Big Guns must first, SHOW THE WAY!
TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE!
If this does not happen, the words of the wise, Sir David Attenborough will apply……THEN, WE, HUMANITY AS A CIVILIZATION, SHALL END!

M.
Foxglove@Taranaki, NZ

Marshal Gebbie Apr 2022

Cry, the Beloved Country

Consider the background to this war in the Ukraine, consider the effects of the accumulation of generated rage over the decades?

Russia has historically subjugated Ukrainians since the 1930s when Stalin, motivated by racial prejudice and a desire to dominate, implemented a policy of extermination which systematically starved the largely rural population to death in the phenomenon known as the"Holodomor"... and forbade any complaint being uttered by the suffering peasants with the penalty of being frozen to death in the gulags of the wilderness of Siberia.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Ukraine became an independent nation by popular decree. This was not received well by  Russia nor by the Russian speaking populace of the Donbass region in the East.

In 2013 revolution occurred in the Maidan Square in Kiev where protestors revolted against the thuggish government of Victor Yakunovych who had implemented, in the face of Russian pressure, a forced decision against the popular choice of the people for the Ukraine to join the European union.

The Maidan revolution resulted in the collapse of the Yakunovych government and his forced sudden retreat to Russia. Pro Russian separatist forces in the Donbass supported by euphemistically titled "Russian Military Advisors" in February of 2014, attacked loyalist forces of the Ukraine in  the self-declared Donetsk and Luhansk republics. Military escalation continued through to 2018 including artillery exchanges and the decision by Russia to militarily invade and annex the Crimean peninsular.

An undeclared war began between Ukrainian forces on one side, and separatists intermingled with Russian troops on the other, although Russia attempted to hide its involvement. The war settled into a static conflict, with repeated failed attempts at a ceasefire. In 2015, the Minsk II agreements were signed by Russia and Ukraine, but a number of disputes prevented them being fully implemented. By 2019, 7% of Ukraine was classified by the Ukrainian government as temporarily occupied territories, while the Russian government had indirectly acknowledged the presence of its troops in Ukraine.

In 2021 and early 2022, there was a major Russian military build-up around Ukraine's borders. NATO accused Russia of planning an invasion, which it denied. Russian President Vladimir Putin criticized the enlargement of NATO as a threat to his country and demanded Ukraine be barred from ever joining the military alliance. He also expressed Russian historic views, questioning Ukraine's right to exist, and stated wrongfully that Ukraine was created by Soviet Russia. On 21 February 2022, Russia officially recognized the two self-proclaimed separatist states in the Donbas, and openly sent troops into the territories. Three days later, Russia invaded Ukraine. Much of the international community has condemned Russia for its actions in post-revolutionary Ukraine, accusing it of breaking international law and violating Ukrainian sovereignty. Many countries implemented economic sanctions against Russia, Russian individuals, or companies, especially after the 2022 invasion.

The Russian genocide handbook was published on April 3, two days after the first revelation that Russian servicemen in Ukraine had murdered hundreds of people in Bucha, and just as the story was reaching major newspapers.  The Bucha massacre was one of several cases of mass killing that emerged as Russian troops withdrew from the Kiev region.  This means that the genocide program was knowingly published even as the physical evidence of genocide was emerging.  The writer and the editors chose this particular moment to make public a program for the elimination of the Ukrainian nation as such.

Legally, genocide means both actions that destroy a group in whole or in part, combined with some intention to do so.  Russia has done the deed and confessed to the intention.....and incidentally, recently Ukraine geophysicists discovered vast gas and oil deposits in the, then, Ukrainian administered segment of the Black Sea. These deposits would have had the capacity and potential to render the Ukraine, not only independent of Russian hydrocarbon dependence but also capable of being developed into a major commercial supplier of oil and gas to the European community. Russia's annexation of Crimea and the recent military occupation of the Eastern corridor effectively opens the door to Russian monopolization of these deposits...and closes the door to Ukrainian aspirations!

Ukraine bleeds, Russia’s Putin must live with the guilt of the suffering and destruction he has caused for the rest of his living days. Emotions are running high on the vast steppes of Central Asia, whatever the outcome of this turmoil, decades of hate and resentment, violence and vengeance have been wrought by this action, the birth of this animosity shall grow and pervade, unhindered, for centuries in the heart of the angry denizens of this poor, tortured land.

Ukraine, Ukraine...Cry the Beloved Country

M.
20 April 2022

Apr 2022

v V v

Into the Deep

Free will has brought us here,
brought me here,
all the result of breathing.

A consequence from arrogance.
A consequence from alcohol (But not me).
A consequence of neglect.

A consequence of the unknown
explosion at any given moment
from my mother when we
were young.

My developed response
a fight or flight my whole life,
the pathway so deep
a bottom doesn't exist.

Like a deep sea diver
the lower I go
the darker it becomes.

Claustrophobia and panic
are almost certain.

Breathing
becomes more difficult

and returning to the surface
takes slow and steady patience.

I've only gone so deep.

How much further I might go I do not know.

I'm terrified to think what might be down there.

The thought of meeting the unknown face to face is
a fight I fight everyday.

They tell me that fighting gives it strength,
it would be better to befriend it.

I try but

its hard to make friends
in the dark.

Apr 2022

Nat Lipstadt

In Their Own Words: “All I’ve ever learned from love is....”

In Their Own Words:

“All I’ve ever learned from love is....”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So come, my friends, be not afraid.  We are so lightly here.
It is in love that we are made.  In love we disappear.  Tho’ all the maps of blood and flesh are posted on the door,  there’s no one who has told us yet what Boogie Street is for.                                     Leonard Cohen

All I've learned from love that it appears on its own timetable,
and, all I've learned from love is, it is the purpose. Harlon Rivers

“is crazy and this is infinite and ever so sobering wondrous possible"
Medusa

It is a paradox of two people - in debit to one another though each may never realise;
and neither one of whom would ever consider recalling the debt. Gideon

A headlong charge into a vast unknown that promises fufillment of every lacy, perfumed dream, but may instead deliver wrenching wounds that only another love can heal. Lori Jones McCaffery

every fantastic mistake I ever really made! Drunk in shallow bar light with a woman of my wicked dreams who laughed as loud as me at our shared ****** jokes we both got. We loved for awhile and then wandered and still loved forever as we found other dim bars with more wicked dreams.                                        gray dot (unknown)

All I have learned from love is to give more than one receives unconditionally.                                                K Balachandran

"love is the great equalizer: ignoring age, race, education, wealth, religion, disability, and sanity... simultaneously capable of lifting all to the highest highs and dragging all into the deepest depths. In love there is no pride or ego." forgotten

that just beyond is a hidden trail, where a magical river of the purest water flows free. Here and only here, my heart can be revived, and my mind is stilled by the silence I find. Love’s call is gentle. Joey

“that love is as love does.”
victoria

All I ever learned from love is the meaning of the word, "unconditional!”.           SE Reimer

Sometimes we fall in love, and sometimes love falls on us.
Stephen E. Yocum

it is gentle rage, come like sun through clouds, to feed parched earth....one word to set life a tingle, the first smile of a golden
boy's day.  The last caress before sleep, the letting go of a dying
friends hand and the gathering together of companions for food
and laughter, love comes in many guises, has many faces and is
lifeblood to the soul hiding within.                   betterdays

where the beginnings end and the ends begin.    Elizabeth J.

The burial of fear and all we’ve ever known In hope for a new flourishment.    Dante Rocio

that life flows in abundance of peace, harmony and balance when I
surrender to live in love.                                                                Cné

that love assuages hurt and heals the wounded...it rings with melody
and dances to the heavens.  It’s the divine giving over of body and mind;  it's mystic transcendence an overwhelming feeling of pure ecstasy.                                                                                      patty m

that love is a dunghill, and I'm a crow that stands on it and caws.
                                                                                      Thomas W Case

Acceptance.  Acceptance of myself and of the ones I love.
                                                                                              Kelly Rose

It is easier to give love than to accept it.         Walter W Hoelbling

was what I learned from her...Love is above, beyond what we all wish, we had to touch the sun, the moon, the stars; everything we have.                                                                            Temporal Fugue

that it is unique; it makes the softest body, hard, and softens the hardest heart.                                                                poetontheroof

Our hearts tied but I don't know how.                       Anonymous

Love has the ability to surpass life. Even though you are gone I still can’t stop loving you. “Love leaves more behind than death ever takes away. “ -unknown.                                        Love Storytelling

to never go searching for it. That's it, I guess.                      Aparna

has been gleamed through the sacrifice and service of a few extraordinary souls.  For true love is borne of sacrifice, and
it compels us to serve.  Without those elements, it cannot exist.
                                                                 J Klein and Sons Pen Parish

it requires curiosity to truly uncover; it is an emotion
that makes us uniquely human.                                        Angelique

that sometimes it hurts and sometimes it thrills, but
love that kills your pain is always worth the dying for.                 r

it is a gift from God, most precious and not to be abused or taken
for granted.                                                          South by Southwest

how to hurt.                                                           Andrew Crawford

is that, it comes like lightning...it jolts, it makes, or breaks a future;
it hangs around, no matter what, if it's meant to be...yours...
all i've learned from love made me a tree, with fruits
with a blend of sour and honeyed truths, it is heaven...
when bared, shared... reciprocated.                            Sally A Bayan

that it is hard and it hurts but we cannot live without it... there is no storybook endings. You take the good and bad and make it what you need.                                                                                 Melissa S.

The burial of fear and all we’ve ever known
In hope for a new flourishment. Dante Rocio

that I can’t, won’t, don’t want to ever live life without Love! ♥️ Feeling Love Sparks everyday forever and always ♥️ Loving Love Glass Slipper Girl

to accept it when it is given, to share it when it is felt, to cherish it because it is a gift and that whether it hurts or it heals, it is far better to have experienced it than to not have.                                  BLT

that love is...forever studied; gravity, it is akin to the sense of gravity;
it can never be explained, felt, or experienced, but never grasped in ones hand.                                                                          wordvango

that if you have it, you should give it.                                  amanda

how to turn up my face and surrender to the rain.
                                                                      Clementine Valerie Black

that God is love expressed by Jesus, and I'm my best when I imitate Christ.   Christos Victor

the most over analyzed, overwrought word that remains after thousands of years, completely
inexplicable.                                                                onlylovepoetry

it's a strength and weakness, ecstasy and agony, a belief and fear (of losing), emotional contradictions yet so intrinsically precious to be worth living and dying for.                          Pradip Chattopadhyay

the emptiness of smothering empathy for all that lives, feels and needs.  It's to bear eternal suffering...                                   Traveler

red.                                                                                                     Fog

to give, far outweighs the take.                                        Mike Hauser

that it lifts open our minds' eyes, overturns our fears in this vast expanse of the unknown - it etherally reveals our connection
Melody

how deep is my ignorance.                                              Joel M Frye

that love has nothing to do with ***. It has everything to do with sick kids at 3am and holding back your friends hair when she pukes in the gutter crying over some ******* who just dumped her. It's selfless.
                                                                                                        Acme

nothing compared to what I've learned from pain.                 v V v

the things I’ve never learned.                                               M-E

that is the cancer and the cure; the detour and the straight line; proof of reincarnation and death everlasting; the intersection where extreme selflessness and selfishness meet, becoming indistinguishable; it’s shapeless, nearly invisible, and yet known to everyone; a verb, a noun, a conjunction between and a preposition to a beginning and a dead end.
                                                                                           Nat Lipstadt

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
thanks to all the participants, so far...(see the note below)

This is an open, living poem; anyone should feel free to message me to add, amend, or delete; just message me directly; won’t modify if you just comment.

one more thing don’t ask me to add an old poem that is only tangentially related: write a max of two or three sentences that
clearly and directly responds to the title...

format is.deliberately sloppy, just like the subject
matter.

and the original version (2017)

https://hellopoetry.com/poem/2187204/all-ive-learned-from-love-for-leonard/

#their #words #all #learned #love #lipstadt

Apr 2022

Nat Lipstadt

One in a Thousand (Am I Compelled?)

~another love poem~

In the thousands of years of Earth’s foregoing,
marking the reign of humans, all seek sapience,
knowing full well, neither first or last am I to mark
this day’s commencement with a need, a desiring,
to notate this not unusual but definitively unique
calendar notation with a tribute, neither requested
but freely given to the person who lies beside me.

Did I wake commanded or so compelled to scrabble
a collection of words, sequences, initially disordered,
into a shape, to chisel these sendings of a chest into a
living disbursement, a statute, a marbleized creature,
that empties and releases a sensory disposition rumbling
into a messy, mediocre utterance of sentience while they
sleep quiet, pockmarked by dreamed mumblings, dreaming?

No, I did not.

News headlines come demanding see me, insistent that
I am urgency, but one displaced by the next, making them
instantly stale by pealing replacements. This poem, a self-
appointed task is now eased, spent and spurted into an
lifespan of a length unknown and untold. Here I end, ceased
and resisting, demurring, desisting another stanza, The hour
approaches the seventh hour before noon, rising time. Go now.

The choring chords of fibrous tasks that stitch existence into
a sustaining impertinent permanence, list-crossing-off, a-nagging.
The itches of living, ask for scratching, 1st cup of coffee making,
but smile bemusedly that this first and freshest to do, newly added,
is done, dispatched with a line-sworded satisfying crossing off.
She sleeps on, while I soon to rise and quiet paddle to the
kitchen where kept the utensils for sustenance,

I am contented, miraculously, simultaneous,
emptied and fulfilled.

4-14-2021
NYC
7:18am

#lipstadt #compelled