Doves and. Machines

Let this blow your mind as it blew mine:

It is from the 1969 film Picasso Summer starring Albert Finney and Yvette Mimieux.  Adapted into a screenplay by Ray Bradbury from his short story “In a Season of Calm Weather,” it is set to music by Michel Legrand.  Despite a weak plot, the music and three animated sequences by Wess Herschensohn moved me no end!  Not only did they explore Picasso in a way that helped me to see his work more clearly, the one sequence above also widened my perception of war. After watching the above, I turned off the film to search it on the web, and found this:

and this:

Together, these three videos entered my life as Picasso's Guernica never had before!  In my search, I found that the creative reactions to Picasso's Guernica may rival commentary on any Shakespeare play.  

Here is my own:

Slate grey noon and rain in June

sat me down to pull war and people

from out my 2D cartoon-framed

vision in a sheltered life not Iraq,

Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan,

Israel, Palestine and elsewhere. 

   Horses

are gone but not foot soldiers engaged to

dishearten from land mines and hidden bombs:

providers, mothers, priests, and young ones with

explosives strapped to their childhoods.

      Doves

are there too close to open-eyed blood we

pour in to food, zapping out strength and hope

drowning all openings to the villains’ millions,

         billions—not humans, but dollars—trillions.

Copyright © 2013 S.L.Chast

Posting for dVerse Poets Pub Open Link Night ~ Week 103.

Birthday Carol

My chosen birthday cake:
Chocolate Babka with streusal topping

At age 62, I have major-sized messes

so beautiful that it doesn't take a mother’s

instinct to see me ... and this is my Birthday poem:

Today in South Africa Nelson Mandela

lives on, a prism spreading more Light

the longer he lingers on his death bed,

a man whose choices turned theories into practice

that transformed prisoners and masters into human

beings as restorative justice re-placed violence

with recognition—This is not magic, it is discipline.

Today, I woke privileged: expecting to find

coffee supplies and cat where I left them, to get

potable water from the kitchen tap, fill bowl

for cat, make coffee, and drink in peace at my own

computer—this too is not magic—it took

discipline to earn it within a country of

opportunity—and I want it for everyone.

At 62, I am no longer teaching

theatre,  literature and writing, but learning

to apply lessons to my own living.

I’m no Mandela, but neither am I naïve

about causes and effects of poverty here

and there, about the many rewards for letting

go, relaxing, and forgetting now that I have

achieved my quarter acre of heaven on earth, my

ticket to ignore my country’s complicity—

and I need discipline, since I have no magic.

What I have more than ever is time—time

as past experience, as reflections now, as

future words on paper—a regular Christmas

carol of possibility—that wants only

discipline to bloom.  Let me then turn this summer

Birthday into carol, an oral song of folk

festivals year round; let me stay inside the dance.

My 62nd birthday finds me a word spinner, trying to get behind my craft and add to the daily discipline of writing an effort to publish and let it fly out into the world. Within one year, let it be!

Copyright © 2013 S.L.Chast