Author: Gary Beck
Source: http://www.polseguera.com/writers/writing-862_levels-of-resistance.html


Levels of Resistance


Gary Beck/Objectives

 

Buffalo Bill's Defunct

I read the great poets

in several languages,

moved by many,

transported by a few.

 

I think about Byron,

died at Missalongi

in the siege of the Greeks

by the Ottomans.

 

World War I poets

died in the trenches,

words mostly forgotten

that didn't endure.

 

The internet spreads,

poetry dwindles.

since few poets

inspire.

 

The performing arts

grow obsolete

without emags

to give them life.

 

Paintings by noted artists

are still prized

to hang ignored

on private walls.

 

Poetry can't be displayed

in ornate frames

and has no value

for avid collectors.

 

Poets do not lead

the fight for freedom,

preoccupied

with mundane matters.

 

Autocracy spreads

funded by the rich,

eroding the promise

of my troubled land.

 

The hope of the future

for our suffering people

melts away

from global warming.

 

 

Tormented Land

Crumbling sidewalks contrast

with resplendent buildings

in the gentrifying city

of abandoned parks,

no longer maintained

as the rich go elsewhere

for recreation.

Nature perseveres

as long as our planet exists

to recover the earth

until we all perish,

weeds sprouting

through cracked pavements

in the ongoing struggle

that affects us all

so we barely notice

concrete is fleeting.

 

 

Oppression

The rich men want our land

and we cannot pay our rent

because they keep raising the price,

so the police come

and drive us off

the land of our fathers.

 

They put us in a filthy tent camp

where men come in the night

and tell us they will take us

to a better life

in the United States.

 

We have no choice

since our children sicken,

so we pay all we have,

join a group,

leave Venezuela

for the incredible journey

of thousands of miles

that will take months.

 

My wife and oldest daughter

were raped and killed in Columbia.

I could not protect them,

a burden I'll never get over.

When we slept in Guatemala

my second oldest daughter

was taken from us in the night

and I could not find her.

 

Somehow I kept my youngest

son and daughter with me

as we went through Mexico.

By that time we were exhausted,

hungry all the time, sick to our stomachs

and we reached the United States,

where they put my children in cages,

me in a camp with barbed wire.

 

I know they don't want us,

but we are like other people

who believe that America

will allow a dream for my children.

I am not a criminal,

drug dealer, or terrorist.

I'll take any kind of job,

learn English

to provide for my children.

 

 

Past or Present

I look upon the ills

disturbing my troubled land

that seems crazier than ever before,

people videoing putting their cats

into the oven

because an ex-president said:

'They're eating their cats and dogs'.

It has to be the internet

allowing instant communication,

unlimited access to many

who don't have enough to do

and follow conspiracies,

each one nuttier than the last,

yet they may not be dumber

than their peers in the past,

just more visible

on social media.

I could spend 24/7

listing dangers to my country,

foreign and domestic,

but cannot conclude

if the imminent threat

from our enemies

is more dangerous

than during the cold war,

when many of us feared,

nuclear annihilation.

 

 

Disappeared

Another homeless man

straggles the street,

eyes flashing:

'Mentally ill. Mentally ill.'

A torn, stained, yellow poncho

covers the scars

of his battered upper body,

lower body in three layers

of tattered pants

concealing wounds

leaking bodily fluids

through porous cloth

lost in his own horizon

subtracted

from humanity.

 

Levels of Resistance is an unpublished poetry collection that raises the voices of the silent and the oppressed, who should be heard: 'Buffalo Bill Defunct', 'Tormented Land', 'Oppression', 'Past or Present', 'Disappeared'.