Politics

A Tapestry of Trouble…

humanist55

Two crowds of demonstrators
facing off across double lines
of harassed, interfacing riot police
each crowd spouting the bias
of whichever media feed dogs
have been pushing their buttons
there is much darning (and worse)
as the police struggle to keep
them hemmed in whilst a journo
darts in and tries to buttonhole
some talking heads for the news
needles his victims to say something
outrageous but the crowd gathers
round and rips into the man with
the microphone, who wishes he
was home this Saturday afternoon
taking a nap instead of mining
this admittedly rich seam of
newsworthy division – newsworthy
though hardly novel – politicians
of both sides have been dog-whistling
immigration to whip up votes
for decades – a pattern that no amount
of careful work with a seam picker
– will undo and ease the tensions…

© Andrew Wilson, 2025

Over at dVerse Poets Pub, lillian in Poetics, invites us to use a list of words from the world of sewing, albeit with a different meanings…

They Dream of Solidarity

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We are The dreamers of dreams
But they are the creators of nightmares
She cannot bear to listen to the news now
He oscillates between feeling fury and futility
They control the narrative with false news
We cannot believe the lies that others will swallow
They wave false flags to justify
Their repressive responses
We wonder where the bullies came from
That swell their ranks
They raise their fists in anger
We throw up our hands in horror
They wave their guns in the air
We waiver in fear for our lives
But he nurtures resistance
And she writes poems and placards
He investigates logistics
She strategizes
They start a movement
Others join the march
All are non-violent but
They shout “We the People!”
And congregate to be counted
He who would be strong
Looks weaker by the day
They garner solidarity
We can push back
I can have hope…

© Andrew Wilson, 2025

The opening line of this poem is taken from “Ode” by the poet  Arthur O’Shaughnessy and first published in 1873.[1] It is the first poem in O’Shaughnessy’s collection Music and Moonlight (1874). In it, he extols the role of artists in creating new worlds and the poem was put to music by Edward Elgar as The Music Makers (Op. 69) – Elgar’s final choral work. Both poem and choral piece should inspire us to come our of the shadows currently being cast by authoritarian regimes around the world today, and to stand together…

Over at dVerse Poets Pub,  Björn Rudberg (brudberg) in Meeting the Bar: Critique and Craft, challenges us to adopt a different POV – through the use of different pronouns, we can move out of our (sometimes) preferred First Person Point of View…

The Chaos Section Poetry Project

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The Chaos Section Poetry Project is an anthology of poems of resistance in the age of Trump and other authoritarian miscreants. You can read all the poems here, including ones by Merril D. Smith and Melissa Lemay as well as by myself, Andrew Wilson.

Furthermore, they are making the anthology available in print
Record of Dissent: Poems of Protest in an Authoritarian Age

Print Edition 

ISBN Number: 979-8-9993042-0-9

Barnes and Noble
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/record-of-dissent-the-chaos-section-poetry-project/1147784379?ean=9798999304209

Bookshop
https://bookshop.org/p/books/record-of-dissent-poems-of-protest-in-an-authoritarian-age/9515d69e43f1f892?ean=9798999304209&next=t

Book People (Austin, TX)
https://bookpeople.com/book/9798999304209

Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FGCZB9B7

Enjoy – if that is the right word…

Compassion for Strong Men – a Democracy of Love…

humanist55

What if we approached the authoritarians
who have asserted themselves
around the world – with compassion?

Perhaps Putin suffers from Napolean
Complex – the plight of small men
and yearning for the late, great days
when he fought metaphorical rats
in dark corners with the KGB
Was he stunted by the starvation
that took his brother, is that why
he cannot have enough of everything?
He is the Strong Man, bare-chested
on horseback projecting his lost
glory days onto his country and trying
to obliterate a country that was there
when Muscovy was just a swamp
– is that what it will take
to make him feel better?

Has Trump really found a friend
who understands his needs
facilitated his election – twice
or is Putin playing him for a patsy
to suit his own purposes?
Did being born with a silver spoon
in his mouth – paid $20,000 a year
by his father, a millionaire by age eight
set impossible expectations that
made a seedbed for hubris and
underhand shortcuts in the attempt
to make the grade?
In bed with a somewhat Mafia connected Cohn
– another avuncular mentor
who gave him a love of litigation
was Trump needing more of a father’s
love than he could possibly find
in reality – is that why he turned
to reality TV and ultimately to presidency?

Post colonially
India seemed like a beacon of
spiritual inclusion, diversity and equality
with its mixture of religions
living side by side
for the most part, peacefully
but Modi promoted Nationalism
but only for Hindus, Moslems
don’t belong – old hatreds
once more resurrected
in the service of party political
power and concomitant
self-aggrandisement.
Was it being born into a background
of Other Backward Class
as his neighbourhood was classified
or serving tea to haughty strangers
on the station platform with his father
that made Modi aspire to climb so high?
What shame did he bear for denying
his marriage to become a pracharak
in the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh
a leg-up the social ladder
for which celibacy was a requirement?
How many people have to die in
religious pogroms to wash away
the scars of humble origin?

And in another place riven
with religious but not racial
differences, one Semitic people
try to delete another
– to take their place
by God given right, they claim
led by a man terrified to
lose it all, the power, the respect
on account of personal corruption
– the prison that awaits him if
he lets go for a moment
of the extreme nationalist narrative
that keeps his country behind him
even though they slide ever downwards
in the eyes of the world

I don’t know about Orban
or President Xi, but
what are the chances that these other
strong men have a weakness within
that drives their story?
We can react with anger, horror
disbelief, to the authoritarian
network that has overtaken
the global village of recent decades
even with all its village quarrels
and sometimes worse
it was better than this divisive
hate filled place we now find
ourselves thrust into
– but where will it get us?
What if we all wrote to
the strong men and spoke
to their hearts with
understanding
of their personal pasts
their fears and disappointments?
Would a million letters each
be enough to salve them
with a democracy of love?

© Andrew Wilson, 2025

Over at dVerse Poets Pub, sanaarizvi in OpenLinkNight, invites us to post a poem of our choice which can also be read out on the OLN live meeting on Saturday…

This poem attempts to look at current events from a slightly different angle…

Querida

humanist55

You told me your schoolfriends called you little frog
because of your slightly bulging eyes, amiga hermana
and like an amphibian, you emerged from the river
into a new land without meeting those who
would have called you “Wet back”
and sent you whence you came
which is why to me, querido, you are Amfibio
for you brought me the gift of insights
of one who has travelled between borders
you are Alebrije – your travel has given you wings
wings that brought you and your fantastic colours
into my life, querida.

What Divina Providencia brought you to my door querida?
What spirit guided your path, melded our destinies?
You asked for work as a live-in ama de casa
to support your family back in Mexico
and you fulfilled a need I didn’t even know I had
and our relationship became hardly that
of employer and employed

Then came the Orange Chupacabrón
the devil who demands all the attention
consumes all the oxygen and sucks all the blood
– this trickster wants to send your kind
back to Mexico and elsewhere as if you are
una cifra insignificante
he would make you an apachurrado
a hat run over by a truck
but he did not reckon with me

At first you shrugged “ Ni modo…”
but I was encabronada
well and trulypissed-off but also I had Susto – fear
down to my very soul
fear for me, for you,
for your family, for my country
I would not see you become
Un pobre infeliz and so
We sealed off the entrance to the cellar
concealed a new entrance behind the mirror
made a safe refuge for you and others
told the shop where you used to shop for us
not without irony, that you had been swept up
and disappeared by the orange one’s minions
and I arranged for a Mexican run shop
with simpática, to deliver discretely
enough food for whomsoever we hid…

Now we have an underground railway
– not to escape victims of the orange one
but to hold them until safe houses can be found
– we did not need the magic of shamans
to defeat the Chupacabrón
we did not need to pick poisonous Toloache
or summon the Cenzontle to do battle
on our behalf because, after all
we are hermanas bajo la piel

© Andrew Wilson, 2025

Over at dVerse Poets Pub, Dora in Poetics, invites us to write a poem using one or more of the poetically interpreted Spanish words in a poem by Sandra Cisneros…

Sandra Cisneros (b. 1954), in Chicago, the only daughter in a family of six brothers. In her stories and poems, she deals with the formation of Chicana identity, exploring the challenges of being caught between Mexican and Anglo-American cultures, facing the misogynist attitudes present in both these cultures, and the constant migration of her family between Mexico and the United States, “always straddling two countries but not belonging to either culture.”
In “I Have No Word in English For,” Cisneros lists twenty-five Spanish words dictionary-like but non-alphabetically, yet seemingly objectively. You soon discover that each definition appropriates a keenly personal shade of meaning.

I Have No Word in English For
By Sandra Cisneros (The New Yorker print edition, September 16, 2024)

Apachurrado. Hat run over by a truck. Heart run over by unrequited love.
Estrenar. To show off what’s new gloriously.
Engentada. People-overdose malaise.
A estas alturas. Superb vista with age.
Encabronada/o. A volatile, combustible rage.
Susto. Fear that spooks the soul away.
Ni modo. Wise acceptance of what fate doles.
Aguante. Miraculous Mexican power to endure conquest, tragedy, politicos.
Ánimo. A joyous zap of fire.
Divina Providencia. Destiny with choices and spiritual interventions.
Nagual. Animal twin assigned at birth.
Amfibio. Person with the gift of global perspective due to living between borders.
Alebrije. Amfibio with wings from geographical travel.
Ombligo. Buried umbilical. Center of the universe.
Toloache. Love concoction made with moonflower and menstrual blood.
Tocaya/o. Name double. Automatic friend.
Amiga hermana. Heart sister closer than kin.
Un pobre infeliz. The walking wounded maimed by land mines of life.
Un inocente. Mind askew since birth; blameless.
Chupacabrón/a. Energy vampire disguised in human form.
Cenzontle. Tranquillity transmitter in bird or human form.
Friolenta/o. Tropical blood. Vulnerable to chills.
Chípil. Melancholia due to an unborn sibling en route.
Desamor. Heart bleeding like xoconostle fruit.
Xoconostle. Must I explain everything for you?

I have used some of Cisneros’ words, sometimes with her poetic meaning and sometimes their literal meanings, given below.

Apachurrado – squashed, down
Encabronada – pissed off (slang) angry
Susto – fright
Ni modo –  “that’s life”, “oh well”, or “what can you do”
Divina Providencia – divine providence
Amfibio – amphibian
Alebrije – a type of Mexican folk art sculpture, typically a brightly colored, fantastical      creature made from paper-mâché or wood
Toloache – literally – the plant with nodding head – Datura, a highly poisonous flower
Amiga hermana – friend sister
Un pobre infeliz – a poor unfortunate
Chupacabrón – a legendary creature, or cryptid, in the folklore of parts of the Americas. The name comes from the animal’s purported vampirism.
Cenzontle – the mockingbird, a bird known for its ability to mimic the songs of other birds

I also used some other Spanish phrases

Querida – Dear (one)
hermanas bajo la piel – Sisters under the skin
ama de casa – housekeeper
una cifra insignificant – an insignificant person
simpática – sympathetichermanas bajo la piel – Sisters under the skin
simpática – sympathetic

America (Krisis: at the Crossroads)

humanist55

America I would still like to visit you
perhaps even more urgently
– the rough beast slouched
towards Bethlehem now born
– a second coming the world
thought impossible
now come to pass
mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.

How long before those Great Lakes
are poisoned by polluters
set free to do their dirty work
and national parks still safe
from the graffiti of the poor
but not from the mineral mining
gutting of once again empowered rich
cost corner-cutting pipelines
fracture and spill their black gold
on sacred reservations and beyond.

To appease his base your President
has pulled your role as policeman
to the world citing the cost
but alongside military might
your soft power saved lives
now already doomed as
vaccinations, retrovirals
and simply food are withdrawn
allies against oppression abandoned
in favour of the oppressors
and that is without the chaos
of world markets disarrayed
the world order disrupted
by a thoughtless
human hand grenade.

We British cannot talk
– we also had a Prime Minister
unelected, full of hubris, who
made leader by her party
with no electoral mandate
fancied herself a disruptor
and lasted less time than a lettuce
but whose damage lives on

– small fry compared to POTUS
whose power, mandated, he claims
has already hurt the whole world
in ways no magic reset can reverse
and in truth, his mandate was
less than half of “We the people…”
his vandals slashing government
to smash the laws that hold them back
from moving money – poor to rich
once more…

The “Land of Opportunity” that
favoured my grandfather’s brother
and many another immigrant
now demonises the souls who
would make their way too
to share the possibilities
of a bright future for their families
even as the undocumented
labour that oils the wheels
of the American economy,
– fentanyl and the war on drugs
a fig leaf to the injustice
of forced repatriation of those
already embedded in America
their dreams and families shattered
by the spurious scourge of
anti-immigrant sentiment
pitting the poor
against the poorer still.

So America I would still like to visit you
but I am not sure you would let me in
with my opinions here on record
– sewn into the worldwide web
where creepy billionaires now
rule the roost and spread the lies
that fooled America’s poor
into electing their nemesis
by inflaming the emotion of their
abandoned sensibilities with
false promises wrapped up in fake news
– how long before you see the truth
and can Americans, as they have before
revolt against the white minority
who would install Gilead
the billionaires bent on plunder
the bigoted descendants of
the slave-owning South.

And if you, the people of America
find your voice and strength again
quell the krisis
reassert the values that had
America support the world order
the rule of law, the equality of man
then perhaps I will yet
get to visit America…

© Andrew Wilson, 2025

This poem was written for the dVerse Poets Pub call for submission for a soon-to-be-published real world anthology of poems to be entitled, provisionally, Krisis: Poetry at the Crossroads. It is also a sequel to a poem I wrote in my writing group back in 2023 “America (I Would Like to Visit You)” which in turn was a response to “America (Superstorm)” by Kathleen Graber. I read the previous poem at the dVerse OLN in July 2023 and I am sharing it for the current OLN #383 which is being hosted by  Grace . Since 2023, President Trump has been re-elected for a second term…

A Warning To the Witless…

humanist55

Our love, equality’s blood now spills and foams
Stabbed by fantasists and dictators with loud fuss
We mourn the loss of freedom taken from us

Supporters held in thrall, dismayed as truth hits home
Democracy is murdered as those fools stand by – witless
Our love, equality’s blood now spills and foams
Stabbed by fantasists and dictators with loud fuss

We poets must respond and fight with sharp-edged poems
Not just to mourn our lost love, blazon our distress
But as a call to arms for all to rise and seek redress
Our love, equality’s blood now spills and foams
Stabbed by fantasists and dictators with loud fuss
We mourn the loss of freedom taken from us…

© Andrew Wilson, 2025

Over at dVerse Poets Pub, Grace in Poetry Forms invites us to try the English Madrigal – a complex form which was often a song and often too, referring to love. This is a somewhat different love song for the dark times we live in – not just in America but across many countries around the world that will nevertheless be made worse by what is happening there.

Key Features of the English Madrigal

Content: Often includes a theme of love

Structure of an English madrigal

*Usually written in iambic pentameter.
*Comprised of three stanzas: a tercet, quatrain, and sestet.
*All three of the lines in the opening tercet are refrains.

Form: A thirteen-line form in three stanzas:
Stanza 1] Tercet -Three lines
Stanza 2] Quatrain – Four lines
Stanza 3] Sestet – Six lines

Rhyme and Refrain of an English Madrigal

[L1] A (refrain 1)
[L2] B1 (refrain 2)
[L3] B2 (refrain 3)

[L4] a
[L5] b
[L6] A (refrain 1)
[L7] B1 (refrain 2)

[L8] a
[L9] b
[L10] b
[L11] A (refrain 1)
[L12] B1 (refrain 2)

In the Offing…

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Stormy Sea, Emil Nolde, watercolor, paper

Two yachts and a pleasure steamer
Caught in the offing amidst a squall

The squall blew in suddenly
Catching the sailors off guard

Standing off to avoid wrecking
on a lee shore, they battle big waves

The waves are ultramarine blue
Starved of light by the red-tinged clouds

And yellow sunset light beyond the clouds
Trumpets the coming of nightfall danger

They weren’t expecting danger on this Sunday sail
Sailors struggle, passengers huddle on the steamer

Pray for those in peril on the sea
Two yachts and a pleasure steamer…

© Andrew Wilson, 2024

Over at dVerse Poets Pub, Melissa Lemay in Poetics invites us to write an Ekphrastic poem selecting from a number of paintings (unidentified as yet) before revealing who the artist was and something about his career. Emil Nolde, it turns out, was an ardent Nazi who attempted to climb the ladder of art success at a time when the tide was turning against his expressionist style in favour of the insipid efforts to which all propaganda are likely to produce.

Melissa asks us whether, upon learning about Emil Nolde’s unpleasant politics, we feel differently about his art.
I think a man’s politics are separate from his art unless he is using his art as propaganda and then as I say above, the quality will suffer because it doesn’t come from the heart.
Nevertheless, I can think of people, still alive today, whose work and life I don’t want to support because their politics are abhorrent. Emil Nolde no longer needs our support and I feel no different about the work – only the man…

Hasbara

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Over at dVerse Poets Pub, msjadeli in Haibun Monday, invites us to write a Burnt Haibun, a reductive poetry form that distils a longer prose poem down to a shorter one and finally to Haiku. The emboldened words below form the second poem and likewise with the second one distilled down to the haiku.

It would have been nice, given the New Year ‘n all, not to have to have written this particular piece but sadly there is no end in sight and awareness needs to be kept alive… Trying to understand/explain the conflict which this poem describes has been both an internal and external journey for me over many years and when I finally found the accounts of the term Hasbara – everything fell into place and I understood a great deal…

However – a Happy New Year to everyone at the pub!

HASBARA

It is hard to translate Hasbara
once it would have been called Propaganda
but for the truly unpalatable
you need a subtler, more insidious word
so hasbara, nearly enough
means explaining

You want to explain
why one people are entitled to
take the land of another people
who have lived there for
two thousand years – hasbara
why two peoples genetically identical
are not in fact equal
paint one of them as evil with hasbara
you want to justify how large farms
can suck the water from the wells
of smaller neighbours don’t mention it
that’s no part of hasbara
but happy, sun-bronzed people
claiming their homeland with confidence
that’s hasbara.

The world attacked us
and they attacked us first
we have the right to defend ourselves
hasbara
they are evil – we are good
hasbara

Hasbara treads carefully
hasbara paints a picture
hasbara targets the diaspora
and the politicians where they live
hasbara accumulates
in the brains of its targets
in the corners of the internet
and on the pages of newspapers
hasbara makes lies palatable
but hasbara cannot paper over
too big a crack between
reality and the lies
genocide is too big to hide
but hasbara breeds hubris
and overreach
and years of hasbara
can deflate instantly
like a burst balloon

Explain that to the
purveyors of Hasbara

Hasbara –
once called Propaganda
a subtler, more insidious word
means explaining

why take the land of people
who lived there for
two thousand years
why genetically identical
are not equal
– paint them as evil – hasbara
happy, sun-bronzed people
claiming their homeland
that’s hasbara.

The world  attacked us first
we have the right
they are evil – we are good
hasbara
treads carefully
paints a picture
targets the diaspora
and politicians
accumulates
in brains
the internet
on pages of newspapers
hasbara makes lies palatable
but genocide is too big to hide
hasbara breeds hubris
overreach
years of hasbara
deflate
like a burst balloon

Explain that to the
purveyors of Hasbara…

Hasbara explaining
they are evil – we are good
a burst balloon

Andrew Wilson, 2025

Ubuntu

humanist55

When our humanity falters

In so many places

And what really matters

Is trounced in so many ways

When dictators are not just

A “Third” World affliction

Which “First” encouraged, in moral dereliction

And now is itself spotted like rust

With rampant would-be elite Fascism

We can draw back from the abyss

For democracy is no mere -ism

If. “humanity” no longer resonates, then think on this

There are other words from other places you

Can use so why not try “Ubuntu”?

© Andrew Wilson, 2024

Ubuntu is not just a philosophical concept but a way of life that influences social interactions, justice, and community building. It reminds us of our shared humanity and the importance of supporting one another.

Over at Reena’s Xploration Challenge, Reena Saxena invites us to write about the concept of Ubuntu.