Tag Archives: social critique

I am on facebook.  If you also are logging on that platform, you will know right away what such membership entails.  With the heavy and prolonged snow falls we have been having almost throughout the entire U.S.A., many (truly beautiful) pictures have emerged and continue to emerge nonstop.  They all tend to tell us a tale.  One may think about the serene promises of the Ansel Adams photographs, to mention probably the most prominent artist’s captivation in our end of the world.  Then, there are pictures from inside homes.  Or such that capture estate-like houses donning various layers of snow.  Cars under snow.  Warmly and elegantly clad people in snow.  And so on.  This last cyberspace “fad” has in the snow its limitlessly admired protagonist – in a display of (surely unwilling) disregard of humans whose lives are affected beyond traffic halts, wet toes, or sore hands (at least, there are toes inside warm boots, gloves covering those shovel-holding digits, cars, and son, to have troubles with).   Remembering, from recent times, a multitude of natural forces that caused immense human suffering and fatalities, I decided to oust this year’s white stuff as one of the most villainous antagonists.  Instead of risking being called “weird” – to fear the least, and therefore avoiding a write-up of a mini-drama play between an age-old and highly clouted natural phenomenon and myself, I wrote a poem.

when another heart sobs

 

i remember in vivid colors all the smells

a crisp taupe late autumn afternoon a reddish sun

mom had us under self-knitted bright and darker orange layers

our tummies were glued snugly to her olive green spreads

 

our front balcony was hosting another private after-school delight

mom’s offerings were housed in a still hot oval yellow earthen pot

aromas galore were always worth our steep twice-a-day stride

no contest though to her beaming smile that rang for us the bells

 

she left suddenly for our kitchen that heat-fronted day

emerged with two large spoons and more of the fresh bread

we watched her face light over the deep bowl she brought along

while she poured in to it some of our plentiful share

her sweet voice urged us to stay and eat on

 

curious our eyes didn’t let her out of sight down those few steps:

our two little age-alikes were now filling the voids of their hunger pangs

mom was standing by the complete strangers’ tiny lonely side

she looked up, smiled – she wasn’t going to mind that we didn’t abide

 

a vicious earthquake then in the peak of eastern Turkey’s winter

had stricken some of the poorest people out of their four bare walls

conspiring with that fault line’s chain of pervert affairs

snow compounded misery with its bountiful squalls

 

mom was never the same after the news

 

maybe it was for that unending horrible winter of all nightmares

maybe it was on that day in that for long ignored autumn

when my fairy-tale perception of harmful matters of life

woke up my negligence to raise me up and hard

to double my mom’s beating-for-all heart

 

her soul was too fragile to hold it all in

especially when children were kept in pain

the source didn’t have to be intentionally inhumane

a storm an earthquake flood or fire

or mere snow many find something to desire

 

uncounted billions of minutes and infinite spatial dots later

insatiable ocean waters and a premature death between us

i sit by a window of my heated abode

rapt in the image of pure fantasy

though the time is now the place is here

only my memories of that past adhere

 

the white stuff has been eager in its show of affluence this year

world’s forgotten quarters sag under its selfish dense weight

marvel-filled comments frequent cyberspace on its beauty

a source of childhood joys for not only a handful plenty

 

for the homeless or the otherwise hit, however,

there never was, is or will be a winter wonderland

 

 

 

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As always, I look forward to your visit next Sunday. May you enjoy the rest of your day and have a wonderful new week.