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Dennis Cardiff

~ Poems & Prose

Dennis Cardiff

Monthly Archives: June 2013

naked truth

10 Monday Jun 2013

Posted by DennisCardiff in Poetry

≈ 57 Comments

Tags

armor, choices, compassion, darkness, illusions, love, mask, memory, naked, past, present, regrets, truth, wilderness, without fear, without pride

Compassion Bloggers visit to Tanzania May 6-12...

Compassion Bloggers visit to Tanzania May 6-12, 2012 to write about the ministry of Compassion International. compassionbloggers.com/tanzania (Photo credit: CompassionInternational)

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naked, i walk
into the darkness,
into the wilderness.
i have no mask,
no armor.
Love and Compassion,
my only defenses.
i walk without fear,
without pride.
i am the lowest
of the low.

i am the result
of my choices.
i have no regrets.
the past is but a memory;
the future, a dream —
all illusions —
they do not matter.
it is now, i find
my truth
ever-changing.

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the simple life

08 Saturday Jun 2013

Posted by DennisCardiff in Poetry

≈ 17 Comments

Tags

cigarettes, drugs, homeless, loving kindness, marihuana, mystery, personal, philosophy, spiritual, unconditional love, wine

.

it’s nice
waking up
in the morning.

if i don’t
I know
something’s
wrong.

i don’t know
where i am,
or how i got here,
but, i’m here.

i got some wine,
some cigarettes
and some maryjane —
i’m okay.

i start walking,
ain’t looking
for trouble, but
it finds me.

how am i?
i’ll be doing fine
soon as i get
this drunk on.

.

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My Destiny

07 Friday Jun 2013

Posted by DennisCardiff in Poetry

≈ 23 Comments

Tags

death, destiny, dreams, empowerment, imagination, lifetimes, longing, loving kindness, nature, personal, philosophy, spirits, spiritual, unconditional love, universe, world

M311.

.

I sit,
back pressed
against the old oak.
Legs crossed in meditation.
Mind emptied of contemplation,
waiting instead
for words
sublime.

A gentle voice,
more like a whisper,
speaks directly to my soul.
An angel, perhaps, sings of a place
(to me, yet unfamiliar)
in blessed words (from somewhere else)
of dreams, fond reunions
far from ravages
of time.

A place
where (someday)
I’m meant to be —
a place I’ll find my home,
my destiny.

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The Happiest Guy Alive

06 Thursday Jun 2013

Posted by DennisCardiff in Poetry

≈ 18 Comments

Tags

compassion, emotion, empathy, generosity, loving kindness, mankind, panhandling, philosophy, spiritual, unconditional love

32191_0d49d789103c491f051909098fed72b6_99ef046f912a3a3cc1a807b5d969ac92

.

So, I’m panning
in my usual spot.
This suit walks by —
in passing he says,
“Get a job!”
“Hire me!” I say.
“Take a shower,” he says.
“I may sleep outside,
that doesn’t mean
I don’t wash —
I wash all over.”

“Hey,” I say,
“if you’re so successful,
why do you look
so unhappy?

“I’ve made the price
of my bottle.
I’ve got some smokes,
a little pot.

“Me, I’m the happiest guy alive.”

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Sleeping Rough

05 Wednesday Jun 2013

Posted by DennisCardiff in Poetry

≈ 22 Comments

Tags

compassion, despair, desperation, emotion, empathy, fear, loneliness, longing, loving kindness, mankind, personal, philosophy, spiritual, unconditional love, universe, world

imagesCAK5SAJ8

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Before I open my eyes
I’m aware of a dull roar;
air brakes hissing,
cars honking,
the sound of high heels
on concrete.
It must be morning.

The cold
is unbearable.
I found some cardboard
to insulate me
from the sidewalk
but, my sleeping bag is thin.

There was freezing rain
last night.
I couldn’t sleep
for shivering.
It’s starting to snow.
I can’t feel my feet.
Sometimes, I think
it would be better
if I didn’t wake up,
but, here I am.

 

 

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Strange Fruit

02 Sunday Jun 2013

Posted by DennisCardiff in Prose

≈ 25 Comments

Tags

African-Americans, compassion, death, despair, desperation, destiny, emotion, empathy, empowerment, eternal, forever, free, hanging, loving kindness, lynching, mankind, philosophy, segregation, spiritual, unconditional love, world

Image result for billie holiday strange fruit images

 

Written for the Freedom Writers Contest, March, 2010, using the prompt ‘INSPIRATION’.Definition of Inspiration: “An agency, such as a person or work of art, that moves the intellect or emotions or prompts action or invention.” (Answers.com)

 

Southern trees bear a strange fruit

Blood on the leaves and blood at the root

Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze

Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees

.

Pastoral scene of the gallant south

The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth

Scent of magnolia sweet and fresh

And the sudden smell of burning flesh!

.

Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck

For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck

For the sun to rot, for a tree to drop

Here is a strange and bitter crop.

.

“Strange Fruit” has been called the original protest song. It is deceptively simple and direct. The song depicts lynching in all of its brutality. The three short verses are all the more powerful for their understated and ironic language. The juxtaposition of the pastoral landscape with “The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth”, the smell of magnolias with that of burning flesh, the blossoms more typically associated with the Southern climate with the “strange fruit” produced by racial oppression — good ol’ boys by day; white robes, hoods and burning crosses by night.

The lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith In 1937 was photographed and appeared on a postcard that was seen by Abel Meeropol, a Jewish high-school teacher from the Bronx. This horrendous event took place in Marion, Indiana, August 7, 1930. Meerapol was haunted for days by Lawrence H. Beitler’s photograph of the incident, which sold by the thousands for fifty cents apiece. Strange Fruit was inspired by this horrific image and was published under the pseudonym, Lewis Allan.

Billie Holiday was performing at the club, Café Society, in New York City. After hearing her sing, Meeropol sent her “Strange Fruit”. Holiday had mixed feelings about performing the song. She presented it to her friend Milt Gabler whose Commodore label produced alternative jazz. She sang the song a cappella, and it moved Gabler so much that he wept. In 1939, Gabler agreed to record and distribute the song.

Barney Josephson, owner of Café Society, recognized the impact of the song and insisted that Holiday close all her shows with it. Just as the song was about to begin, waiters would stop serving, the lights in the club would be turned off, and a single pin spotlight would illuminate Holiday on stage. During the musical introduction, Holiday would stand with her eyes closed, as if she were evoking a prayer.

Billie’s grandfather was one of 17 children of a black Virginia slave and a white Irish plantation owner. Her father, Clarence Holiday, while touring the Southwest as a guitar player with the Don Redman big band caught a heavy cold on March 1st, 1937. He had served in France during the last year of WWI and had his lungs severely damaged by mustard gas, making him susceptible to any respiratory ailment. He delayed seeking medical attention, knowing the prevailing racial attitudes in Texas, at the time. He died of pneumonia in the local Veterans’ Hospital. He was 37.

Holiday reflected, “I have to keep singing it, not only because people ask for it but because twenty years after Pop died the things that killed him are still happening in the South.”2

Lynching ideology was directly connected with denial of political and social equality. Benjamin Tillman, 84th Governor of South Carolina from 1890 to 1894 and later a United States Senator from 1895 to 1918 stated forthrightly:

We of the South have never recognized the right of the negro to govern white men, and we never will. We have never believed him to be the equal of the white man, and we will not submit to his gratifying his lust on our wives and daughters without lynching him.

Mobs lynched 4,743 persons in the United States, between 1882 and 1968, according to the Center for Constitutional Rights. Over eighty-eight percent were African-Americans. Fewer than 1 percent of those arrested for lynching were ever convicted.

Abel Meerapol was all too familiar with the news reports describing the Holocaust that began in 1933 when Hitler came to power in Germany. It is estimated that 11 million people were killed during the Holocaust. Six million of these were Jews. In addition to Jews, the Nazis targeted Gypsies, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and the disabled for persecution. The American Holocaust differed only in numbers and scope.

“Strange Fruit” undoubtedly contributed to the 1964 Civil Rights Act declaring discrimination based on race illegal. President Obama reinforced this position when he signed major civil rights legislation in October, 2009 entitled the Matthew Shepard & James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, named for Matthew Shepard, a gay Wyoming teenager who died after being kidnapped and severely beaten in October 1998, and James Byrd Jr., an African-American man dragged to death in Texas the same year.

“Strange Fruit” was counted among one of the “ten songs that actually changed the world” by Q, a British music publication, but “Most Provocative” or “Most Unsettling” might more accurately reflect the song’s artistic impact and true social standing. “Strange Fruit” is “a work of art, that has moved the intellect, emotions and has prompted action”. It, therefore, exemplifies Inspiration.

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Footnotes

1  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4ZyuULy9zs

2  “Lady Sings the Blues” by Billie Holiday with William Dufty, published by Harlem Moon, page 95.

 

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Billie Holiday

02 Sunday Jun 2013

Posted by DennisCardiff in Poetry

≈ 13 Comments

Tags

Billie Holiday, CBS, compassion, destiny, Duke Ellington, emotion, empathy, empowerment, Fine and Mellow (song), Harlem, Lady Day, Lester Young, loving kindness, mankind, philosophy, racism, Sound of Jazz, spiritual, unconditional love, universe, world

Lady Sings the Blues (Billie Holiday album)

Lady Sings the Blues (Billie Holiday album) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

.

Head tilted back,
gardenias in her hair,
Billie sang the blues
like no one else could.

She had lived the blues
with teen-aged parents —
fatherless mostly —
a child scrubbing floors.

Raped by a neighbor
at the age of ten
then put in a home
for wayward girls.

When she was fifteen
she sold her body
to make ends meet
then went to jail.

At Pod’s and Jerry’s
Harlem speakeasy
she sang for the crowd
and brought them to tears.

She sang with the greats
Ellington, Goodman,
Armstrong and her friend
Lester Young on sax.

Like a tapestry,
threads of voice and sax
intertwined and weaved
and became as one.

When I hear her voice,
so melancholy,
crying for her man
it brings me to tears.

She was beautiful,
she was successful
but, abusive men
and drugs pulled her down.

She was Lady Day,
Angel of Harlem.
She charmed us with song
then left us too soon.

Over two hundred
of her recordings
is her legacy.
We miss you,
“Queen of Jazz.”

 

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Note: Excerpt from Fine and Mellow with Lester Young from the CBS production, The Sound of Jazz.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IyuG_2jXsE

Footnotes
1  Tribute song by the rock group U2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3IaL-0h-R4

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Icarus

01 Saturday Jun 2013

Posted by DennisCardiff in Poetry

≈ 18 Comments

Tags

compassion, death, destiny, emotion, empathy, eternal, forever, lifetimes, mystery, personal, philosophy, spiritual, universe

Icarus

Icarus (Photo credit: Jim Moran)

.

there is a space
between the mind
(that tends to seclude)
and the universe
(all-encompassing)
i travel this space

there is a space
between musical notes
between words
between lines
(very important)

there is a space
between the breathing in
and the breathing out
between the fullness
and the emptiness

between ascending
to the sun with Icarus
and the inevitable
plummeting
to earth

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