Voices and Soul

9 March 2010

by Justice Putnam
Black Kos, Tuesday's Chile Contributing Poetry Editor


It seems everywhere we look, another devastation has dropped it's heavy hand on the Earth; wars, global warming typhoons, earthquakes, pandemics, the greed that would level mountaintops, that would pollute air and water and the very blood that courses through our veins.

Jayne Cortez has determined that we shouldn't just take it, we shouldn't just cower at these devastations; instead, we should...

Push Back The Catastrophes


I don't want a drought to feed on itself
through the tattooed holes in my belly
I don't want a spectacular desert of
charred stems & rabbit hairs
in my throat of accumulated matter
I don t want to burn and cut through the forest
like a greedy mercenary drilling into
sugar cane of the bones

Push back the advancing sands
the polluted sewage
the dust demons the dying timber
the upper atmosphere of nitrogen
push back the catastrophes

Enough of the missiles
the submarines
the aircraft carriers
the biological weapons
No more sickness sadness poverty
exploitation destabilization
illiteracy and bombing
Let's move toward peace
toward equality and justice
that's what I want

To breathe clean air
to drink pure water to plant new crops
to soak up the rain to wash off the stink
to hold this body and soul together in peace
that's it
Push back the catastrophes


-- Jayne Cortez