poetry – Anarres Project for Alternative Futures

The Responsibility of the Writer

By Octaviano Merecias (June 26, 2019)

The responsibility of the writer

Is to measure the rising poison into our soul by reminding us of
our numbness of distraction into the apathy of oblivion
as the dissolving heart of our neighbor lingers in our pupils

Is to face evil with a piece of pen and ink as mighty weapons
And biting the metal fences as their saliva screams…
For the freedom of God, queens, and saints facing administrative agony
because when peace is crucified and hope remains caged
only faith loiters into the roads of our past, present… and future.

Is to scribble angels of water and shelter with a stroke of feeling
Is to draw photographs of rising waters and cadavers
to imprint into our memory the legacy of banana republics
and colonial interventions for our gold comforts and fake peace

What is the responsibility of the writer then?
It is to remind us that it is your river, is my rio, is our Rio Grande too;
Is to remind us that his name was Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramirez
and Valeria was 23-months-old.

Have You Ever Had to?

By Octaviano Merecias-Cuevas (June 16, 2018)

Have you ever had to?

Abandon a lifetime at the eye-blink notice of a memory?
As villages collapse and dreams become black fumes?
As tanks roll-in while drones of anger machete their bloody ways into crops and farms?
No laws can stop imploding sadness; burying babies in Syria.
Dead AF floating towards the shores of your consciousness.
Migration then… is not a fucking choice;
As we become walking clandestine dreams on stolen lands.

Have you heard the symphony of exodus?
Decapitated destinies and mutilated dreams; vibrating!
Toxic poverty of institutionalized stress; raising!
Rows of footsteps carrying crucified Gods in palms of dreamers hands
Escaping carcinogen greed of capitalism; who’s legacy?
Remedying the asthmatic last speech of a 4-year-old
Witnessing tear-ed little hands from moms along the border.

Migrating in paths of your ancestor’s plans; a better life
escaping cages, emperors of corrupt plans and genocide;
AK’s disguised as bibles and doves into moral enforcers
As seven-headed false prophets fight porn-stars; silence
Vomiting hypocrisy underneath the stars of our flag; compliance.

Crossing a fence, jumping a border; the last choice or falling into:
the indignity of decomposing into the mouth of the desert
Suffocating into the extremities of the oceans; praying
Holding crushed infant hands in collapsing clinics.
Starving for a new beginning in shadows of invisibility
flowering into emerging hopes; photosynthesing dreams

Mother, aunties, grandmas, sisters…
holding on tightly the innocent hands
Like holding onto the last feelings that germinate our souls
Her sentence lingering on a piece of paper with her name;
Her hope collapsed into the absence of a piece of paper
When home burns as a waving flag legacy of colonial brutality;
The only house left for us to walk is the naked world;
As memories of dinosaurs-into-butterflies today remind us;
migrate, to survive, like waves, like wind, like time… Like Life.

Is there an accidental kind gesture within your soul?
Can today shine your merciful medicine of secrets?
Here’s the last piece of my hand; families belong together
like mind, soul and spirit belong into one wisdom!

Poesia Mixta

Letter to the White Tourist Who Asked Me For Cocaine

By Octaviano Merecias-Cuevas (July 19, 2015)

I have to walk across the street when I see a female at night walking during the evening; “No I’m not a rapist, I’m just traveling home from a late night at work.” Continue reading “Letter to the White Tourist Who Asked Me For Cocaine”

Fiddling While Rome Burns

By Maite Pepper

Yesterday, after the triumph of Argentina over the Netherlands, the horns for celebration rang out throughout Buenos Aires. How ironic: the people of a certain place in the Middle East were hearing a similar noise.

Continue reading “Fiddling While Rome Burns”

Manifesto for Mothers

Manifesto for Mothers Oppressed by Sexism, Male Domination, Racism, Ageism, Classism, Their Own Darling Children & (of course) Other Mothers

By Nadia Martinez Chantry

To begin:

I am so oppressed I can no longer even dream Continue reading “Manifesto for Mothers”

Interview: Tom Motko

Tom Motko joined the U.S. Army in 1968 within a month of graduating from high school, was trained as a Vietnamese linguist/ voice intercept operator at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, CA and Goodfellow ABF, TX, and worked in a command subordinate to the National Security Agency. His duty stations included Japan, Taiwan, and Viet Nam. Continue reading “Interview: Tom Motko”

Minding P’s and Q’s

by Tony Vogt

The cap in Capitalism

worn backwards

might stop the whole show.

The hag in Hagiography

simmers stew

from the bones of saints.

Says, “We’re either all

going to heaven or

we ain’t.”

(click the title to read more!)
Continue reading

Transformation without Apocalypse – Episode #11: Ursula K. Le Guin and Kim Stanley Robinson

On February 14th and 15th, the Spring Creek Project sponsored a symposium entitled “Transformation Without Apocalypse: How to Live Well on an Altered Planet”

The final event focused on the power of stories and featured award winning writers Ursula K. Le Guin and Kim Stanley Robinson, in their first ever joint appearance, reading from their own and from each others work.

Continue reading “Transformation without Apocalypse – Episode #11: Ursula K. Le Guin and Kim Stanley Robinson”