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Poetic Matrix Comm Page #4

This page is intended as an exchange of ideas, poetry, comments and concerns. I invite your expression on this page via our email address, poeticmatrix@yahoo.com. Write what you feel is appropriate, it will be reviewed and placed on this page for others to see and comment on. Comment on the material on this website, send in a poem, address issue of concern for poets and lovers of poetry.

We take as a general theme:
"The role of the artist in community"

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July 4th 2006

I received this in my email today from my good friend and colleague James Downs, he was good enough to let me reprint it here. It is important when our honor is impugned to comeback and say what is true. To be critical, to write what it is we see that needs redress, to follow a calling that is not down the line with what the society claims to be right does in not in any way mean we do not have feelings and a deep connection to the culture we find ourselves in. I applaud James for immediately "correcting" this affront to his person. - John

On this 230th anniversary of our Independence from Britain, I had occasion for someone to call my patriotism into question. Their offhand remark that "James doesn't seem very patriotic, anyway" has allowed me to explore what I believe that patriotism entails. I would like to share what I found in my heart with each of you on this day:

• patriotism means seeing our shores for the first time and breathing a sigh of freedom
• patriotism means feeling safe and moving through life with that sense of freedom and without fear of reprisals from your own leaders
• patriotism means watching geese fly through a sunset over our land   and getting a lump in your throat
• patriotism means being willing to protect those geese and the air they fly through and the water and earth they land upon   for they are our only geese air water and earth
• patriotism means your heart thumping proudly as you help a homeless person on a packed city street or volunteer at a hospital or give to human causes
• patriotism means each person is cause for your heart to reach out and love   because each is as important as all
• patriotism means being grateful a child born has a chance to be healthy and has possibilities to grow up to his or her full potential
• patriotism means fighting for that child's health and potential by insuring them safe families   safe streets   health insurance   well supplied schools  and opportunities to flourish
• patriotism means being proud we live in a land of laws
• patriotism means holding each citizen to those laws fairly   making sure the greatest as well as the least follow them   means that we hold tightly to the principle that we are innocent until proven guilty   not guilty until proven innocent   as was the European system we left in the 1700s
• patriotism means being aware of the possibilities in a thunderstorm as well as a sunny day   means remaining open to the possibility of wonder and joy by keeping our eyes and our hearts propped wide open
• patriotism means being willing to risk pain and fear   to get past fear   in order to live fully   live authentically   live
• patriotism means discerning between battles with those who have committed wrongful acts against us   and that of reckless wars of adventure for power or personal monetary gain
• patriotism means then demanding that we stick to the first choice
• patriotism means to always vote because it is our responsibility and our right
• patriotism means making sure that all persons' vote counts   not allowing one single person to become disenfranchised for political gain
• patriotism means learning
• patriotism means always being open to learning   learning about others different than ourselves   learning to work together   for all the people
• patriotism means guarding our founding documents
• patriotism means guarding the rights in those documents from erosion   from exploitation through fear   from plain usurpation
• patriotism means protest
• patriotism means not remaining silent when a wrong needs righting   speaking to truth   holding our representatives accountable
• patriotism means risk
• patriotism means risking your freedom by going out and living your life to full potential   brave in spite of fear   as an individual in a society   helping this country fill up with good

That is what is in my heart today   Thank you for listening
James Downs   Yosemite poet   July 4, 2006

6/20/06

I received an email today from a good friend who, to date, I have met only over the internet, Paul Dolinsky, poet, philosopher and editor of the fine Buddhist website The Golden Lantern (see their banner link on the index page). He and I share a number of common sources: a love of poetry; a history of philosophical study that has taken both of us into Buddhism; a concern for the current political affairs of our community; and the importance of joining our voices with the voices of many others so that we might be agents for a deeper understanding of our human condition towards maintaining this plant and the many and diverse inhabitants.

Paul sent me an address to his Blog (www.philospeak.blogspot.com), I'm still a novice in the internet department so Blogs are still a new phenomena to me but I am interested in any intelligent vehicle that can get a conversation going about the state of THINGS. Paul writes about how the Republicans wrap the flag around events of the day thereby making the event a plus for "our side". Read his Blog to get the details of what he is driving at. He signs his piece by his blog "nom de plum" poetpaul. On this page (Comm Page) we are looking at The role of the artist in the community and poetpaul is taking the role of the poet to heart. Yes, the poem is the thing and yet one's poetic sensibility is critical if we are to rearrange the furniture in our political house and infuse our communal life with the stuff of poetry. One's poetic sensibility does not come only with the poem but makes up the sum of one's way of being in the world. I know poets who are highway contract inspectors, juvenal justice lawyers, plumbers, teachers, professors, sports magazine editors, restaurateurs, cooks, and the list goes on and on. They put their poetic sensibilities out in all they do, not just in the poems they write, but in their concern and interaction with juvenal offenders, with students, with the food they cook and the customers they serve.

Poets take as a sacred task the connection of words with truth. The manipulation of words to suit the political agenda is one things that gets poets all stirred up and as this happens most regularly in our less than intellectual political climate poets tend to be a bit of a radical lot, unhappy with the ruling political elite and their pundits and the shoddy abuse of words and language in general. It does seem important to take the poetic sensibility into that most abusive political arena on occasion and point out the flaws and make demands that a search for the better community run parallel with the search for truth and that a sinister manipulation of language for political gain is anathema to these ends.

Check out poetpaul's Blog. Find others, keep the internet an active place for poetic sensibilities, drop us a note here at the Comm Page, write a poem to the President, to the local newspaper. Put up a billboard (well maybe), speak the truth, connect your work to truth, smile and connect all of us to love and truth and beauty and fill this sometimes dismal world with the stuff that makes it glow, the stuff that lets us know that we are luminous inhabitants on this earth, us and so many more.

John Peterson, Publisher

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James Downs, Associate Editor
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