Midnight at the Oasis – Infographic Artwork

Dread Death Come

A #TwistedNurseryRhyme mimicking “Are You Sleeping”

Secrets keeping

Dread is creeping

Hope is gone

Death has come

Hear our dirges singing

Mourning bells are ringing

Ding dong dead, dread Death come

 

Darkness streaming,

no more dreaming

Hope is gone

Death has come

Death knell is a-ringing

Mourning bells are ringing

Ding dong dead, dread Death come

© 09 September 2019, by D. Denise Dianaty

Sketch artwork by D. Denise Dianaty

A Mother's Tears

This poem was composed for the “Flash Tales” prompt, for the week of 26-31 August 2019, moderated by Toni Keif, in WE PAW Bloggers group on Facebook. The prompt: 500 words or less and the #writingprompt is “Standing on the shore of the Salish Sea.”
Her eyes brimming with tears
from a heart broken for years
The final pain sealing her fears
Of his tragic end alone

Bent by age, crushed by woes
Recalling his sweet button nose
of twid’ling his sweet little toes
potentiality prone

Silvered hair, wrinkled face
In his life, she had no space
Hope now lost of finding a place
Never again coming home

A shining son dimmed, lost
Only son shed by cru-el cost
Into the wide sea of death crossed
He found no meaning owned

Ash tipped from golden urn
In the Salish Sea now churn
With salty tears her cheeks burn
A mother’s tears sown

Bent by age, crushed by woes
Mother’s love lost to fame’s woes
Bent by age, crushed by woes
Mother turns, heads home alone

© 30 August 2019, by D. Denise Dianaty

Eamonn Doyle’s “Shapeshifter” from his series titled “K”

Façade

Self-convincing deceptions
We make and accept in Life

Each one pricks as a tiny cut
An almost imperceptible wound

We wound our deepest self
To choose what lie we will

Tending gardens of our hearts
As the nightingale weeps a lonely song

The flowers are melancholy
That content, we lose the dream

Bleeding drawn by pricking thorns
With putrescence we cultivate roses

© 14 August 2019, by D. Denise Dianaty

Laugh Clown… Laugh – A Spoken Word poem

In memoriam for Robin Williams…


Delivered the joke, smiled through torment…
On humor’s wings your malady was bent.
You shared with all your gift of the jape,
For our maudlin hearts a moment’s escape.
A manic laugh ‘pon your face fights,
We raised you up to astonishing heights.

Laughing… laughing… laughing… laugh
From the depth of melancholy in your eyes,
Take flight now before us… ever higher you’ll rise.
Made us laugh ’til we did cry apiece…
Precarious… you teetered ‘pon the precipice.
Played out your suffering ‘pon the stage,
Lights… camera… the pedestal… your cage.

Cry out loud… make jest of your pain
For you ever inspired, gave hope from your fragility,
Shined so brightly for all your frolicking jocularity,
Behind the door… in the dark… burned out alone.
Did we ever see if a smile from your eyes shone.
You always were easing our lonely malady.
You made the joke from your own tragedy.

The lonely clown… living to entertain
Reveling in your hilarity taken for granted,
Your warmth… your joy… we were enchanted.
Left none to ease your heart so dolorous,
To deliver joy beyond depression’s curse.
To strive with unending adverse poignancy,
Gave joy… spread smiles… and tears of hilarity.

Dying… dying…dying to make us laugh
Laughing… laughing… laughing countenance
Hiding behind laughter, your sustenance.
Your soul laid bare… laid bare for the joke,
Poured out… poured out… ’til your heart broke.
Loving the clown to death, we cried,
Cruelest cut the day the laughter died.

Laugh clown… laugh

Laughing… laughing… laughing… laugh

Cry out loud… make jest of your pain

The lonely clown… living to entertain

Dying… dying…dying to make us laugh

© 19 August 2014, by D. Denise Dianaty

Fear Her… Fear Liberty

“Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore, Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

“Fear Liberty” – Multimedia artwork, 12 July 2019, by D. Denise Dianaty

Fear her… Fear Liberty
Once upon a time of hope…
Liberty shone her light,
welcoming unto the world
Proclaiming covenant…
The America she shown upon
Now dims… now hides her light,
unkind… harsh… unwelcoming…
Denying covenant…
No quarter for those tempest-tost
No hope they may breath free
No more the Mother of Exiles
Covenant is broken…
Your huddled masses turned away…
Her lamp, not lifted… shuttered.
The Golden Door is dross.
Fear her… Fear Liberty.

©12 July 2019, by D. Denise Dianaty
This words of this poem, like so much of my poetry, were inspired by the creation of the artwork. The poem flowed from the process.

The Unraveling…

Terrible truths and horrific lies are unraveling the American ideal.
unraveling… unraveling… unraveling, frayed
A once proud nation bowed ‘neath hate
poor brown refugee babes’ cagèd fate
…stolen from pleading mothers’ arms
for believing America’s charms
all meaning now lost in that flag…
Liberty’s steel skin reduced to slag

unraveling… unraveling… unraveling peace
Old Glory’s red, white, and blue spoiled
unraveling… before our eyes soiled
Poisoning our land and our air
Sowing seeds of impending despair
Reaping humanity’s demise
demonizing the words of the wise

unraveling… unraveling… unraveling love
All meaning stretched to fit
an unconstitutional remit.
Suppressing the majority…
“We the People” — no priority
…stolen voices of the nation
rendered perfidy’s coronation

unraveling… unraveling… unraveling, hope© 09 July 2019, by D. Denise Dianaty

Original artwork created with Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop, 08 July 2019, by D. Denise Dianaty

Humanity… Earth’s Disease

Kids on the street
Babies in cages
At the table no seat
Garbage in our seas
Climate change
And dying trees
Pollution on the breeze
Heating the oceans
Humanity… earth’s disease

© 06 July 2019, by D. Denise Dianaty

Photoshop Art by D. Denise Dianaty, 07 July 2019

Cruelty is the point

Another child died in custody
A brown babe looked upon distrustfully

Demonizing refugees crudely
The point is unrelenting cruelty

Ripping babies from their mothers’ arms
Locking them in cages, increasing harm

Gassing caravans to stem the flow
Of families fleeing tyranny’s woe

Tell soldiers to use lethal force
Hoping they’ll kill those caravans, of course

Look upon Liberty’s abject shame
You’re seeking asylum? J’acuse! We blame

© 25 May 2019, by D. Denise Dianaty

Original Infographic created c.2016, by D. Denise Dianaty

No… Democrats and Republicans are NOT the same.

So… you say yet again, “It’s not just the GOP. It seems almost all our lawmakers are way, way out of touch. The very real fact that all of us often struggle for basic needs means they’re [all] failing us. Near the top of the list of things I hate, is articles… that highlight the fact that the [offending person] is a Republican, as if to intimate that the Democratic solution is better. All it does [is]… create a false narrative for the purpose of getting votes.”
You could — perhaps — have comfortably made that argument 25 years ago — or, for the very generous of heart, maybe even 15 years ago. And then we could have discussed how both parties needed improvement.

However, I’m sorry, today it is NOT a “false narrative” that Republicans keep espousing repugnant ideas and working to ensconce those ideas in official policy. We have watched the GOP, for at least the last quarter century, descend ever more rapidly into our current nightmarish authoritarian extremism. Not only do the worst of them spew vile and hateful rhetoric, when they do, their Republican peers don’t do anything about it. Democrats are constantly accused of the “circular firing squad” for speaking and acting to hold peers to the higher standard. While, just as an example — yet again — the GOP primaries an actual card-carrying nazi in Arthur Jones, elected blatant racist Steve King, and are right now again primarying pedophile Roy Moore.

Former House Speaker, Paul Ryan actually said of his desire to gut Medicaid, “We’ve been dreaming of this since I’ve been around,” Ryan says, before interrupting himself to clarify exactly how big of an opportunity this is, “since you and I were drinking out of kegs.” Mitch McConnell is right now gutting Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid programs. The GOP has been waging war against America’s middle class and working poor since before the Reagan era with singleminded devotion to enriching the mega corporations and the wealth class. Even in Bill Clinton’s day, the GOP controlled Congress, and rammed through their agenda against America’s middle class and poor. The GOP’s patriotic religiosity and misogyny will settle for nothing less than the systematic tearing down of our constitutional democratic republic, creating a nightmare Handmaid’s Tale-like society by imposing their vision of a Dominionist theocratic corporate feudal state. We’re three fourths there already.

No one is saying Democrats are without faults, but they hold a clear moral high ground. It’s worse than a mere false equivalency to conclude that Republicans and Democrats are not different in their intent — it is a baldfaced, perfidious LIE. Democrats have often been ineffectual, but the overarching intent, since at least the time of LBJ, has been increasingly progressive and more inclusive. In that same span, the GOP has become increasingly fear mongering and divisive and exclusionary. It has been the GOP’s calculated arch strategy; it is known and has a name — “Nixon’s Southern Strategy.” The GOP continues to hone the stratagem for maximum fear mongering and divisiveness through patriotic religiosity to disenfranchise — nay, to oppress — as many non-GOP voters as possible.

Articles like the ones you so often decry highlight the fact that the person is a Republican because, for more than half a century, the GOP increasingly emboldens and embraces repugnant ideals. They create policies predicated upon stances that would have us believe that women are so morally and constitutionally weak that we mustn’t even be permitted the dignity of personhood that comes with autonomy over our own bodies; minorities and people of color (POC) aren’t American enough to freely vote; POC are inherently criminal in all they do and are a threat while living in spaces white privilege deems its own; all religion not their Christianish ideal is evil; and, the very existence of our LGBTQ Americans is a stain upon and dire threat to the nation’s very soul.

The GOP and Democrats are completely divergent on every issue

The GOP is exclusionary. The GOP denies climate change; disbelieves fact and science; is anti-intellectual; devalues education; and promotes regressivism. Twitter says their algorithm cannot distinguish between Republican and Alt-Right accounts. Misogyny and sexism are core values of the GOP. Racism and xenophobia are key pillars of GOP control over their base. Demonizing the LGBTQ and criminalizing women’s control over our own reproductive rights is integral to fomenting anger in the GOP base. Suppressing voting rights and access is the only way the GOP can cling to power. The GOP has been waging war against America’s middle class and poor for at least the last forty years, since the Reagan era. The GOP is fighting to take away our healthcare because they seem to believe healthcare is a privilege only for those who can afford it. The GOP only care about the corporations and the wealth class.

The GOP has become completely divergent from our constitutional democratic system. They are NOT part of our system any longer. They are destroying our system. It is calculated and systematic.
Democrats are inclusive. Democrats know climate change is real and immediate; embraces fact and science and intellect; they value education; and they promote progressivism. Democrats challenge misogyny and sexism. Democrats try to recognize past errors and work to reverse the impacts of institutionalized racism and xenophobia. Democrats believe ALL PEOPLE deserve the right to control their own bodies and to choose who they will be and who they will love. Democrats are fighting voter suppression and working to increase voter access. Democrats believe healthcare is a human right. Democrats care about all Americans.

No… Democrats and Republicans are NOT the same.
This link is a collection of actual things Republicans have said about women https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10207849909589262&type=3

Hope Unbounded – #LovePoem

Hope UnboundedA barren, frigid cold gripped my heart.
Warmth lay far beyond my hopes.
My soul repeated a tragic refrain
of a heart like a denuded forest.
I followed the loneliest dance,
ever and always out of step…
again and again, twirled and whirled…
abandoned to the wasting cold.
I watched alone without hope of love
through the frigid fractals of despair
until that one shining gaze
from your laughing ebony eyes
melted the hyperborean grip.
A whispered kiss warmed my heart.
A fragile blossom opened in the snow.
In joy unbounded blooms our love.
Like breath upon the dandelion puff,
our love’s seed bears hope unbounded.

© February 14, 2019, by D. Denise Dianaty