colossal statues were three thousand years old
found in Sardinia in 1974
carved by the Nuragic civilization
depicting warriors on Easter Island
We thought they were only heads
Until someone decided to dig down
They are full-bodied
Buried up to their necks
How did they carve stone back in the day?
Is it odd kings were not represented?
Only archers, boxers and warriors
Many theories are bantered about
Easter island holds on to her mysteries
Intriguing and enticing archeologists
Keeping the Nuragic civilization alive
Three thousand years later
Perhaps that was the purpose?
Faithful few
Filled the
Firmament with
Fundamental fervour
Finally finding, through
Fastidious fellowship,
Future fanatical friends and
Fulfilling the fine frequency
Favourable for forgiveness.
Finally.
Wash away the sins of the father
Release your head from the sand
Try to start again
Or ignore the reaching hand
Who are you to judge over a body? A way of life?
A face growing weary and thin?
Restless, are we still so cold?
Are we a plague to ourselves, made of mildew and mould?
Pigment and porcelain statues refuse to give in
Committing evil against humanity
Fighting a war against prejudice
Over melanin produced in the skin
Find the key others have found before
Let their voices be your guide
Open your mind to the reality of death’s door
To find the ignorance from inside
Refuse to accept anything but truth
And choose to refuse the lies
And move forward into a new world
Where melanin doesn’t depict who lives and who dies
Outside drives of dude ranches or of hobby farms
Cast statues of horses bred from Cortez' runaways.
They stand in basket planted ferns to camouflage their hooves,
Or rear atop a barn as though to jump into a circus pool.
More at home on green way cityscapes.
A scattered cavalry would save us from ourselves.
With piercing stares, their riders try to rally troops
To rout the rest, leave us solitary soldiers of the field.
Frontage roads and roundabouts
Out flank them and surround them.
Traffic blinded how they might retreat,
Or charge, they wait in disarray.
The only value now a century of late
Is a centaur kind of horsemanship:
One goal between an animal and man.
Graffiti by the day adds to epaulets of pigeon .
Mobs would have them roped and quartered down,
Hauled to salvage parks unseen revision of our past.
To those casting heroes into bronze, "Be discreet,
Bronze lasts longer than human judgements do."
You'll put up a statue
and say I'm a poet
When all of you worship
what I'll never know it
And go on to rhyming
what's left in the moment
When statues are showing
the glow of the loment
And I'll be impressed
when the honor is mine
And the statues are tumbling
for the last of the rhyme
Burning and tearing down, statues,
is to erase history... and this
does not exist...
The past must serve as an example...
Statues that tell of human deeds
or defects... do not deserve so much attention,
but they tell what happened... So they must
have the context explained...Everyone has the right
to learn the truth...
The garden statues
come to life
every night
after the house
is quiet and still
and they roam
through the hedgerows
and hide behind
the old willows
and play their games
and whisper among themselves
‘til first light.
OVER UNDER INSIDE OUT
(It still doesn’t fit)
The hospital gown
Makes Greek statues frown
You can see it in their sculpted faces
And they say in disgust
That they always will trust
The fig leaf that the gown replaces
If we can’t tell stories
about our past
—the future stays untold
If judged by standards
out of time
—the fault beyond control
Our history always
both good and bad
—correction on the rise
What happened, happened,
as time rolls on
—and yesterday reminds
(Independence Square Philadelphia: March, 2021)
harsh reality
revenants of slavery
reminders removed
Statues of Darwin
David J Walker
Cayotes claim what they can of
The daylight hours hounded by the
Windblown November sun
Below the Mesa
No better than the
Blazing days of the summer
Only colder
Every rock looks the same
Every plant a chameleon
Every insect a meal in a race for
Its life
Here the world is cruelly honest
About its business and
Indifference to death
Here, life is recycled
Without ceremony nor prayer
Language needs no interpretation
Reading is seeing and reacting
And each species erects its own
Statues of Darwin
Monumental statues
so quickly torn down
by radical, woke vision
Truth, a ghost town
Sewer workers' heroes
too, have to go
They carry out the
'Plans of the Man'
Don't you know?...
Located underground
Can't tear those statues 'down'
Will they be broken 'up?'
~ I hear a voice screaming 'Yup'
I can only live in a garden
where warped talons
of tiger tulip petals mar
unbroken lines of pastel shimmer,
not where silent cerulean lakes
float as though aloft
in frames of polished stone
to tell the cloudless sky,
I'm your offspring.
I smile for blighted statues
mocked by companies of peonies
effervescing in ballet
and the coarse tusk of St Augustine
thronged by emerald dichondra.
I have no business among wisteria's cornucopias
of lilac bounty nor the glee
of summer marigolds.
I tend thorny stalks
of a wild rose that never blooms
and climbing ferns whispering
in shaded corners of spring's
explosive allemande.
I feel only weight of gray misted mornings
when the dank of coming rain permeates
in pale foliage's stag line
where vines creep in distant communion,
ignored by harsh jonquil rays.
Ravage our monuments,
empowered dissidents.
Endless entitlements,
from spineless governments.
In this era unplanned,
by fathers of the land.
Divided we stand,
in moral wasteland.
More on Statues
There is an apparent urge
To erase the markings of history
Which appear to stain
Visions of what should be..
History is a story appearing
In our reading in this moment..
Often justifying doings as right
Which can then be retold on
This Fourth of July..
But..alas.. clinging assumptions
Of division remain..
Statues are stories written
In sidedness and division..
What if the urge to erase
As we are observing in
Widespread places..is really
(Whether recognized or not)
A turn Inward..collectively
To bypass the assumptions and
Recognize our inner Vastness
In which all history
Is written..and read...?
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