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O M M A N I
P A D M E H U M
The Full Moon Family sends out positive vibes, blessings and
prayers to the victims of last December's
horrific earthquake and tsunamis. Mountains of the Moon
made monetary donations to some of the
organizations
below. Every little bit will go a long way toward food and
medications for the victims.
If you are able to donate to any of these organizations or other
aid and relief groups, please do.
If you cannot, please send out your blessings and positive
energy ~ those things help in a big way as well.
Care
International
1-800-521-CARE
Oxfam
1-800-77-OXFAM
World Society for the Protection of Animals
Animal Tsunami Victims Relief Fund
1-800-883-WSPA
UNICEF
1-212-326-7000
Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres
Doctors Without Borders has
put out a statement that they have
received sufficient funds for their
emergency response in South Asia, but are still taking donations
for their general Emergency Relief Fund.
1-888-392-0392
Buddhist Peace Fellowship
International Federation of the
Red Cross
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TSUNAMI BLACKWATER:
VISITING SRI LANKA
Submitted/Written by Bill Boyd, May 2005, after visiting Sri
Lanka
PROLOGUE
December 2004: tsunami wipes clean
the landscape of complacency
just a few moments
washing away presumptions
permanency and order fractured
displacing comfort
at a scale previously unseen
by most people
December 2004: walls of water skimmed the coastlines
Indonesia, Thailand, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, India, Africa
washing
the coastlines of the global mind
an instant of geological chaos
a mere physical process
becoming social political psychological
December 2004: tsunami water dislodged
the tropical shores of imaginings
– tropical paradise
touristic dreamings
the everydays of families, villages, living
ordered futures –
watery destruction redefined the everyday
December 2004: normality washed into the sea
new normalities struggle to grow
for all touched by the tsunami
basics, definitions, place-in-the-world
all questioned and questionable
eyes on the world must refocus
December 2004: order and organization
take new shape disorder disorganization
introductions come last
footnotes take
precedence over text
poetry of displaced geographies
– disjunct and crying –
speaks better of the blackwater aftermath
shading rational prose, statistics, facts
in the spread of broken homes promises hopes
December 2004: normality is dead, long live normality.
BLACKWATER
Textbook Tsunami
Classroom Tsunami
Google Tsunami
Only talk the clean educated scholarly research version
Waves water forces swell crest water clean ocean speed
wavelengths
Unproblematic
Cleanwater
Naturewater
Japanese woodcut Tsunami
Shines
Benevolent moon on the wave crest spray
Friendly Mount Fuji
Paternal avuncular
Fishers
Balancing boats in successful sea harvest
Breadfruit trees
Dead and dying broken limbed infested
Speak only of the Blackwater
Bumping grinding tearing poisoning crashingboatspeoplebuildings
Against defenseless limbs
Catching sarees
To remain in upper branches flapping in a memory wind
Prayer flags for the lost
Broken boats
Ragged edged upturned stranded impaled
Crying for a floating past abandoned
Speak of the angry spirits
Punishing forcing land and sea to merge
Slurry blur of boundaries sacred
Drowning in the Blackwater
My tears
Speak
Stories
Lost
Repeated repeated repeated
Identifying the living alive the dead remembered families
decimated
Futures snatched washed clean bodies
Found and unfound
Haunting broken lived forever
Born of the Blackwater
Blackwater
Is the whitewater truthwater
Tsunami water saturating churning stolenlife
Blackwater Deathwater
PASSING WHISPERINGS
In this world of madness
I am a feather
Flitting in the breeze of a disaster
Touching for the moment touched forever
Crying for a loss that is not mine yet is of everything that
could be mine
I whisper past the places
Where blackwater whispered its roaring hatred
Momentarily
Through the palms and the homes and the lives
I hear the dead speak
Rustles in borrowed clothes
Foreign canvas mouths gaping in still shock
Breezes through broken windows
In languages lost to me
But making a sense crazy illogical sense
As real as the carefully tidy up piles shattered bricks tiles
lives
My feet tread gently softly on alien sands
Tiptoes to leave the disturbed undisturbed
Soles whispering to the ghosts and their keepers
Respecting the sand the new earth
The sand natures blanket over the normal
Blackwater spread as if to say
I soothe you my children as I destroy you
I whisper past the places of love
Lost futures uncertain bravefaced
Kirindi Harmantota Tangalla
Whispering towns
Where leaves dare to rustle
Dead clothes flapping tin roofs rattling lost schoolbook pages
New plant shoots tentatively hopeful youthful arrogance full
growing
The overcomers of obstacles
But blackwater still whisper
Lurking in the shadows the minds
Threatening
Echoes of its orgyfeastgluttony momentary havoc
Now spewing memorials graves empty eyes haunted homes broken
souls
Kali dancing
Weligama Koggala Unawatuna
Spawning sprawling tent cities
Temporary permanency
Foreign goodwill aid everyone’s momentary help
Military order ragged disorder
Flysheets flopping flapping centre poles broken
Sagging homes for sagging lives
Weeping tents lives standpipes
New whispers from foreign tongues
Reshaping the damaged body in their many likenesses
Galle Hikkaduwa Palaliya
Decaying ruins sheltering hopeful shelters shelterers
Pegged to crumbling brick concrete stone wood
Tied guyroped to fallingdown solidity
Optimistic fences
Staking out a future on the wasted land wasteland
Backdropped by the train to nowhere
Forever late
I whisper past these places
A feather on the breeze
Touching and being touched
My ears crying to the stories
I hear and hear and hear
The telling telling telling
Is all the blackwater whisper has left
NOTEBOOK TSUNAMI: THE INADEQUACIES OF A
FLYING VISIT
The waves just skimmed the surface
But the undertow is still churning
Ripping undercurrents alive and dangerous
The houses the gardens the schools the temples
All skimmed away
In an instant
Clean removed the obvious removal
Invisibility
The living minds
Dragged under
Still rattling their broken families traumas futures
Churning struggling against the blackwater undertows
My wave flyingvisit wave equally skimming
Drags my mind undertowing to confusion
What can be done? What can I do?
If I despair what can I do
When on the surface survivors surfacesmile
And talk and live and surface survive
I know I think I know
The turmoil they live with
Or sense at least the ripples of their undertowsundercurrents
Daily knowing ghosts everpresent everconstant
Reminders living and dead
Strengthened by being alive
Driven to action if not madness
So I cannot despair or I will be the
Madwoman
No son no house no land no future
Ranting against the wind
Consoled by the Coordinator
No son no house no land a future
Who hires the Brickwomen handclearing
Bricks walking miles dumping tidying
Forever smiling laughing never forgetting
Clearing preparing building for those lost
So I cannot despair
My pen notebook feeble words
Pale reflections of the undertows deep pools of destruction
Maybetools of help
My notebook dot points
Scribbled through misty eyes
Perhaps
Bring the Madwoman Coordinator Brickwomen closer
And we can touch them
Dot point one: broken boats
Should-be-floating boats
Should-be-fishing boats
Scattered over fields, neatly piled at roadsides
Hiding up trees
Waiting for a new world
Where shattered boats can smile at the sea again
Dot point two: broken houses
Abandoned houses
Lived-in-again houses
Dismantled houses
Partly-rebuiltrepaired houses
Broken windows doors gaping drawing in sunlight
To flush out the ghosts of the blackwater
Deadhouses livingmemoryhouses
Dot point three: relieftents sheltertents
Flapping hanging on the wastedland
Someotherworld charity instantmoment charity
Canvases of hope
Styles donors decided anonymous to the unwilling residents
Homes where there are none
Dot point four: drains creeks rivers
Filled-up drains creeks rivers fillingsand
Unwanted-sand-filled-up drains creeks rivers
Replacing water wantedwater now-invisiblewater
Dot point five: debris debris debris
Now gathering seaward hopeful landfill
Protecting against the blackwater-future-blackwater
Or building new building land
Or scattered too tired to be collected
Chance reminders to stub the unwary toe
Dot point six: edges of destruction
deceptively sharp
Cutting the lives of everyone we meet
So I cannot despair
For though I know the edges of destruction will always cut
The blackwater will never be forgotten
I am sure
With-help
The boats will smile on the sea again
The houses sing with families
The flapping donor tents will blow away
Or become normal-life marquees boat stores sunshades
Or simply rot in tropical inevitability
And the debris will overgrow foundation make seawall protect
Easing the madness
Smoothing the undertows
Making new homes
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