Solace from Terror, a Set of Poems about Living in the West by Damian Robin

Persistent Danger

Where is this going when state and foe mow down
civilians and non-combatants in market stalls?
They shock and flame like an erratic clown
whose grisly creativity appalls,
resolving citizens to not shut down.

As killing stalks with permanent, present dangers,
our crowded sense of continuance recalls
past births in ancient palaces and mangers.
Through metros, nightclubs, and shopping malls
we fill more lives with the warmth of strangers.

As one, accepting ever-present death,
our hearts aren’t petrified but focus on.
Together, resilient beyond death,
we truly, compassionately, carry on.

The Worst Terrorism Is in China

There’s more behind this ISIS terrorism,
than fracture war splitting to shattered shards
the creeds of distant hardened factions; of schisms;
of unconvincing reasoning in yards,

feet, fingers, splinters, plumes of dust,
unfiltered poisons at the micro level;
of shouts of ‘paradise’; of scriptured lust;
of gods of words boiled down to flesh and shrapnel.

In China there’re two faiths that aren’t religion:
One’s the Party’s ritual organization
that tried to wipe out God, then stole God’s position:

The other’s Falun Gong that transcends nation,
worship, and routine, through cultivation –
and gets The False God’s jealous persecution.

Note: Falun Gong is a spiritual qigong that was brought to the public in 1992. With its adherents numbering over 70 million in 1999, the practice was crashed down on by the whole might of the Chinese Communist apparatus. A vicious attempted eradication persists in China with new estimates of more than 60,000 being killed each year.

The Original Beauty in China

Channeling broadcasts with remote control,
I get an edgy edit of the world
distracted by dysfunction. It’s a whole
whose underpinned distortions aren’t absurd
but there to cover all bad qi in China –
the murky ker-qing we buy and then sell on
that funds the genocidal propaganda,
the mundane background soundtrack that’s always on.

Don’t let it rubble that hub of meditation
that’s not desertion nor retreat but facing
death and life without retaliation.

More than lotus silt, or rose’s prong,
the grind that’s true and good and time-embracing
transforms while cultivating Falun Gong.

Note: qi is a form of basic energy;  qing means sentimentality or emotion

Home Is Where

Around the clock we’re programmed to return
to eat, wash up, reheat, cook fresh – and learn.

We ritualize: slice food from bunch and pack
designed to make the best of multiples,
of re-formed veg, re-membered animals:
whole meals from air-sucked bump or re-sealed sack.

As we prepare, we weigh up global good,
we meet with others, chew the social cud.

We muse on the West’s priv’leged global stance,
aware of refugees and butchered crowds,
how slaughtered humans drip to soil and clouds,
of media blanks – their ruse of song, and dance.

And like the hair we wash and dry and comb,
we make each pass though here a welcome home.

Tea Commercial

You’re up, awake. Should I make us tea?
Maybe that will take you nearer to me,
bring us closer with little ceremony.

I’ve been around the garden, lifting and moving.
A pleasure to do on a sunny, bird-sung morning
while the discomforted world is upturned and twisting.

And I saw you’d opened the curtains upstairs
and had opened the window to let in these airs
and I thought it’d be nice to arrange tea affairs.

I know there’s pain and hardship and hunger and war
in the near east and far off where our soldiers take store
while here our country is falling apart shore to shore.

But, still, it’s marvellous to sit and drink tea
surrounded with fine glazed pots of ‘safe’ and ‘free’,
in this bubbled building of tranquility.

Note: This poem was used by Mr Tea’s Teas, a U.K. business
with a fine variety of flavoured teas. Part of Mr Tea’s
intention is to wean the world off teabags.

Remaking the World

To squash the world before their sense of god,
they drill, repeat, re-beat, each suicide squad.

But self-made bombs – or knock-down pumped-up wheels,
or boring bullets – fail to burst the Earth.
They throw up karma, justice, end, rebirth,
reveal aggressive martyrs’ Achilles’ heels.

Their terrors don’t ferment anarchic fervours.
Nor are we bunkered down in blast-proof cellars.

We’re all super human. Though flesh is slow,
we’re more than instruments of gravity.
They try to orchestrate cacophony
but can’t blast cosmic symphonies in flow.

Not squeezed in siege but peeled through air with grace,
we hear their torment, and listen with a god’s face.

Once and for All

In interludes of murder-suicides –
earthquakes hop – crushed trains stop – land slides –
the normal sufferings that swamp mankind
have the tinge of inevitability:
are natural blows that sentient beings find:
death, old age, disability;
but present calamities are over the top,
addicted to rushes that seem to never stop.

It’s like we’re on the cliff at the end of the world,
exposed to moon-swing tides of charges and calms,
of voids, and highs, abysses or cosmic roar,
where Town Halls fall and naked mobs are hurled
sucked down by magnetic charms or karmic harms
or taken up, absorbed by Cosmic Law.

Apocalypse Hooves

Four horsemen’s hooves hammer the beach’s water.
The ocean’s edge spreads red-flecked hints of slaughter.

At night, packed wood and metal and rubber ships
are straught by choking smoke and light’ning spike.
Lit waves suck famlies down from troughs and tips
with no two candle ends snuffed alike.

No actions blend and nothing matches right
and morbid beauty flames each run-from site.

Each earth wound cavity, each martial mark,
each hard decay or natural arcing flight,
is blanketed by storms of smoking dark
where smouldering hells are bombed by heaven’s light.

Both yin and yang become a clapping hand.
True souls remain while past lives spray on sand.

Miracles Come This Way

For years our world’s endured this ‘terror’ war
and cosmic catastrophes like none before
that old philosophies can’t answer to.

There’s no solution viewed from any place;
not science logic with its deluged space,
nor manmade, God-given Books, Old or New.

In all dimensions battles steam and rage
as particles are read through, page by page.

The Milky Way moves away, a drop
in dark Dark Matter where inkblot Time has run,
gone to seed, grow up again, been done.

Nothing will return from this clock’s stop.
Night is going. Day approaching. Stay.
Stay strong. Miracles come this way.

Damian Robin lives in England where he works for an international newspaper and lives with his wife and three children.

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