"Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere."
--G.K. Chesterton
"The man's body is sacred and the woman's body is sacred.../Each belongs here or anywhere just as much as the well-off, just as much as you."
--Walt Whitman
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According to the Buddha, right speech is a statement that is timely, true, kind, helpful (connected to liberation), and spoken with a mind of good-will. Let us all try to observe this precept.
Correspondence with my prison pen pal "Conway" has been irregular this spring because of the ever-shifting regulations that can cause mail to be blocked without warning. His latest letter shows that he continues to take refuge in his art and to help others do the same.
Several of his poems have just been published in "Paper Thin Walls", a magazine produced by the Artist Pen-Pal Mutual Aid Project. This project is one of the social justice initiatives from the BuildingBloc Arts Collective, which is also sponsoring a touring exhibit of prisoners' art, titled "Our Dreams Don't Fit in Your Cages". From their website:
BuildingBloc is a collective of artists dedicated to using art to explore
the social inequalities in our society. Through experimentation,
collaboration, and performance, we inform, provoke, and inspire ourselves
and our audiences. We aim to spark dialogue, to create and sustain
relationships between artists and community organizations, to support
existing struggles for social justice, and to erase the boundaries between
art and activism.
In a letter I sent Conway in March, I confided my concerns about a friend in trouble, and my frustration that I couldn't do more to help her: "I wrote a poem about it this morning but poetry is empty compared to taking action in the world. Or is it? Is poetry second-rate action, the last resort of the powerless, or does it create change?"
His response, in this month's letter:
I believe that as a blossoming poet myself, I can faithfully say that (for sure) each poem that I write. Creates a change in my growth & understanding of this world and even if Nobody ever reads these scratchings that I've tried to conceive; painting pictures with words. That at least I have taught myself to define this world in this moment, and basically that is my first duty. To understand my place and to act accordingly with my fellow travelers.
Once more, my long-distance friendship with Conway has brought me back to my core mission. Options are distracting. When there's no motive for writing except soul-survival, one sees that this is the motive that breathes life into poetry, the one truly essential objective.
Flicker Out by Conway
When, one jealous Moon gathered its courage (prepared to die) refused to share anymore, twilight Sky.
It was a last ditch- gilded dream another early, end of things.
Feeling betrayed by a star's bright glow another globe was caught up before it really could know.
Like a thief contesting desire lurking through church to own everlasting fire.
While another Heart, fell from its perch unclad night slept fulfilled-- nuzzling against the hurdles of squandered adolescence.
Despite this Roaring avalanche there was not a sound or whimpering illusion to be swept along.
No one to miss or hear the splendor, the desperate kiss of dawn.
So; In the mornings mist among abundant bird'song, this sacrifice too, was forgotten.
The face of a Soul disgraced sufferingly stares, beyond vanishing sight trembling through tonight.
As that once flawless jewel now shares-- nothing; Nothing at all...
