Khaled Hosseini: "And The Mountains Echoed"

This is not a review.  How could I presume to review Khaled Hosseini?  The author of "A Thousand Splendid Suns" and the classic "The Kite Runner," has now given the world "And The Mountains Echoed."

Whether the details of his previous stories remain whole or in part, the essence of Hosseini's work lingers.  It is alive and well again, in "And The Mountains Echoed," as he bring another tale centered around Afghanistan; a country for most of us that is nothing more than "the place where terrorists were and a lot violence remains."

Again, this is not a review; just some random thoughts I find myself holding after finishing reading the book only moments ago.  Hosseini's gift is the ability to bring to the pages extreme pains and hardships, yet blend in an unexplained peacefulness and serenity.  Then, in the tears of beautiful interweavings of life that yield promises that life has heart, hope and love, even within all the struggles, there is also the subtle, stubborn aching.

I loved "A Thousand Splendid Suns."  It is a story of incredible honesty.  It hurts and feels good at once.  As I cried my way through the final 50 or so pages, ultimately ending in a place of calm, sorrow, bitterness, warmth ... life, I am aware that it will be several days before I can even consider reading something else.

Poem: Storms

Storms

Storm on horizon is warning

Darkest of skylines now forming

Calm does not mask what soon beckons

Illy prepared will be reckoned

The heart, it can pulse through disaster

Rhythmic beat ever faster

But can hearts be alive acquiescing

To the death of the void coalescing

Wreckage is strewn all-surrounding

Listen for faintest of pounding

A mixture of living and dying

Spilled milk cares not for your crying

Copyright SGW 2012

Poem: Dreaming of Mr. Rogers

Dreaming of Mr. Rogers

The story's from my youthful days

Recurring dream whose memory stays

Not bent of anger or violent mind

I more was mild and rather kind

The dream still lingers, is yet to fade

It's time I tell through poem laid

Of Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood

His virtues clear and understood

The scene is set with common thread

The homespun den, the sweater red

With sneakers tied and smiling bright

Yet strangely see was late at night

A knocking door, his head had turned

Who could it be would soon be learned

A lion stood upon the rise

A flowing mane and fiercest eyes

And poor old Fred with panicked feel

No make believe, but lion's meal

  

Copyright SGW 2006

Footnote:   Based on an actual, recurring dream I had well into my twenties.  I know, I have a twisted side.

Poem: Tears

Tears

World leaves its imprint in many a fashion
Feeds on our longings, consumes of our passion
‘Nary a notice as to where it will spring
When least it’s expected, best expect anything

Man at the grocer’s is awash in full grief
Need to unburden yet can bear no relief
Son, thirty-eight, was just taken away
The heartbroken father left in shattered dismay

All we can offer is to listen and nod
When the man walks away I unmask my façade
Shed me a tear and my voice loses power
These are the moments where emotion will flower

But tears come from places of often sunny condition
Where a heartfelt conviction writes a warm composition
Simple sent message from a dear, special friend
“Happy to have you in our lives” she’d extend

Eyes start to moisten with the love this conveys
Reminder to self:  Ample good’s on display

In these polar extremes lies the binding of living
Sometimes it’s taking and sometimes it’s giving
Hardship can break us to a point of demise
‘Til angels of mercy breathe new strength to arise

Tears have been shed for the better and worse
Life is a blessing and life is a curse
Life is the challenge of entangled emotion
Nothing is rooted, for life’s constant motion

Copyright SGW 2013

Poem: Violence

Violence

A world of too much violence

Where impulse turns to rage

A world of too much violence

Of monsters left uncaged

Bombs will never win a struggle

Conflagration yields no prize

The coldness of a conscious choice

A choice of promised lies

The zealots planning mass destruction

A government hooked on drones

Madmen screaming “seas of fire”

Mindless hates intoned

Violence yielding more the same

Death reveals more death

Nothing’s gained for any cause

In ending just one breath

Too many guns; too many “tools”

A weaponized decay

Too many means to take more lives

The murderous bouquet

Enough, enough, this all must end

Build and not tear down

Stop the hate, stop this craze

The rage is all around

Riling frenzied, manic “flocks”

With words of hate and words of fear

The vitriolic platitudes

Breed anger most severe

Blood for blood and eye for eye

Ratchet up the storm

Rocks to guns to missiles launched

So death becomes a norm

Copyright SGW 2013

Footnote: 

Boston, Manhattan.  Columbine, Aurora, Virginia Tech, Newtown, Tucson.  The West Bank, Baghdad, Aleppo, Yemen.  The Topeka abortion clinic, a podium where a speaker stands and arouses hate.  North Korea, Iran.

Nothing justifies a terrorist attack on innocent people.  The actions are evil and without any justification.  But drones, missile strikes, propping up dictators, and wars of choice kill indiscriminately, too, and breed more hate.  Some war is necessary; defense is a right.  But more balance – building schools, teaching democracy, farming assistance – these things cost less than bombs and shape people’s views in a better way than bombs and drones.

This nation’s gun craze does not in any way lead to acts of terror such as the World Trade Center, Oklahoma City and the Boston Marathon.  But they kill far more people in many other acts of terror and in daily , routine life.  They can, of course, serve the purpose of defending a home.  But far more often they kill innocent people.  They have a place for hunters and sportsmen, but not to the extent of the weapons escalation we are living with … without even the most basic and reasonable means of temperance.

All of these things are related because they are all acts that lead to amping up the violence.  One act or circumstance does not always lead to another.  Nothing justifies the end result of mass killings.  But they are all part of the same problem.

And it is ALWAYS the right  time to look for change.

Poem: Shepherd

Shepherd
(Dedicated to the thousands of children sexually abused and then betrayed again.)

A “keystone” as timeless as time might forget
Rituals formed by the years long since set
The shepherd’s high platform builds the virtuous mask
Bejeweled and berobed, in the worship he’d bask
Archaic the rules and the doctrinaire dance
Awash in the vastness of adoration’s expanse

The shepherd holds riches unimagined to know
But he will pray from above; wash some feet all for show
The money-held bounty would make any banker soon blush
All the gold and the silver kept in secret’s cold hush

His castle’s been fed by corruption and greed
The sins of the evils as foundational screed
With fraud of no limit by the crimes since amassed
Long been swept under rugs through the centuries passed

Neanderthal thinking from what’s best as extinct
A homophobe, anti-woman and a Dark Ages link

The monsters protected are the shepherd’s right hands
Obfuscation, eluding and a bullying brand
Children as wreckage left abused and destroyed
All the tools of destruction were too quickly deployed
Grave the transgressions laid ‘pon innocent victims
And from Lucifer’s scepter come the unholy dictums

No godly existence in this evil wrung deep
Mindlessly follow stand the shepherd’s blind sheep

Copyright SGW 2013

The sexual abuse of children is among the most vile and evil of crimes that can be committed.  Thousands of children were preyed on by priests in the Catholic Church.  Most will never get justice because the leadership of the Church, all the way to the Vatican, and Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI, thought it better to protect the wealth and power of the Church, than the children who most needed protection. 

Poem: Shades

Shades

Calm sets in after the wintry storm’s wrath

A blanketing whiteness that impedes every path

In the bristling cold air moves a singular frame

While I sit in the warmth he will work all the same

Stories reported of the common event

A xenophobe’s ring of repeated lament

‘Round Freehold stoppings there’s a gathering mass

The Mexican workers standing anxious alas

Whether legal or less so is often unclear

The landscape and work crews they would to hope to adhere

Though people scream wildly of jobs they might steal

‘Nary a white man ‘mongst the group would reveal

These poor, decent people only seek daily bread

The venom from racists would be better unsaid

My immersion in thoughts of past dust bowls and decay

Leave me reflective of this man on this day

Call the man to me; crooked teeth, short but stout

Just a hard working spirit weathered inside and out

Hand him a ten-spot as the least I can do

He thanks me and smiles then he thanks me anew

Put in perspective of a national fight

Where some see the brown less deserving their rights

Remove them, contain them and brand with a stain

But they are us, we are them, we are all just the same

My walkway is shoveled and the man shuffles on

Illegal or legal, what this land’s built upon

We all trace our roots to migrations as such

Whatever the reasons, we’re alike much as much

Copyright SGW 2013

Poem: Carrousel

Carrousel

She was always too busy claiming tasks to be done
Forever en route, endless errands to run
The juggler of missions, a servant of time
Life can be lost on this narrowing line

Excuses came plenty in her martyr’s brigade
The slave to a struggle who’s succumbed to what’s laid
Until eyes of impression are soon molded as well
The tree and its apples on the same carrousel

Too late to notice that you’re benumbed and immune
Cat’s in the cradle and the man in the moon
The children become what the mother has crafted
An appendage of labors has been too firmly grafted

Try to break in to break up the routine
But freedom of leisure only viewed as obscene
Imagination can’t flourish where every minute’s imposed
Where’s the freedom to dream or just wiggle one’s toes

Cat’s in the cradle and the man in the moon
Here’s to who’d craft of a less-perfect hewn

Copyright SGW 2013




Footnote:  Obvious reference to Harry Chapin’s “Cats in the Cradle.”

Poem: Different Words

Different Words

Bullies have terrorized a country
Torn at all rational thought
Through combination of varietal methods
A destructive regression they’ve sought

Quietly succumbing in measure
Would be nice if were met with in-kind
But in the face of extremist departure
We must call out the worst that we’d find

Where racism, hatred and bigotry
Use actions and words as a voice
Naming them such is the battle
Must be waged without question or choice

Homophobic, anti-female or immigrant bashers
Elementally these are people to fight
And calling them out is not equal
It is morally given and right

When you say rape can’t impregnate a woman
Or you’d drive off economy’s cliff
While you insist that Obama’s a Kenyan
You’re a loon with no but, and or if

As a grouping of people go crazy
Irrational and of vilest of mind
The damage they do to the nation
Requires the bright light be shined

Calling them what they exhibit
Whether racist or nutjob or fool
Exposes their regressive obstruction
And provides them deserved ridicule

Copyright SGW 2013

This poem is dedicated to the overwhelming majority of the Republican politicians in office or who have run for office since 2008, FOX “News,” most conservative talk radio, teabaggers, S.I.P.E., and the extremism that they have come to represent and display.  Fighting against this with vigor is a must.  If someone is a racist, fearmonger, bigot, homophobe, class oppressor, liar, or, well, fringe, lunatic, calling them by those names is not stooping to their level or “name-calling.”  It is using a necessary weapon to shine a light on their hate, shame them and make others understand how destructive they are.

Poem: Sculptured Garden

Sculptured Garden

 

The world lies removed

Sculptured garden's quiet

Only cascading water speaks

And with soothing voice

The world can go on,

For a small time, without me

Sit to take in this peace

 

Copyright SGW 2012

Poem: Breaking Of Dawn

Breaking Of Dawn

Boarded up windows
Broken down trees
Strong winds blowing
Bringing Jersey to her knees

Homes left battered
Power shut down
Shiver in darkness
Flooded downtown

And this hurricane pounded like it never would stop
The ocean’s tide rising, is it ever gonna’ drop?
People lost everything and everything is gone
Sit here just praying for the breaking of dawn

Sea Bright and Asbury, Ocean Grove and LBI
Atlantic City’s buried and gas in short supply
Someone is crying and a handful were lost
Billions in dollars; too high human cost

Boarded up windows
Broken down trees
Strong winds blowing
Bringing Jersey to her knees

Homes left battered
Power shut down
Shiver in darkness
Flooded downtown

But Jersey will find itself in the coastline’s rebirth
The homes be restored; the boardwalk unearthed
These people have fortitude enduring in length
You can knock us down, Sandy, but we will return in full strength

And this hurricane pounded like it never would stop
The ocean’s tide rising, is it ever gonna’ drop?
People lost everything and everything is gone
Sit here just praying for the breaking of dawn

Copyright SGW 2012

Poem: Dream Dance

Dream Dance

‘Twas a fleeting moment
Dancing amongst two dreams
One, more accepted as being days gone by
And, now, the other, mostly unknown until this point in time
Yet no less ephemeral

Dance in the here and now
Embrace the moment
Innocently
Meaningless outside my imagination
Isn’t that just like a dream?

Copyright SGW 2012

Poem: Wind

Wind

Feel you ‘gainst my skin
You can be warm or viciously cold
Mood of the world determines

Quench sweating pores
Feed hunger of exhausted parching
Or chill to bone
Shiver
Wreak havoc so every inch of being knows your touch

Come and go
Rise
Fall
Breach
Soothe
Heal
Comfort

Yours is a tapestry of sensations
Never knowing what you’ll bare
You are the wind blowing

Copyright SGW 2012

Poem: My Poem

My Poem

Yours is a sweetness
Where shy cannot mask beauty
In piercing eyes

I am overcome

Laughter of quiet innocence
Balances fire borne
Of impassioned  yearning

And I have come undone

Wonder as to understandings
Of entangled language
Yet cannot impede two hearts

My heart you’ve won

Penetrating tenderness
Softly whispers of love
Beneath layers of unfolding warmth

This love’s begun

Copyright SGW 2012

*  Influenced by “Once.” 

Once: The Musical

Writing a “review” of a Broadway show is far outside my domain.  Doing so for a Tony Award-winning production seems unnecessary on the part of anyone.  With that in mind, consider this the inspired musings of someone who just saw “Once” at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theater and wants to share some words with people, like myself, who are not Broadway connoisseurs.

I thoroughly enjoyed the 2006 movie starring Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova, who also wrote and performed the soundtrack.  Like everyone else, I fell quickly for the feature song, “Falling Slowly,” and, like far too few, I was, and am, a fan of the mostly overlooked film.

“Once” on Broadway is better.

Glenn Hansard’s grittier voice and look might have been truer to the “Guy” role, but, as his Tony win states, Steve Kazee is remarkable, too.  Kazee’s voice is superb and he is able to convey a fine blend of pain and lost love with the determination of a dreamer.

Yet, for me, Cristin Milioti, from Cherry Hill, NJ, shines like a super nova as “Girl.”  Her voice is more than able to stand beside Kazee, but it is her convincing portrayal of the Czech immigrant that wins the audience over.  Milioti’s comedic timing is perfect, as she is given most of the performance’s humorous dialogue.  More, though, is how effective she is at bringing emotion to her role.  Petite and very pretty, she tugs at your heart constantly.  Subtle facial expressions, smiles, glints in her eye, and depth of soul seem so clear within her.  Milioti is able to jump from her marriage’s aches to her daughter’s innocent joy to boundless and infectious enthusiasm to inspired artist to deeply vulnerable and in love woman.  All her emotions take you with her as you experience each high and low of the story through “Girl’s” spirit and craving for life.

 “Once” as a play is something more, as well, as to what makes it special.  The direction and choreography of the stage and all the actors is brilliant.  Get to the theater as the doors open.  You will be allowed on state to order a drink at the fully operational bar near the back of the stage that also serves as part of the set design throughout the play.  As I walked about, I noticed various instruments – guitars, violins, mandolins, banjoes, and more – lying about.  I soon found out why.

With the exception of the two leads, the entire cast quietly appears on stage milling about with the audience members.  Soon, a musical free for all of wonderful Irish songs is in full force; the crowd claps and foot stomps along with the performers.  Particular praise for the fine musicianship of David Abeles, Will Connolly, Elizabeth Davis, David Patrick Kelly, Anne Nathan, Andy Taylor, and Erikka Walsh.  What a fun Broadway version of a romping house party!!

This goes on for 15 to 20 minutes (Too short!).  Quietly, ushers escort audience members from the stage as the singing continues.  Finally, someone, Steve Kazee, chimes in, suggested he’d like to sing something, and, without even knowing it, “Once” has begun.

To further add to the uniqueness of “Once,” the cast serves as “orchestra” on stage throughout the show.  The movement and flow through scenes is seamless and clever. 

“Once” might not be the best Broadway musical of the era, and the cast might not go down as legendary performers; the place of the play and actors can be determined elsewhere.    But this is certainly a brilliantly staged, acted and performed musical.  I loved it all and walked out wanting to sing and dance down Broadway.