Poetry Month Newsletter Banished Poets Society: Katherine L. Gordon, editor

 

NEWSLETTER APRIL 2026  For National Poetry Month  THE BANISHED POETS SOCIETY APR 14   READ IN APP   This April, National Poetry Month Newsletter, The Banished Poets Society honours the power and passion of poetry to influence and impact the world with hope of transformation into peace and justice for every culture, every part of society. We salute George Elliott Clarke for his dedication to promote black culture in poetry and music. We note with pride that the first black astronaut went on the moon voyage, accompanied by a skillful woman and an astronaut wearing the indigenous wisdom of the cosmos, insignia embroidered on his jacket, examples of the equality of all cultures, the wondrous aspects of humanity seeing the dark side of the moon for the first time. They showed us a radiant Earth, pure poetry in cosmic music. This issue includes poetry from Italy, Israel, the U.S. many great Canadian poets and emerging poets from a variety of backgrounds who have found herein a platform to express past suppression, present hopes of healing and esteem. All reflect on the beautiful vulnerable humanity we all share, our growing recognition of evil politics that threaten liberty and life for so many. Speaking out now against cruelty and injustice we save democracy, we help to transform the Earth into its glorious potential. -Katherine L. Gordon. Editor. April, 2026 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Transcendence We have seen the glowing Earth from the dark side of the moon, rare, beautiful, worthy of cherishing, though its ancient dust no longer undisturbed or home to quiet craters of possibility but a frantic mix of bombs, bodies poverty and fear held hostage to the evil policies of tyrants. Trump, Netanyahu, Putin, the evil trinity eclipsing democracy. Yet the people are rising from the mountains and valleys the deserts and plains, the sea-shores, the forests, discovering that voices joined can change the world. This is the power of united human courage, poetry and passion, the music of the cosmos vibrating in waves that shape the future. A new era of transcendence is born. -Katherine L. Gordon ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Gaza City Across the water across the bobbing, yellow-striped fishing boats in the long late light— we see the gold of Gaza City, sitting on the Mediterranean— its sandstone minarets, concrete apartment blocks, Byzantine architecture. And now more war is coming, bringing with it the weapon of enforced starvation. Omar Mukhtar Street, is soon to be blanketed with the gray powder of exploded and collapsed buildings. Soon to be like the rest of Gaza, where we see tens of thousands of the strewn dead, of whom other thousands are children. And other thousands of children are amputees— maimed children wander in the dust, maimed children, wandering in the dust. -Gene Grabiner ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Shimmer and Slime I have strolled down paths aglow with marigold shimmer, breathed in the tang of forever friends who've wandered along with me... side-stepped cracked and broken culverts skulking along the edges, their scent of brackish water as they seek their reflections at all costs. Marigolds are not famously fragrant, but their scent is one of honesty. - B. Alexander ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Washing Bananas I want to tell you how washing bananas is like writing a poem but the truth is more complicated than that I watch a woman working in the factory noise in Costa Rica music blaring over loud speakers roaring in the air like midnight torture in a American prison at Guantanamo Bay and she moves the bone machine of her body dipping her arms in the banana-floating water that washes the yellow crop with drippings of shipwrecked berries in clutchable bunches gripping each rinsed cluster and lashing them one by one into plastic baskets she pulls and shove pulls and shoves thereby filling her quota she’s dressed in a rubber bib running past her knees her hands gloved to the elbow a costermonger of the daily harvest she’s a cog and wheel of the human spirit paid by the dreary hour of each dolorous day the greengrocer’s serf and slave -John B. Lee ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Dominion Day in Jail (celebration 1975) I spent last Dominion Day in jail in a cold cell on a steel bench - cold, sleepless, angry and proud tho almost wanting to feel foolish. Fed a cheeseburger and a coffee in 24 hours fingerprinted stripped of my shirt frogmarched - mugshot insulted. All this for the patriotic crime of daring to say YANKEE GO HOME! to the Yankee Shriners parading thru downtown Toronto. They thought it was the 4th of July (Canada Division). Cold, sleepless, hungry, angry PROUD that I was cold, sleepless, hungry, angry and not enjoying the July sun lounging on the green grass in Queen's Park or lining the parade route for the Shriners. This growing pride made my solitary jail cell a celebration of Dominion Day. -Chris Faiers ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Grave Digger, or Not Another Ode About the Trees I’ve learned I’ve pondered the trees in a fallacious way. Yes, I’m aware the poets gorge on oak & ash. A sycamore is less. Their buds outnumber the sand. But all this time their branches have been roots—roots have been their scions— stretching to a sacrilege of light, the undertow of earth. This is why the moles are nearly blind. Treasure at the bottom of abyss. Squinting’s a game for the quick & not the dead. Who decides what’s sky? Behold the flight of worms. Our grandson stomps on leaves to hear the crunching of their bones. This is something beauty cannot offer. Supple’s invariably soundless— which only the deaf can hear. A surface yet to wrinkle hasn’t lived. To wither is to feel the sigh of God. There below the stratum. Every stone a star. The basis for why you’ll stop at six feet down. Why you’ll roll your beloved over once the mourners sob & flee. Her dreams had always burrowed never soared. Your shovel like a staff that splits the sea. -Andreas Gripp -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Rise Of The Hydra We have been driven deep into the heart of our yearning, . . . — Robert Duncan Another spring-tide is threatened by war — war follows war as far back as memory lasts: Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, and now Iran. Maybe Cuba’s next? And still, human longing for peace persists. Today, government thugs in black masks beat and murder civilians, merely citizens who only desire freedom from violence. In this game there can be no winners; we will all be losers, or even dead. Six decades ago, Robert Duncan saw the Hydra break loose destroying bridges, temples, schools, rice fields, entire villages — entire villages. An ancient people faced the utter destitution of years of war. The young women and men who believed they could stop the killing displayed a raw courage and a truth that created a green place within the blind earth, a calm centre in the hurricane of fear. And yet the United States has resumed the slaughter of the innocents, the reign of wrath. How often will Herod return to inhabit the White House? School girls are hunted down in their classrooms, deserts have been turned into mass graves. As Ramadan and Lent fall together, waves of bombers thunder overhead. A whole region is laid waste. How many times must the Hydra rise? With each new war we are driven ever deeper into the heart of our yearning, deeper into our desperation for true brotherhood. We seem to have been fighting the Death Cult for generations, fighting the servants of evil forever. The sky’s aflame over the Persian Gulf. Outside, months of snow have been replaced by rain; we hunger for the new life we pray spring will bring. -James Deahl ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Mother Wise i Soft earth opens like a woman. Bulbs crown from her thighs and bloom. Fish swim from the river’s hips. But Mama is so small I am born of a wound. ii In a womb of time the midwives lay their hands on my twins’ damp heads. They will bury the placenta in the herb garden. Its fine hairs will sprout from the earth’s skin. Excerpts from Good Grief Shortlisted for the Next Generation Indie Book Awards and the Global Book Awards - April Bulmer ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- War Effects Child wanders in hunger this is not what life should be She looks to nearby adults does not understand differences Food must come from somewhere plentiful on shelves, not UN Aid boxes Enjoyment is not known to child only suffering amidst war rubble How dare nutrition is not available even worse as a tool of ultimate power Primary school should be for education not as a missile or drone target The word ‘War’ to stay in dictionaries What happened to classmates and teachers her playground to enjoy recess Rubble and dust landscape broken in wonderment Friends spontaneously cry over friends to never see again Someday, when this is over reunions will have somber moods Adult recollections of this disaster will forever need illness treatment - Ed Woods -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Lament for a Homeland After Edwin Muir The anguish of plane engines in the night heading to one of our never-ending wars shatters our dreams; nightly we hear them roar, rumble like thunder, fade sound-smeared into the sky. Why? What has made this land so plagued, its promise unfulfilled, afraid of yet impatient for its doom, unable to make room enough between the river and the sea for both to share? Must it forever be all mine or only yours? We were beguiled like refugees returning to a lost isle by the mirage of a land, that once was ours, of milk and honey, eager to drink our fill; we were betrayed by decades of assumptions wrongly made finding not sweetness there, but bitter gall, the milk and honey turned to blood and dust; considering ourselves just, we did not heed the prophets warning us of future ills, telling us milk will curdle, honey clot, fruit slashed with swords will rot our silos will be empty in time of need; we, who through millennia never forgot this land, imagined they, its later conquerors, would fade away quietly, or let us in without a fight. While they believed false prophets who urged them to savage deeds for decades taught their children to hate, to kill and do so still. Extremists on both sides have sown this seed. Beguiled by We are right, betrayed by those who promised We will win, no need to compromise, ignoring even now the words of the wise, both sides, lying awake in darkness, hear over and over, these last hundred years the anguish of plane engines in the night. -Judy Koren ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Green to Heal Time does not pass In this garden of citrus and thyme With a sprinkling of dove And sunbird Where anemones thrive And a blackbird praises Spring And greens The colour of calm and healing Greens that ease The pain of war… -Helen Bar-Lev -------------------------------------------------------------------------- For March 1 Oh, Love, we were bubbles In the flotsam of time Part of this river Part of some rhyme All promises fulfilled All projects on hold We had so many rivers Before we grew old The March wind was singing Some wild hero’s song The canoe was ready The evenings grew long And now we’re a couplet In the epic of time We followed our rivers To the end of our rhyme All dreams and all rivers To the end of our rhyme - Lenny Everson -------------------------------------------------------------------------- APPEAL TO POETS Poets, come out of your closets, open your windows, open your doors, you have been holed-up too long in your closed worlds. Lawrence Ferlinghetti - Populist Manifesto Poets, let’s write words of Hope for every country at war where homes collapse, like sandcastles at high tide, where an opaque veil fills the air and eyes are full of terror where children’s laughter is too often silenced…. Poets, let’s spread words of Peace on the far horizon there is a promise, waiting to bloom. -Lidia Chiarelli --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Gift of India gift of india gift of bones gift of colour in the trees silver round the ankles glass around the wrist dust in cloudy eyes, and clouds, themselves, like ash i asked my eyes they sang inward, nameless tunes my ears rang dry through all the drenching dazzling afternoons i asked for nothing but to crouch within the crowds the feet trampling the dust below the clouds above the music of the anklets set a ringing and a numbing while the heat-dazed insects stared i asked no gift, but it was given anyway for the sound of the cicadas for the smell of tamarind and tangy urine for the incense toiling upward for the small waxy flowers with no voices for the mindless march of feet beating even in the rain they have taken all my numbers and the letters of my name and given me these inward eyes, overcast and tuneless like the eyes of the beggars in the lanes -kymme sun ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Transformation Nature in eternal cycle, greens the Earth rainbows her fields with flowers buds fruit trees with promise of sustenance. Poets transform war-burdened lands with hope and forceful voices visioning equality of justice, truth and sharing. Speak your protests, embrace every culture, all the dispossessed and weary. Together we create transformation. -Katherine L. Gordon -------------------------------------------------------------------------- THE BANISHED POETS SOCIETY's Substack is free today. But if you enjoyed this post, you can tell THE BANISHED POETS SOCIETY's Substack that their writing is valuable by pledging a future subscription. You won't be charged unless they enable payments. Pledge your support   LIKE COMMENT RESTACK   © 2026 THE BANISHED POETS SOCIETY 548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104  Unsubscribe

Trump versus Pope Leo and as Jesus: Charlie Angus

 

Trump, Pope Leo and the Lessons of 1933 CHARLIE ANGUS / THE RESISTANCE APR 13   READ IN APP   “Lay down your weapons now.” - Pope Leo As Israel was blowing up villages on the Lebanese border and Trump was bragging that the United States was “locked and loaded,” Pope Leo called out these actions as breaches of international law. War crimes. This is unprecedented language from a world religious leader. But he went one step further. Pope Leo called on American Catholics to get politically active in the fight to stop the escalating war in Iran: “Call your congressmen to work for peace and reject war.” Pope Leo is speaking with an urgency, not simply to stop the killings by the United States/Israel war machine but to awaken democratic resistance. Donald Trump has responded with a bizarre rant accusing the Pope of being “WEAK on crime” and that the Pope shouldn’t criticize him because he created the “greatest stock market in history.”  He then posted a second meme portraying himself as Jesus Christ. It is totally unhinged and disgraceful. But Trump’s hate rant at the Pope is not just about Donald. It is an indictment of the entire political, military, legal, media power structure that threw their lot in with the criminal narcissist from Mar a Lago. As the Israel/Trump war in Iran goes south the whole lot of them are standing without any credibility before a religious leader who dares speak truth to power. As Bob Dylan said, “Even the president of the United States sometimes must have to stand naked.”  And this is why the United States has turned to threat.  In January, the Pentagon demanded a meeting with the Pope’s ambassador, Cardinal Christophe Pierre. Such a meeting was also without precedent. The notion of generals demanding to meet with ambassadors or religious leaders highlights a dangerous moment in the dying American democracy. The Pentagon was enraged that Pope Leo called out Trump’s “Donroe Doctrine,” which claims the unilateral power to control sovereign nations in the Americas – including Canada. During the meeting, the Under Secretary for War, Eldridge Colby, put a brutal either/or on the table: “America has the military power to do whatever it wants in the world. The Catholic Church had better take its side.” When that threat didn’t work, the Pentagon threw a direct physical threat against the Pope. They suggested that they would use the lessons of the Avignon Papacy to teach the church a lesson. In 1303, the French King Phillip attacked Pope Boniface. French soldiers beat Boniface to death, and then the military dragged the church leaders off to Avignon, France, where they were held in captivity for 70 years. Needless to say, the church took these shouted threats by Pentagon officials as a direct attack on the life of Pope Leo. If Washington thought it could spook Pope Leo with a dark historical reference, it was mistaken. The Vatican is taking their history from the more recent past — the 1933 Reich Concordat between the Nazis and the Vatican. When Hitler took power, he had a big problem with Germany’s Catholic community. They weren’t enthusiastic about the Nazis, and some key Bishops were denouncing the rising level of threats. Hitler needed to bring the Church into line. He met with Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli (later Pope Pius XII) and offered a deal — if the Church kept its nose out of politics, the Nazis would lay off the German Catholic Church. Pacelli signed the Reich Concordat in 1933, which forced the silence of the one institution that could have called out the Nazis. It was a disaster for the people of Germany and Europe. Bishops were warned not to speak up about the attacks on the Jews. The threat to German Bishops was clear: “If you speak up for the Jews, the Nazis will come for the Church next.” The Reich Concordat has been a stain on the Catholic Church ever since. Thomas Merton, the monk and Catholic thinker, summed it up: “Pius XII and the Jews … a silence which is deeply in complicity with all the forces which carry out oppression, injustice, aggression, exploitation, war.” There is no way that in this new age of fascist threat, the Church is going to forget the lesson of the Reich Concordat. This is why Pope Leo denounced Pete Hegseth at the Palm Sunday celebrations, declaring, “God does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war.” Over Easter, the top Catholic Chaplain in the US military, Archbishop Broglio, called on U.S. military personnel to refuse to obey unjust and illegal military orders. Among the MAGA influencers, there is a great deal of manufactured rage against the Pope. Typical was the claim by white racist Laura Loomer that Leo is a “woke Marxist pope.” Given the spleen venting by the right-wing MAGA Catholics, some have wondered if a schism is coming within the American Catholic Church. I doubt this will happen. MAGA is driven by a gong show of loudmouths who attempt to define the political debates of the nation. The far-right of the American Catholic Church is driven by a small group of so-called “trad” Catholic converts like JD Vance, who joined the Church believing they would be able to go back to the good old days of the 1500s. They bristle at Church teachings on feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, visiting the prisoners and helping refugees. This group of MAGA Catholics rallied around a few visible American clerics who supported the far-right agenda. But under the leadership of the previous Pope Francis, the Church began removing such figureheads. They took out the outspoken Cardinal Raymond Burke and Bishop Joseph Strickland. Both Pope Leo and Pope Francis have been looking into the role of the far-right Opus Dei group. Polling of Republican and Democratic Catholic voters shows a remarkable level of support for the Pope across the American political spectrum. Picking a fight with a young charismatic prelate from Chicago is not a winning strategy. This explains the rage in the Pentagon. Trump and Hegseth’s antics might play well with the likes of Laura Loomer, but they will go nowhere with people in the pews. When Leo denounces the “delusion of omnipotence,” everyone knows who he is talking about. Trump can’t stand to be ridiculed. But Leo is doing something different. He is calling out the immorality of Trump’s self-personification of wealth and power. “Enough of the idolatry of self and money! Enough of the display of power! Enough of war!” We should expect the Trump administration to continue to escalate pressure on the American Catholic Church. But we can also count on the Church to increase its resistance to the administration’s unjust and illegal actions.  They have learned a hard lesson from 1933. If any photos or images on this site are under copyright please let us know and we will give appropriate credit. Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting. Charlie Angus / The Resistance is a reader-supported publication — please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Upgrade to paid This post is public — feel free to share it. Share Thank you for reading Charlie Angus / The Resistance. If you’d like to upgrade to a paid subscription your support will help keep this project independent and sustainable. I’m grateful to have you here - thank you for your support. Upgrade to paid   LIKE COMMENT RESTACK   © 2026 Charlie Angus PO Box 74173, Ottawa RPO Beechwood, Ontario K1M 2H9  Unsubscribe

The United States is destroying itself: Rebecca Solnit - The Guardian

 

The United States is destroying itself

Rebecca Solnit

The daily news can’t adequately convey the administration’s sabotaging of our government, economy, alliances and environment 

Sun 12 Apr 2026 11.00 BST

665

The United States is being murdered, and it’s an

 inside job. Every department, every branch, every

 bureau and function of the federal government is

 being fatally corrupted or altogether dismantled or disabled.

 All this is common knowledge, but because it dribbles out

 in news stories about this specific incident or department,

 the reports never adequately describe an administration

 sabotaging the functioning of the federal government and

 also trashing the global economy, international alliances

 and relationships, and the national and global environment

 in ways that will have downstream consequences for

 decades and perhaps, especially when it comes to climate,

 centuries.

Across the branches of government, the services that are supposed to

 protect us – nuclear stockpile monitoring, cybersecurity,

 counter-terrorism – are being undermined, understaffed or trashed.

 A different kind of protection that consists of public health,

 vaccination programs, food safety, clean air and water, social services,

 civil rights and the rule of law is also under attack. The federal

 government that serves us is being starved while the federal

 government that serves the Trump agenda and the oligarchy is

 glutting itself on taxpayer money, including the grotesque sums

 dumped on the Department of Homeland Security and the US

 military now being warped into Pete Hegseth’s twisted vision

 of a ruthless mercenary force. Hegseth has reportedly stood in

 the way of promotions for more than a dozen Black and female

 officers.

It is striking that the Trump team’s constant refrain is that we

 cannot afford to protect the vulnerable or provide for the people,

 which is why the richest person in the world, Elon Musk, atop

 Doge, destroyed USAID last year, which has already resulted in

 tens of thousands of deaths from starvation and preventable

 disease. The Iran war is creating a fertilizer crisis in Europe,

 Africa and Asia that may also result in widespread famine.

 Meanwhile, the former head of homeland security Kristi Noem

 spent more than $200m on an ad campaign starring herself before

 she was fired.

Although there are far worse things about the utterly

 gratuitous and literally unjustified war on Iran, the fact

 that it burns through billions a day is striking, given that

 huge cuts are being made to environmental protection

 and national parks, and the forest service is being

 effectively sabotaged, while public lands are being

 offered up to fossil fuel companies and mining interests.

The forest service headquarters are being moved across the country,

 which will probably cause many resignations, like the similar move

 of the Bureau of Land Management in Trump’s first term. More

 than 50 forest service research stations are being cut, meaning 

more loss of irreplaceable ongoing research, data, facilities and staff.

Trump said in his droning dullard speech last week:

 “We can’t take care of daycare. We’re a big country ...

 We’re fighting wars ... It’s not possible for us to take care

 of daycare, Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual

 things.” Your money, our money, our public lands, our kids.

 Trump even bribed the builders of offshore windfarms almost

 a billion dollars to stop, just because he has a personal vendetta

 against the clean energy systems. The US used to lead the world

 in scientific research, including medical research, which had led

 to important breakthroughs in disease treatment and health,

 but all that has been slashed to the bone and beyond. This is

 murder.

The old aphorism about how long it takes an aircraft carrier to turn

 around might be why the nation seems relatively stable, and why

 reactions have been inadequate; the full impact is yet to come. At

 some point if the ship doesn’t turn around, maybe it will start

 taking on water or listing badly or hit an iceberg, or perhaps the

 iceberg has been there all along and is named Donald Trump.

 He has started a war for no particular reason – the word fun was

 deployed – that is further undermining the global economy he

 already badly damaged with his ever-fluctuating tariffs. Enterprises

 need to be able to plan, and tariffs that triple and melt away and

 pop up again like his moods undermine the ability to do so. In

 much the same way, threats that aren’t carried out, talks that

 never took place, administration actions that the courts reverse

 become forms of political whiplash, jerking everyone and everything

 around, a show of force that is also a show of incoherence and

 inconsistency.

We need to talk about the reconstruction a ravaged and corrupted country has to go through to return to functionality

But the offensiveness may be a distraction from the destructiveness.

 A whole sector of mainstream media now functions as spirit

 mediums attempting to interpret Trump’s actions to try to fit

 them into the context of competent leadership and coherent

 and consistent agendas. If there was a coherent agenda,

 it would be a destructive one, a malevolent one. The newly

 popular slogan “the purpose of a system is what it does” is useful

 here, because what this system does is weaken, damage, corrupt

 and harm. The idea that there’s a coherent agenda driven by

 Vladimir Putin works in the sense that most of what Trump has

 done is good for the ageing Russian dictator while also bad for the

 US.

It’s also evident that Trump wanted to come back into office in

 part to revenge himself on a country that in 2020 had rejected

 him, the way an ex-partner sometimes becomes a murderous

 stalker of the woman who dared to escape him, and specifically

 revenge himself on the individuals and institutions that had

 prosecuted him for crimes or otherwise thwarted him. Trump

 at some level knows he’s failing politically, cognitively

 and physically and wants to take it all down with him,

 the way that ancient rulers were buried with their

 slaughtered horses and servants. He’s also, as mortality

 breathes down his neck, trying to grab some immortality

 by sticking his name on buildings and park passes and currency.

But trying to understand motives is something of a hobby when

 the focus needs to be on consequences. We do not need to

 understand these criminals in order to try to contain

 and ultimately remove them. They will not last for ever, and

 we need to think about what happens when they’re gone – to talk

 about the kind of reconstruction the US will face for the

 first time since the civil war, the reconstruction a ravaged

 and corrupted country has to go through to return to

 functionality. But not to return to the way things were.

It’s the antidemocratic weaknesses in our system that created the

 vulnerabilities that let this happen – the electoral college and voter

 suppression that gave Trump a minority victory in 2016, the

 gerrymandering that has given a minority party majority power

 in Congress and statehouses, a grotesquely corrupted and

 unaccountable supreme court and the corrosive influence of the

 ultra-wealthy in a system that gives them power on a scale that

 is a direct assault on democracy. We need to imagine a more

 democratic, more egalitarian, more generous country, one that

 operates in recognition of an abundance of wealth that should serve

 all of us – and nature and future generations too – rather than is

 driven by the moral poverty of billionaires.

• Rebecca Solnit is a Guardian US columnist. Her newest book is

The Beginning Comes After the End: Notes on a World of Change