Raising Awareness of Global Concerns through a Marriage of the Arts
To illuminate this time and space we all float in.
Welcome to The Abstractaphy Initiative, a place where artists and writers come to express their thoughts on the state of, and future of, the planet and its residents. This website is an artistic project designed to raise awareness of global issues, foster appreciation for the world we live in, and promote thought towards new ideas for action in the present that will positively impact the future.
We accept virtually every kind of poetry known to humanity and will even accommodate translations if accompanied by an English version. We also accept art that addresses the above goals.
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Last 10 Posts
By Rebecca Drouilhet
Picayune, Mississippi, USA
the urge
to flow beyond my banks . . .
a drop of water
longing to go
where oceans rise and fall
By Carissa Coane
California, United States of America
Daughter, is it fair to keep you,
knowing what you will inherit?
Will you understand the stories I read to you,
skin as white as snow, lips as pink as roses?
Will there be roses at all, petals for you to pluck,
grass to stain your knees, trees to climb?
I used to think Mother Nature was a real person, like Santa,
that she breathed life into every seed.
And even with shriveled hands, lines cut into her face,
she was radiant, peaceful, eternal.
(Santa, what will I tell you about him?
The North Pole gone liquid, But what about the reindeer? You’ll ask.
Will you ever know the scent of pine mingling with cookies from the oven,
Will you even know trees? Winter? Cold?)
–
Six months since I first bled;
at fifteen, I’m a late bloomer (will you understand this metaphor, anthesis, tulips in April?).
Six weeks without even a cramp,
until I finally took notice.
I never thought we’d meet like this,
an extra line on a plastic stick, your first introduction.
I’ve heard my generation is the first to have a lower quality of life than our parents.
What will become of yours, I wonder?
–
It is the purpose of life to create more life, I learn in biology class,
every quirk of my body by design,
every impulse and thought predestined,
my entire existence optimized for you.
I optimize myself in other ways, too-
stuffing in my bra, glitter smeared on my eyelids.
I buy sustainable skincare from my favorite actress;
her jet emits 5,000 tons of carbon per year.
One of my friends is already saving up for implants,
she wants her breasts to look like this forever!
Centuries from now, twin discs of silicone will remain,
a testament to her everlasting beauty, Greek sculpture of the modern age.
Yet in all our artifice, it remains the ultimate compliment
for a woman to be a flower, a summer’s day, a pearl; true perfection is only of the earth.
And like her, we are stripped, hacked up, pruned,
made into objects to be consumed, insisting it is of our own volition all the way.
Forests cut down for the profit of corporations, ribs removed from waists.
Fluid pumped into bedrock, acid injected into lips.
Ostensibly, these procedures done to maximize our potential.
To attract investors, suitable mates, the most natural of all things turned synthetic.
Seduction is a game we play, one with niceties and unspoken rules.
But what will happen when mass displacement, scorching summers, lack of food,
make all of our customs and manners wither away,
and woman, once prized possession, loses all choice in her objectification?
As in crises past, girl becomes prey.
Only we will have no allies, no sanctuary, no hope of peace.
Even beauty, charm, the things we have spent our whole lives pursuing, turned meaningless,
attempts to evoke mercy as fruitless as the once-abundant trees.
–
My whole life culminated in your creation,
you are my destiny, my bloodline, my raison d’être.
How can I let you fight,
when I know I can never shield you?
–
Once you’re my age, will there still be clean air to breathe, fresh water to drink?
Are you only truly safe in here, size of a lentil, lodged somewhere below my stomach?
–
Before she was a Mother, was Nature a girl too?
If she had known what would happen to her, her daughters,
would she have chosen to carry them at all?
Without begonias and beaches she might have been bored,
but would she, much wiser than I, pick dullness over desiccation?
–
Daughter, five years later,
and I still think of you, unsure of whether I made the right choice.
Sometimes I dream about giving birth,
but even in my imagination, there are complications-
you come out the wrong way, or I bleed too much,
and I never once hold you against my heart.
Perhaps it is safer like this,
my cycle never skipping another month,
the routine distracting me from higher temperatures, rising seas,
I’ll sleep better knowing you won’t face any of it.
Does it really matter, though, how often I shed blood,
when I know it all ends in hemorrhage?
| January 12, 2025 | 8 Downloads | |
| January 4, 2025 | 36 Downloads |
All poems/art are copyrighted by our contributing poets/artists.
By Debbie Strange
Canada
The Bamboo Hut, Number 2, September 2023
By Debbie Strange
Canada
Frameless Sky, Issue 17, December 2022
By Debbie Strange
Canada
Shortlisted Vispo, 2023 Sonic Boom Annual Vispo Contest
Artist’s Statement:
A word-weaving of culled Wikipedia details regarding Treaty 1 (in my home province of Manitoba) affixed to stained watercolour paper, referencing the boil-water advisories on many First Nations in Canada.
By Monica Kakkar
India and United States of America
wind without color
hues widows of Vrindāvan—
forsaken in droves
Further reading:
Prompt: Stone of the Month – January 2024 “Intersection”|
Gallery of Poems, Prose and Paintings, at the Viewing Stone Association of North America (VSANA), February 01, 2024. https://www.vsana.org/ppp-17-feb-1–24
By: Ken Scott
Los Angeles, California, USA
It is time for us to end this.
It is time for us to end the confusion,
the congestion, the hustle culture,
the vicious competition for survival,
and the monetization
of human life itself.
It is time for us to end this.
It is time for us to end the original greed,
the self-entitled avarice,
the violent conquests,
the hate, the wars,
the tortures, the rapes,
and the senseless slaughter,
time for us to end the shootings,
the hangings, the lynchings,
the burnings, the bombings,
the colonizations, the thefts,
the genocides, the ethnic cleansings,
and every last form
of for-profit dehumanization.
It is time for us to end the superstitions,
the religious excuses, the pious ignorance,
and the selfish blindness
that have maintained our bondage
to countless centuries of mortality,
time for us to end our enslavement
to instruments of death and destruction,
time for us to end our vulnerability
to the weapons that have been wielded
against us all,
time for us to end all empires
of oppression and exploitation,
once and for all,
so that humanity is truly
free.
When we know
who we really are,
this corrupt world
ceases to exist.
It is time for us
to Awaken.
We are the Infinitesimal Infinite,
the Silence of all sounds in One,
the Nothingness that is Everything,
the Briefest Eternity
and the Omnipresent Now,
the Singularity of Pure Consciousness
from Everlasting to Everlasting.
And it is time for us to end
this world of darkness,
so that the World of Light,
Peace, Empathy, Compassion,
Wholeness, Supernatural Being,
Eternal Truth, Eternal Life,
and Eternal Love
embraces us all.
We already know
what to do:
we choose
to BE.
Copyright (c) 2024, Kenneth Irving Scott, Jr., All Rights Reserved
About this poem of affirmation: Ken Scott
“Beyond all reasonable doubt, world events have reached a rather disturbing and pivotal point in the totality of human history. From hostile wars of for-profit aggression to livestreamed genocides, the societies of this world have brought the entire collective of humanity to an unprecedented precipice. And it is from this precipice that we either soar above these nightmares or fall headlong toward our own extinction. I strongly believe that we have the ability to soar. Nevertheless, it requires an affirmation of who and what we are at our core, so that we may fulfill that path of enlightenment and ascension. To that end, I wrote and recited a poem, entitled “Formal Declaration of 9,” intended for this crossroads, in the hopes that many others would likewise recite this poem between now and the end of the year 2025, toward awakening that enlightenment and ascension in the collective soul of humanity.”
By John Pappas
Boston, Massachusetts, USA
By Elizabeth Crocket
Ontario, Canada
