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 inhabitants. 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 and art that addresses the above goals.
The world has many problems: climate change, famine, and authoritarian rule, for examples. Greed is one of the greatest challenges. But to name a couple of root problems: war and division ruin our chances to solve the greatest problems facing the planet and humanity. This is one planet, one people, seriously divided. The only solution is to come together. The oligarchs are determined to prevent our united front. The question is, how do we get people to stop fighting each other?
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Last 10 Posts
Caroline Giles Banks
Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
WWII home front. Oils, fats, and meats are requisitioned to feed the troops, to grease the machinations of war. Ration cards. A lipsticked smile gets a coveted kidney from the butcher.
yellow dye oleo
no fooling
butter-starved eyes
The U.S. Government funds research to guide post-WWII famine relief in Europe and Asia. Young men who object to digging trenches of loss and grief participate in the Minnesota Starvation Experiment. Thirty-six COs are semi-starved and rehabilitated to determine the effects of severe dietary restriction. Fantasies of smorgasbord buffets soon outweigh thoughts of peace—and sex. No pin-ups of starlets on cork boards. Only cut-outs of shapely legs of lamb, plump breasts of chicken.
pious proud
belts cinched
tight & tighter
2025. Operation Metro Surge. Thousands of immigrants, many naturalized citizens with no criminal record, are locked up by the U.S. Government in overcrowded detention centers. No beds or blankets. No meds or baby formula. No potable water.
one sandwich per day
stomachs growl
“hear our prayers”
See The Great Starvation Experiment by Todd Tucker. University of Minnesota Press (2008)
Caroline Giles Banks
Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
Chain maille, shredded like old newsprint, covers up the carnage, the bedlam of civil war. Picasso’s canvas voraciously absorbs the din.
white, brown, pink…
frequencies of noise
color-coded
Shroud white. Funereal black. Grief gray. Tubes squeeze, brushes stroke a bull’s bellow, a horse’s bray, a soldier’s plea, a mother’s keen.
dagger tongues—
mouths agape
entreat and forewarn
Contemporary Haibun Online Issue #22.2 (August 2026)
Guernica
Painting by Pablo Picasso, 1937
Caroline Giles Banks
Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
car trip
tank filled on credit
fossil remains
First published: contemporary haibun online 17.3 (Dec 2021)
Caroline Giles Banks
Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
Caroline Giles Banks
Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
call it what you will
late fall
roses still in bloom
bottle rockets #38 (2016)
By Theresa A. Cancro – Wilmington, Delaware, USA
ceasefire—
under the weeping fig
a blind doll
Caroline Giles Banks – Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
Mother maples, and their promised seedlings and saplings, filter pollutants from the air.
Printed on paper—trees’ shrouds—The Associated Press reports that the U.S. Forest Service will terminate a $75 million dollar grant allocated to replace hundreds of thousands of trees lost to Hurricane Katrina, many in an historically Black community in New Orleans. By Executive Order, environmental justice initiatives that assure a percentage of climate investments go to disadvantaged communities “no longer meet government priorities.”
agnostic buzz saws pulp
Latin<—-> English primers
DEI<—->GODS
The Last Oak Leaf: Haiku, Senryu and Haibun Poems, Caroline Giles Banks. Minneapolis, Minnesota: Wellington-Giles Press, 2025.
Caroline Giles Banks – Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
sun and wind
unfunded
what on earth?
tsuri-doro #27 (May/June 2025)
lilacs re-bloom
spring
discombobulates
bottle rockets #52 (February 2025)
the Rio Grande
trickles down
to a misnomer
tsuri-doro #13 (Jan/Feb 2023)
Caroline Giles Banks – Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
The Eye of the Beholder
In the Company of Burtynsky and Basho
Edward Burtynsy’s photographs are stories of human alterations to the Earth. Taken using drones and fixed-wing aircraft these depict large-scale industrial projects and their effect on the environment. I am especially drawn to a photo of the tailings pond of an African diamond mine. Seen from the air, it appears almost beautiful, like a massive flower with its black-and-white petals opened and impressed upon the ground. I am reminded of Basho’s words:
How admirable!
to see lighting and not think
life is fleeting
Translation by Robert Hass
The Essential Haiku: Verses of Basho, Buson and Issa.
New Jersey: The Ecco Press, 1994
First published in Drifting Sands Haibun #19 (January 2023)
See “Edward Burtynsky. Over 40 Years of Bearing Witness to the Impacts of Human Industry on the Planet.” www.edwardburtynsky.com
By Subhash Roy Choudhury – Cuttack, Odisha, India
revolution square—
a beggar steps aside
for the parade
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