World Poetry for Total Peace

Por: Janette Ayachi

World poetry for total peace. // Pedagogy for the new life.

                  I have inherited your shadows
                            and a thousand crossroads.

        I read these lines with a smile, penned by a poet who has been a wanderer her entire life, Nathalie Handal, a woman who has crossed many borders successfully flirting with her chameleon tongue. A philosopher of lyrical reach. Her quest for peace has always been rooted in her ancestral calling, in learning languages & in spending time traversing diverse cultures. She has always listened to the true voice, one that resides within us all, & followed its trail the way a pilgrim would follow the north star.

        You cannot be afraid to be personal as a poet, you must engage with a raw dialect completely surfaced from self before you can cause a reaction in any other. The capacity of yourself will surprise you. For most chemicals to react we need heat, fire; that excitable flame flexing beneath the surface that reveals the properties of personalities (or the poem). It is important to switch off the noise & speak to the fire within ourselves, what is our will, the personality of the body often wants things independently of what we are considering - we need a time out to find the right frequency. When we charge up in solitude we can come back to the collective full to the brim with new ways to adjust circumstances to end the war between worlds, soothe the battle between good & evil, & help each other on our journey.

        Peace is a universal qualm, & I think poets are the only artists that can trace & waver its trajectory across the human condition with the most explorative & finite ways of seeing. For this, we are fortunate to have suffered in a way, to have mastered a way to self-heal & learn so many teachings from all the viper-strikes & wound bites. It is a tradition, poets are memory-keepers, they only smoke when their country burns, feel when they are touched, & sometimes more when they are untouched. Wars end, poetry does not.

        Radical faith is the primary disposition we must sink ourselves into. If we don’t believe something will happen, it won’t happen. We are all humble learners, vulnerable humans, looking for teachings, & celebrating love. When we surrender to complete trust, unhinge over to conviction, there is no limit to our personal & community powers. When we are grateful instead of fearful for what we have we are given more ideas & opportunities for growth & change. It is deep within the sacred vaults of our spirit that we can navigate our living & task in this life - we are all visionaries, here to leave a mark. Our DNA strands were made on purpose for a purpose by our creator.

        We are going through the most profound evolution humanity has ever made at the moment. I have started to write this essay on the new moon in Sagittarius 2022, a sign ruled by our great benefic, Jupiter, there could be no better divine timing of expansion, higher learning, optimism, philosophy & faith. We have swaddled through Scorpio season, tending to the subconscious, unlocking the mystery to purge what we have carried over the year, releasing what no longer works for us. It has been messy work, but in the slums of shadow, we have built mirrored walls to reflect the light. There would be no progression, no evolution, without words, without the serenade & pure wisdom of language.

        We have been confused. We have been plagued with promises of war & sickness & tragedy. We have been lost & have lost our faith along the way, but 2023 & The International Poetry Festival of Medellin 33 is the magic numerical infrastructure that will unravel the portal of change where we will be more in alignment, more in abundance, more in tune with our higher self. This coming year we will finally be able to use the learning & sagacity we have produced from the catapult of chaos & hoops of lessons we have been pushed through. Obstacles & blocks in life are normal, but then also so is a bout of concurrent smooth sailing thereafter. Through intuition, the teaching we offer our/self, rather than tuition, something we would pay for, we have landed in the space for true transformation. No more force for answers now. No more pushing. The best revelations arrive when we stop looking for them. We have done the work, next year is about receiving, for sitting back & watching our universal hard work fall into perfect position - it is time now to sit back & have some fun! To enjoy the arrival of peace.

        There is no remedy like that produced from the medicine of poets - their way of seeing, beyond sensory vision, beyond the 3-D, rooted within the third eye - they encourage the blossom of all that tip their ear to this musical synchronicity of collective healing. We have felt peace because of the poets, we are gearing towards total peace because of the poets & their gift of all-seeing & heightened feeling & sharing.

        All those times we let ourselves be intoxicated by our greed to make the simple ecstasy last that little bit longer, to keep our fists raised in the air, saluting sky & rage & power. Despite most people being law-abiding & calculable, predictable instead of paranormal, the nation is still a spell of nerves haunted by the latest news. Yet the ultimate locus of our interest should be on developing new roles, to not inhabit a selective social space but to branch out. Reach out.

        This jaunt is revoltingly suave; a roadside swallow of professionals at their peak, you may assume, content to have reached something they cannot return back from. What is this comfort that we find reassuring in the other? We teach best what we need to learn ourselves. Any ideological agenda in politics, religion or education

that instils normative as the highest value will annihilate us & our self-expression, it will dampen, or worse, erase our Art. The trick is to not be an android & suppress your natural state of being, but to instead allow for proportionate doses of creativity to cycle through you, like the seasons, without it getting caught in the dovetails of what others think. This is the most relevant message coming from spirit when one is in search of resting with peace.

The luminous longing for elemental truth is what stirs all creative impulses, however, as philosopher Kierkegaard proclaimed ‘Truth exists, only as the individual himself produces it into action’ so staying silent is not an option for the daring sensuality of peace. To be an explorer, seeker & pursuer of truth over the vast areas of the world - even heartbreak cannot hold you back when you are geared toward that quest. We have been sleeping long enough. We have been locked down into stillness long enough. Love in the now is often sitting in the disappointments of the world. I am not sure why we do that, haunt intimacy with a showcase of let-downs from our broken expectations, toss them tall on the scrap-yard pile of failed relationships. With lovers, with cities. The communal let-downs. ‘Why do you need to know what a painting means?’ asked Pablo Picasso one evening cleaning his brushes ‘sometimes you just have to look.’ Why do birds sing, we never ask, we just listen, but they sing because they are happy that they have arrived safely after migration.

      We should always strive to be better, to examine more, to explore the multiple facets & faucets of our sensibilities & capabilities after we have crossed borders or migrated through major historical events. I admire that about life, the unending valleys of experience always blooming. Peace is found first in the self, cell self &

spirit self, then the nation, then the world. Remember this. One of the deepest forms of peace we can experience is living in integrity. You can lie to other people about who you are, but you can’t lie to your heart. Inhale peace, exhale suffering.

        The primal scream is so close to the actual pulse of life; there is pain in birth & pain in death, in old worlds & new worlds, so I traffic in the place we go before we die, riding life’s wheel of carnivorous fortune because, well, I was a sickly child, & truly, there is nothing we can do to harm the soul. From my Near Death Experiences, I felt that peace is found in death, destruction & decay, at the end of something & now we have shifted timelines & begun a new civilization, enlightenment, & a new world post-pandemic. The ruined environments return to the rural community after chaos.

        Peace is gritty & ethereal, a still beauty; fragments, moments, impressions, it is humour & humility settled in deep time, it exists in our vital matter. It is a full heart. Peace is discovered first in the self & then reflected in place, on the planet, there are no complex entanglements - it crystalizes then is released. Poetry is the only form in which we can carry & hold & share peace, to verbalize the sense & sensations felt in the body as an instrument singing its divine lullaby to soothe the grief, & sometimes to celebrate it. Peace is born & born again, after the storm, the last breath & the first song - peace is the sound of freedom. Peace is the undulating vortex navigating the expanded higher consciousness of love. Poets are the magicians that put these concepts into words to unite humanity.