Over the last decade, Mike Sonksen (Mike “The Poet”) has mentored emerging writers in a variety of locales from Cal State Los Angeles, Woodbury University, Southwest College, View Park Prep High School, St. Bernard High School, 826LA, Hillsides in Pasadena, with the Get Lit Players and also at the Stella Adler Theater. Mike’s new column, “Tomorrow’s Voices Today,” will feature essays, poems and short stories from some of his brightest students. Most of the selections will be current high school scribes, but a few will be from the college level as well.
The first student to be published is Jamal Carter. Mike’s former student from View Park Prep High School. Carter is now finishing his Bachelor’s Degree at Cal State LA and on his way into the Teaching Credential Program.
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Gaia’s Ghost Dance
Gaia, our beloved mother, such a beauty is she/ More breathtaking than a single tree, or anything intimately known to man, wouldn’t you agree/ No make-up needed, for she’s one of thousands and thousands of faces/ With more backgrounds than ethnicities and all human races/ From her arctic glaciers where she’s shrouded in white sheets of sleet/ to her dry, rough patches in the middle east/ Reminisce on her tropical jungles, petrified forests, and many stages of beauty/ Or move toward her waistline in Africa that can scorch feet rudely/
All imperfect aspects but working together near perfectly/ Still vainly trying to wrap my head around the vastness of the mind, that her body is mirroring/ But it’s futile.. Regardless, I forever thank the cosmos for her birthing me/ Allowing me to experience.. and absorb the highbeems to observe what I see/ Honestly, her love is all I need/
If you follow her physique, it’ll lead you to creep/ up to proud crowned mountains which fountain and peek, down at us all/ And if you continue your meddling, you’ll witness her reveling/ in wild rivers that wave, “hi”… As swift, fluid salutations to the sky/ She holds in oceans of emotions, but you know when she’s under the weather/ Because when she gasps and sighs, the subtle spirits of the winds ripple/
Photogenic she is, shinning amongst the stars—though she’s no ego-tist/She’s a sensitive, sensual, infinitely simple soul—more selfless than any single ego gets/
For she has the greatest heart in the world, her core burning passionately with volatile magmas and many molten metals/ most mistake her heart’s domain for the lair of the devils/ But she’s magnanimous, and blows breath gently into our lungs/ And we blow back heat, like the recoil in the barrel of a gun/
She’s that-feminine goddess that floats with no wings, though she’s a flapper in her own right/ flaunting rocks and fluorescent dresses/ with hills so high, even the horniest of hooker couldn’t top/ competitively, they’d always come in second/ Or perhaps I’m biased because beauty is beheld within the holder of the iris/ So our relations are relative, meaning she touches me in private/With-in-tamacy, constantly shifting my positioning, IF you catch my continental drift/ But I can’t help that I gravitate toward her… For I am but a man…
Scrutinizing this Sunkist seraph.. this clumsy pole dancer, with the best body/ Not coke bottle shaped, but spherical/ It’s truly a miracle how she nourishes our bodies with vitamins and minerals/ like we’re connected to her, with indivisible umbilicals that are invisible/ but times have become critical, for we’ve cut off our connections/ So her blessed presence receives the opposite of reverence/ And all of these extractive economies plan her obsolescence, driving her deeper into depression/ Civilization’s smoky breaths have coalesced into smoggy fumes that loom lung doom overhead/ Now her tears rain acidically, whenever they’re shed, onto our cities/ Where we make haste to make waste like parasitic litter bugs leeching on lands/ Causing her temperature to skyrocket as she plummets/ We’ve carelessly cast her into Dante’s cursed inferno/ Her body has become a commodity, and it’s profiting her corporate pimps like they hit the jackpot in the lottery/ While they green wash their filthy hands.. simultaneously removing all traces of their humanity/ Gaia’s been abused, drowning in ominous emissions, increasing carcinogens while her decrepit body is kicked, and left with carbon footprints/ All politics aside, how are we going to destroy the land upon which we rely, and expect to survive?/ Selfishly eliminating elements and suffocating sustenance/ In pursuit of artificial intelligence, like we can’t get enough of it/ Ironically, it’s more like idiocy-As the trail of death in the wake of our pursuit to material wealth proves that the citizens venomous ignorance isn’t bliss/ Look at the animals are bred to suffer and be slaughtered in factory farms, and vivisection labs/ Where their vocal cords are slit so they can’t even scream/ Being tested with injections for crap, that we don’t even need/
We humans have become calloused, silently allowing the decimation of whole generations, other species especially/ Daily massacring innocents on a greater scale than the holocaust AND atomic bomb together could’ve never seen/ Scientists assert that humans bequeath selfish genes, and this is how its meant to be/ But just so much as a simple glimpse at history reveals that truths are often stretched or disrespected so the message never carries peace/ but justifies a flurry of state-sponsored felonies/ Enabling our conscious collectives to be directed towards investments, insolent belligerence, and weaponry/ Our competitive spirit is hindering our progress/ Listen…
Survival of the fittest was deduced in past times/ Things change, as the poles shift, the tables turn, the clocks ticks and the ticks talk/ telling us we only have so much time, till we must face our ultimatum/ Love life, or die!/ Judgment day is nigh/
I see more murders, less elegies/ Mentally it pesters me, with questions of whether we collectively/ Have any synergies in sympathy, or inner sense of empathy/ Within our sensibilities/ And whether the unconscious at least understand that nature vs. man is a false dichotomy/ The majority also seems to believe that the universe revolves around humans, which was proven false/ That’s Ptolemy’s archaic fallacy/ Not just being egocentric, but I sense mental poison tainting psyches/ And it’s all astonishing…./ How we foolishly fall for abstract illusions, pushed by schools and institutions/ Most of which is useless/
The wonder of it all is that ivy still slithers like serpents upon Medusa’s vengeful scalp, but peacefully/ And grass still rises in armies, In green brigades with raised razor blades, battling with hulk-like tenacity/ And mycelial fungi’s working diligently to detoxify and relieve ecosystems everywhere/ Gaia handles this all with love and patience/ so let us assist her, and push for evolution, evolution, evolution/C’mon my people, let’s do this/
