on the ground of battle

FOR 100,000 Poets for Change; please link in your own work. The info on this is below the poem. Thank you!

it’s just your old soul and mine and
this intuition we share on the ground
of battle, witnessing the foment of hate,
anger feeding disenchantment in the street,
the acquisitive tendencies of the elite,
cowardly saber-rattling, cut off from authority,
from that innate expressively honest power
of our erotic selves, our instinctive selves,
the non-rational knowing that embodies
strength, nothing weak or pornographic
in its expression, a profound antithesis
to the pornography of war and hate that,
in the end, is about impotence, about an
emboli of narrow minds, grasping politicians
stirring tribal dissents for their own ends
or dropping bombs like a child bangs pots –
to overwhelm the fear of thunder, a game
of chicken, of a hawk-hawk play toward
a mutually assured destruction, just a
matter of time . . .

as we stand the ground of one another’s
battles where peace would be radical and
the unholy alliances of conflict might
burn themselves out, find their way into
calm, but here we are, once again, in thrall
the sociopaths have us bloodied and bound ~
their eyes in the aging face of a clockwork orange,
numb to the obscenities of maim and murder …
time now for change, for new ways to be in this world

“. . .  and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.” Isaiah 2:4

“I dream of giving birth to a child who will ask, ‘Mother, what was war?‘”Eve Merriam (1916-1992), American poet

© 2013, poem, Jamie Dedes, All rights reserved; illustration “Schwerter zu Pflugscharen (Swords Into Plowshares) bronze sculpture by Jewgeni Wutschetitsch, photograph by Neptuul under CC BY-SA 3.0

PEACE AND JUSTICE

is our theme for the next seven days as we participate in a global event:

100,000 Poets for Change

Please link in your own work here by using Mister Linky (just click on it) or by leaving your link in the comments section below. One of us will visit you then and we also plan to collect all the links shared with us to create a special commemorative page on this blog. You are welcome to share your work by linking in on any day or days during this event. Thank you! Let’s reimagine the world together. Our art has power …

RE: The Bardo Group

I have passed the administration of The Bardo Group blog to Terri Stewart (Beguine Again), effective October 4. The Beguine Again collaborative and The Bardo Group are coordinating a consolidation. The shared core value is nonviolence.

I remain as poetry liaison and member of the Core Team and with this post extend my appreciation to Terri Stewart for agreeing to take this effort on and to the rest of the Bardo Core Team and to the Beguine Again team and our many guest bloggers, contributing writers and our readers, followers and commenters for their heartfelt contributions to this effort since February 2011. You are a fabulous community of heros and saints.

Let’s continue our worthy traditions. Practice your artfullnes, live from your heart and never lose your ideals. They are real and I hope you will continue to share them here for a long time to come.

In spirit,

The Poet by Day.