Project Tag: poem

anthem . . .

still we sing
give peace a chance
still
the young die
for
the ghosts
under
old men’s beds
and for
flag draped
corporate greed
once
our voices
were strong
and
could be heard
throughout a generation
our arms
were linked
for
human dignity
but
time
has eroded
the bedrock
of
our song
and
death
has pried
our arms apart
so
many
of us
stand alone
repeating
those words
as if
the dead
will rise
if we but
only
say
our life’s mantra
for
every
life lost
to
the lust
for
domination
oh
we have sung
these words
so
very long

 

A Regiment of Leaves

A regiment of leaves dry, dull, dark, dead,
Flying, flapping, fluttering in the wind,
Rustling, rattling, flattering, sputtering
And a small piece of advice stuttering
About how once they were so vividly green,
Glittering, glistening, ah what a scene!
They were so excited to have eavesdropped
To the the secret of love and never stopped
Until they dropped dead like shot down birds
Or buffalloes or any hunted herds.
Yet I don’t lament their fall and absence
For next spring they’ll come back to existence.
They’ll come back as green as ever again,
Canopies to cover the naked plain.
Oh those young regiments who won’t come back,
Confined before time in graves cold and dark,
Sent to fight in futile wars and battles
And got killed in everlasting struggles.
They won’t be seen next spring or any spring,
They’re gone forever but the pains still sting.

© 2018, Osama Massarwa

Bloody Revolutions

Hemmed in on all sides, left and right closing like a vise.
When the gauntlet is thrown down, you better think twice
about your plan for freedom, because they’ll strike you down.
Violence births violence, it all comes around.

Venezuela and Cuba are examples of this, how a people downtrodden
take the party’s whips, until fed up with utopia, they push back and are killed
for party, for community, for unity, ideological blood spills…

Hemmed in on all sides, left and right closing like a vise.
When the gauntlet is thrown down, you better think twice
about your plan for freedom, because they’ll strike you down.
Violence births violence, it all comes around.

American values are shipped the word round, we infiltrate cultures,
raze them to the ground, then rebuild in our image, a slow-bleeding wound…

Hemmed in on all sides, left and right closing like a vise.
When the gauntlet is thrown down, you better think twice…

-© 2018, Joshua Medsker

~ The Edge After ~

Photo by Yasin Akgul/AFP/Getty Images – Guardian.com under a Creative Open License

When war is your “normal”,
How do you find peace?
Is it the breaths between bombs,
When the dust motes circle,
Sparkling in sun beams?
Is it the silence of the dead,
The lack
Of thudding thunder,
Or bloodied wonder of whistling
Missles overhead?
Is it as simple as securing
A safe path through the tumbled
Rubble of what used to be your school?
Is it found in the tiny, yellow flowers
Heads bobbing in the breezes
In the middle
Of a minefield?
Is it the warm comfort
Of a hot meal on nights
When you dared to light a fire?
Is it the softly repeated prayers,
Whispered balms for a tired mind?

When war is your “normal”,
You find peace in the small things,
In quiet moments of reprieve —
Of “not war”.
The kinds of punctuated pauses
That had no drumbeat,
No percussion,
“Before”.
When war is your “normal”,
It is hard to remember
That there ever was a
“Before”.

 © 2018, Corina Ravenscraft

 

Peace

We all have heard the moral
That one should always be honest
Because honesty is rewarded.
Yes! We all should be like
That honest woodcutter
In the story ‘The Woodcutter and the Axe’.
But is it only about rewards?
Is it only about getting a silver axe?
A golden axe?
Honesty is not about getting more
Or receiving the best.
It has more to do
With our character
Being our true selves and
That which helps us find
Peace within ourselves.
Sky
When I look at the sky
I don’t think about its vastness
Nor the changing colours.
I only think how I can
Climb so high
How I can touch it
With my own hands
How I can colour it
With my own painting brush.

© 2018, Sravani Singampalli

Gesture

The marchers rally behind him.
His left hand flashes a peace sign.
The right brandishes
a sign like a sword:
“War is Fascism
Fascism is War.”
A reporter asks a
question. He sidesteps.
Instead he parodies
the President:
“Without peace
there is no security.”
That night he pulls into his parking lot.
A Lincoln straddles two spaces,
including his.
The street lamp illuminates
a Trump Pence bumper sticker.
He keys the Republican’s car.

Her bumper sticker proclaims:
“Visualize world peace,”
which should surprise no one
who sees her driving the
tie-dyed Tesla with
peace sign on the hood.
At the Elemental Fern
a waitress spills a latte down
her $500 Reformation coat.
She rattles the table with her fist
Screams for the manager,
demands the waitress’ dismissal,
abandons her check.
No tip.

“The peace of the Lord,” he says
as he clasps the hands of the couple
in the next pew. “Peace of the Lord,”
he repeats to the grandmother and
the soldier and the smoker with
nicotine stains enveloping her hands.
In a moment he will lead
a reading from Isaiah,
“They will beat their
swords into plowshares,
their spears into pruning hooks;
nation shall not lift up
sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war.”
His wife stayed home,
unwilling to show off
the black eye and bruises
adorning her cheek.

We demand peace from nations
but ignore the
consuming rage
within.

© 2018, poem and illustration, Phillip T. Stephens

III

III.

Is this World War Three

are we destined to stay apart

regardless of the peacemakers

and the efforts of the meek

to spread giving as a

worthwhile commodity

Will the pain be daily

these unexpected jolts

of molten fear

followed by losses

we cannot afford–

this is not something

we saved up for

Will children grow up questioning

if there is any point

in following dreams

or is there a way to keep

God’s peace close, and hope

as an option, instead of a

faraway fantasy

© 2018, Pleasant Street

A Tale of Two Cities

(Raanana, October 9, 2015)

It was the blessed of cities
It was the cursed of cities,
A city located halfway between heaven and earth
And a city halfway between earth and hell,
A city where stones are cool and soft
From evening breezes and countless feet
A city where stones are hot with blood
And sharp with crashing down on heads,
A city purchased with the blood of David
From Jebusites for more than it was worth,
A city worth more today than the blood of all our children,
One city’s Mount Moriah where Isaac was bound for sacrifice
Another’s Al-Masjid al-Aqsa where Mohammed ascended,
A city protected by youthful soldiers
And a city defiled by youthful soldiers,
Jerusalem the capital of Israel
And al-Quds the capital of Palestine
But in truth the capital of no earthly nation,
A city twice destroyed
A city indestructible,
A city about which everything said is true
And one about which nothing said is true.

© 2018, Mike Stone

On a Passage from the Mishna

….(Raanana, November 17, 2017)

It is written that whoever saves a life
It’s as though he saved a world
And whoever snuffs out a life
It’s as though he snuffed out a world,
And why is that?
It’s because that when we walk
We walk with an entire world in front of us
And we walk with a whole world behind us
On either side of us
Above and below us
So we are six worlds saved or destroyed
And who can know from whence will come the savior
How he’ll look or what he’ll do,
So whoever saves a life
It’s as though he saved himself
And whoever kills a life
It’s as though he killed himself.

Note:
The fourth chapter of the Mishnaic tractate of Sanhedrin “whoever destroys a single life … is considered … to have destroyed the whole world and whoever saves a single life … is considered … to have saved the whole world” sometime prior to 250 A.D.

© 2017, Mike Stone

News from the Front: Guernica Is Draped

“Shortly before Colin Powell’s February 5th 2003 UN Security Council fraudulent power point presentation – where he made the case for invading Iraq – UN officials, at US request, placed a curtain over the tapestry of Picasso’s Guernica, located at the entrance to the Security Council’s chambers. As a TV backdrop, the anti-war mural would contradict the Secretary of State’s case for war in Iraq.” Saul Landau, from “Fallujah, the 21st Century Guernica”

in the formal glass & steel palace
of power, Guernica is infamously
draped so power and its plans will not be embarrassed
by all those inconvenient very famous screams
or by that equally famous walleyed pall of death, suspended
in the air like a steel claw
over Guernica

the wild-eyed horse’s famous scream is draped, his long
teeth are draped, the famous one-eyed man looking wide-
eyed up into his own tiny but also very famous
death is draped, and the big wheel of pain
is draped, and the shame we ought to carry like
a ball and chain is draped and the god of unintended
consequences who steady dogs the gods of war with bad
dreams of futures, unforeseen, is draped, is draped
is also draped

and who or what will carry that scream, always,
already further into our memory because
our memory is now draped and our memory alone
is the true habitation and the secret name
of that horse, his teeth, that one-eyed
man, that claw diving down on us from
a sky, torn and dark, and that long, and for-now,
very famous scream

(This poem was formerly published by the Sonoma County Peace Press (Feb/Mar 2014, Vol29 #1)

© 2018, John Sullivan

A Taste for the Juicy Zobo-Blood

I
After fuddled in thought,
Around 12 a.m.,
In the serene night
I depleted my thought
Which was flitting through my mind.
My thought I proffered no ears
But nature reasoned with me.
When depleted,
It was just like a cannikin tipsy with water
And then disgorged.

II
Night piggybacked me
Decoying me to drift off
And letting me not to take to heart
The scene of dratted, bloody war –
Which my eyes caught
In the placid gyring screen
(Men were moved to war)

III
What stirred men to bloody war ?
What impelled men to gyre in war ?
In the serenity perception of mind
Heart will proffer them answer
After the taste of juicy ZOBO-BLOOD
Running spill from their heart.

© 2018, Martins Tomisin

Steal a Glance at the Sky

Look!
Hey, look up
see the sun sitting still on the cloudy sky
flaring on the days of worry
and slitting through the sky;
eyeballing on the earth
with a beautiful smile
and then gyring on the placid sky

Look!
Hey, look up,
the sun is still sitting still on the sky
as the cloudburst withdrew
like a bat that must flinch In flinch
from the morning-rosette.
Look,
all you who draw hot tears
from its sad face
all you who draw sword
against your neighbour
all you who feed fat on bloody wars.
Look at the gyring sun;
sunny, while rain drizzled the earth
and unmoved by the cloudburst:
It glisters all day in serenity
and bring harvest to men.

© 2018, Martins Tomisin

Reluctant Immigrant

Reluctant Immigrant

“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door.” Emma Lazarus

Plaintive song sung in childhood, beloved melody that touched my heart,
Often tired, sometimes wretched, always poor, though not homeless

Before I understood the words, I knew the yearning
to belong, to fit in, to be accepted—we were outsiders

Immigrated to the west, escaped, searching for a better life
I left family behind, severed ties for years, survived

He was forced to flee the genocide, board the boat,
Fighting his friends to go to his wife and child, already dead, they said

Landed in New York, no English, cooked for men like him in the hostel
Once a proud Armenian, now a conquered, bereft, shamed man

Reluctant immigrant to a strange land, mourning his home, far away
Arranged second marriage, nine children born on a farm, a life lived, survived

Trauma lived and re-lived, DNA passed down the generations, his story lost
No golden doors for him, just a desire to blend in…and forget

Grandfather to father, father to daughter, I stop the cycle of abuse
Exiles that no God, no Lady Liberty could return home, sheltered here

Safe now, loved, loving others, a good life carved out of pain and shame
He survived that 1915 holocaust, I am, we are, his legacy, immigrants yet.

© 2018, Lisa Ashley

Refugee

is good. To belong
is wrong. Be homeless.

Mortgages and rents are chains.
Tread the world without burden.

Find a banquet in a crumb.
A glassful in a droplet.

Warmth in a newspaper blanket.
Comfort is a concrete underpass.

© 2018, Paul Brookes

Refugees Rule Each

Nation. The seat of power
is one that must travel.

If it was to ever stop
the populace would revolt.

Folk who stay in one place
are a public nuisance

who don’t get rid of their own
trash, who have a reputation

as thieves from the greater majority
who are travellers. Stayers

Put pressure on others as they insist
on a place to put down roots,

occupy a piece of land when all
land is in common to be used by all.

Stayers cordon off land with fences
which restrict travel and onward journey.

From A World Where (Nixes Mate Press, 2017)

© 2017, Paul Brookes

Our Edge

Each time it is a border,
an end of the road,
a new building,
where I am asked same questions
“What’s your name?
Where are you going?
Why?”

I am discovering my story,
remembering where I have
been, but I recall it as
a
border,
an end of the road,
a new building,
where I am asked same questions
“What’s your name?
Where are you going?
Why?”

© 2018, Paul Brookes

My Daddy

Each time it is a border,
an end of the road,
a new building,
where I am asked same questions
“What’s your name?
Where are you going?
Why?”

I am discovering my story,
remembering where I have
been, but I recall it as
a
border,
an end of the road,
a new building,
where I am asked same questions
“What’s your name?
Where are you going?
Why?”

© 2018, Paul Brookes

.. wouldst thou be pm, an abbreviation..

archaic or dialect question, in appropriate. a lowly start

with slight misgivings, i come arrived from the country, an immigrant

here.

if the task came to me unlikely, i should sew profusely. a safe bet in that

something grows decently.

do you know how to stitch a lie, when all about grow honesty? mine was

white last year,

now nothing germinates.

the question is irreverent, no disrespect meant. forgive me, this is the second

time. this time,

i shall stay.

despite my nationality.

© 2018, Sonja Benskin Mesher