You can read the text of this poem HERE.
Sam Hamill: A Friends Speaks of Tibet
You can read the text of this poem HERE.
Project Type: The BeZine, March 2018, Vol. 5, Issue 1
She Was So Pretty When We Were Young
I knew her when I was younger,
she’d smile at me every morning
when we’d stand up in class and
talk to the flag and the cross.
She was so pretty then, adventurous
and friendly, the Supermodel-in-training.
She helped all the kids, even new ones
transferred in from other neighborhoods.
But some big kids mistook her friendliness,
for weakness, twisting it into some
unspoken promise of a good ol’ time.
They used her in indulgent perversions
of power and possession.
When we got older, those big kids
corrupted her, trotted her around, showed her off,
gave her a new face, new boobs, new persona.
My friend became so addled by all
of their push, prod and promises that,
in the end, she’d do whatever the big guys said,
even nod hollow-eyed when they lied about her.
I barely recognized her in her obit t’other day.
You may have missed it, being so busy
doing what they let you think you want to do.
I’m told they laid her next to her mom,
who men used, debased and scarred until
she was unrecognizable, too.
I wrote most of this poem, originally titled “Liberty Has Fallen,” almost four years ago. I based it on my friend Kellie Elmore’s prompt of a picture called Fall of Liberty, which I think was something like the one illustrating this marginally updated version. In four years, not much has changed. Maybe just the volume’s turned up.
© 2014, Joseph Hesch
Why Do You Love to Hate Me
My elder brother, why do you love to hate me,
Neither am I a boxer or a punching bag,
Yesterday was just about a mere comment that graduated into a serious conflict,
Must we fight to showcase might,
Why don’t we just sit down and reason like men and not just big boys,
I fighting back from slavery to bring peace home.
Sister, why do quarrel over quagmire questions,
Must we agree on everything for us to live harmoniously together,
Don’t we have to disagree in order to learn from the wiser,
Then why do we fight over opinions and errors that can be corrected,
I am rowing too hard to bring our big brother peace back home.
Dad, I miss mum fulfilling presence,
The ugly squabbles have drowned the beautiful love,
Our age refuses to buy into your exchanges,
Please don’t shout over over our heads,
I can’t stand my parents fighting in the 21st century,
Please go sell all your treasures and buy peace and then sleep in peace,
With tranquility of freshness blowing gently on your home.
Oh, what is sweeter than sweet peace of mind and soul overshadowing the struggles of life.
© 2018, Agufa Kivuya
Rest Now, Rest
Your face is a map
of all the wars
you ever fought,
physical, mental,
against others,
against yourself.
You think those lines
might have softened
when your heart ceased.
You think you might
have had some peace
then, some peace,
you would think,
some peace,
I would hope,
if your splintered life
had not disproved the possibility
of its existence.
© 2018, Edward Lee
The Never Ending Fall
There is no calmness quite like it,
its warmth caressing
your tumultuously tumbling mind,
a damp cloth on a fevered forehead.
All the white noise behind your eyes
suddenly ceases
with the decision made,
the route mapped,
the end in sight,
The end of it all,
an unholy trinity
of pain, noise,
despair,
all done,
gone,
as you will be gone,
nothing of you left
but the body you once inhabited
and the memories
alive in the minds
of those
who didn’t really know you
after all.
© 2018, Edward Lee
We Interrupt Your Regularly Scheduled Programming
Any one of us
could change the world,
simply by turning to the stranger beside us
and saying hello;
a stranger could become a friend,
a silence a sound,
a gesture a levelling
of these walls we build around ourselves,
creating our own narrow worlds
within the greater, wider world.
We, humans,
all of us human,
need only one world,
as big as it needs to be,
while as small as the distance
between us and a stranger,
not these millions of unideal worlds,
noiselessly colliding with each other,
fragments of ourselves
lost forever.
© 2018, Edward Lee
catalyst . . .
it has no true form
yet still sweetens all of life
this so-called thing peace
© 2018, Charles W. Martin
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 ~
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
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