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voices for peace/
These may be my chosen words but the poems have life and are voices unto themselves. I wish I had more time and means to forward this work. Help us, the poems cry, in any way that you can. Peace Be.
Humanity
Do not the mothers and the fathers of Gaza love their daughters,
love their sons, love the children as you love?
Do not the mothers and the fathers of Israel love their daughters,
love their sons, love the children as you love?
Do not the mothers and the fathers of Russia love their daughters,
love their sons, love the children as you love?
Do not the mothers and the fathers of Ukraine love their daughters,
love their sons, love the children as you love?
Do not all children love their mothers, love their fathers, love their sisters,
love their brothers, love their homes if they still have them—
Love them all as you have loved?
Placard
We do not beg for peace —
The War-Men have no peace to give.
Peace is yours, mine, ours.
Peace is ready now.
I hear the desert wind
“The lone and level sands stretch far away.” Shelley.
Ah… And there it is, my friend— “A disembodied thought,”
Found, we’re told, under a soldier’s boot,
Though some have said it is not a thinkingness
But a yearning for the life that held it.
And there, just there, a bit of quartz
As white as cataracts
As final rays of sunlight, once
Caught and held— As black clouds
Boil across an afternoon sky
Eclipse the sun and day falls into night.
Or so the lone survivor told.
But she was blind, it’s said.
She lived another day or two
The legend goes, to say who won.
Though who would care, I wonder?
Surely not the dead.
We walk. We part from pasts and where
All pasts must dwell. Many cannot speak—
Others reach with open arms
Toward the voices of Allah, of Yahweh,
Of L. Ron Hubbard, of others.
And having listened and to our own thoughts
And having prayed our own prayers
Rejoined our own lives,
Today, we are returned.
In peace, be.
.
Hymn of the Fallen Tree
Let me rest among these giant souls that stand
where trees once stood.
Here, greens break into blacky-blues and dragonflies
and dusts of beetle dung grow old withal.
Let me rest among the salmonberry and the tumblewood
of cotton, ash and hemlock, fir and cedar.
And let the wind stir of pine above the fall reawaken me
in early greens and sapling dress, anon.
This poem is an allegory. Published in: “souls arriving” 2006 as title “Tumblewood”: “Between Music and Dance” 2013: “Letter to the White Imbongi” 2013: “The Footprint Press” 2014: “3201 e’s” 2018.
If a man whispers peace in a field for the dead
If a man whispers peace in a field for the dead
will he be heard or will it be said
that the voice of one man is a lie?
If a man calls out peace from a box in a park
will he be heard or left lone in the dark
with the murmur of madmen and lies?
If a man cries for peace and names Allah or Yahweh or Christ
will he be heard or were they sacrificed
under flag? under bomb? under fire?
If a man offers peace with peace in his heart
will he be heard? Is that how it starts?
Someone— Anyone with peace in their hearts—
Will we be heard? Is THIS where it starts?
If we fail, my dear friends, who will live?
The War-Men have no peace to give.
Published in: “souls arriving” 2006: as version “If…”
We Will Survive
Take away the sun above
And burn the air we breathe.
Take away the moon and stars
And everything believed.
Take away the green of life—
The blue-green seas below.
And take the glow that lives in them
And everything unknown.
Take the candle. Take the verse.
Take art. And take the artist’s words.
Take each thing— its form, its name.
Take everything. What’s left but blame? More blame.
One thing’s for sure— We will survive
We have gone on and left this song behind us.
Published in: “souls arriving” 2006 as version “9/11” : “3201 e’s” 2018 as version “We Have Gone On (9/11)”
WAR POEM
WAR is NOT a spiritual preference (except to the insane)
WAR is NOT a spiritual orientation (except to the Merchant of Chaos)
WAR is NOT a spiritual experience (except to those who die)
open our eyes together and we will dream
open our fists today and we will build
open our doors tonight and we will sing
open our eyes/fists/doors
or (close our eyes and never mind
(close our fists and build collateral damage
(close our doors and scream
oh no
open our eyes/fists/doors
send our prayers to the front lines
send our light to the front lines
send our truth to the front lines
send us
and we will build for beauty
and for freedom
and for love
send us
Published in: “souls arriving” 2006: “3201 e’s” 2018
Paris, November
I remember. I remember
The flying leaves and floating leaves
Blazing yellow-orange-red
Until, wind-felled, their final embers
I remember to this day
This wet-wool gray, this end of day
Paris that November
Paris attacks, 13 November 2015.
Published in: “3201 e’s” 2018
You sit, you stand, you read
You sit, you stand, you read
the news. How marvelous
that you do not weep.
Published in: “3201 e’s” 2018
Let us say
Let us say that we have loved
and though good women,
though good men,
admit the hatreds too.
And looking, just by looking,
find that love may be
the greater of the pair
and love, the bed upon which
hate must heal.
Let us say that we have loved.
Published in: “Poems for Relationships” 2017 (earlier version): “3201 e’s” 2018
THE NEW APARTHEID
Yes, segregate.
Create a slum for me.
Build walls.
Render us apart.
Hide.
The New Apartheid appears in full in Walling In and Walling Out: Why Are We Building New Barriers to Divide Us? by Laura McAtackney (Editor), Randall H. McGuire (Editor), as the epigraph for Chapter 11, Conclusion. Available on Amazon. The Introduction’s epigraph is a quote from Mending Wall (from which a line provides the book title), a poem by Robert Frost. Randall McGuire wrote, “I want to thank you for capturing in 13 words what we struggled to say in 100s of pages of academic prose.”
Also published in: “souls arriving” 2006 as Apartheid: “3201 e’s” 2018
Begin
Begin with faith
Beyond belief
Faith is
Begin with hope
Hope is the point
Rekindle hope
Begin with love
Love in all
Love first
Love anyway
The Hateful Man
Let each hate, and ours for his,
Be scraped away. Hopefully
He cared for some—At least the few
That may have cared for him.
Allow unchanged what good remains.
At length, with love or hate or both,
We go. We will return.
Peace
Peace
Is not withdrawal
Peace is the surge
The urge
Peace is arising
Swelling
It’s an overflowing
Swing of
Upturning
Turned-up rhythm
Peace is resurgence
Peace is expression
In and of
Common Purpose
Cresting waves
Of purpose
Aligned
Upon a new dynamic line
Peace is
Not withdrawal from life
Peace is not placid
Not flaccid
Peace is active
Busy
Peace is believed
Conceived
Crafted
Peace is for
And not against
Peace just is
See?
And you are its source
And I am its source
And we are its source
Reaching
Reaching from and for and to
Every searching soul
Peace is strength
Of integrity
Peace is faith
In living
Peace is yours
Mine
Ours
Peace is ready now
Sweet Home / Two Beats Of Silence
There are two versions of this verse. Which do you prefer?
/
When I am done with being right
And you are done with being wronged
Perhaps then we can speak of something small and bright
That we can both agree upon.
This lovely piece of calligraphy is from the hand of Catharine Hoffmaster. Its full size is about 20 inches by 8 inches. It hangs in my kitchen.
…………………………………………
When I am (or you are or we are) done with being right
And you are (or we are or I am) done with being wronged
Perhaps then we can speak of something small and bright
That we can all agree upon.
First version published in: “Letter to the White Imbongi” 2013 as “Two Beats of Silence” : “Poems for Relationships” 2017: “3201 e’s” 2018.
The following calligraphy was done by curry72501 at fiverr.com
