Breeding War

Sri Lankan kids inside the jungle
Taking shelter from the bombs
Stand beside the rebel soldiers
And watch their daddies kill their moms

Haitian children live in huts
Don’t go to school, can’t read a book
Their parents cannot feed them - ever
But we can’t see if we don’t look

In Gaza, secret army soldiers die
For children shot, and killed, and terrified
So posters now display the losses
They’re peppering the countryside

Chinese teens have been detained
For remembering the fight
That failed to bring their honor back
That failed, again, to show what’s right

The Belgian painted killer who
Could hear the voices in his head
Rode his bike into a town
And left a score of toddlers dead

And when their lifeblood jobs were lost
A Californian man and wife
Knew desperation, thought long and hard
And then they took their children’s lives

These are the headlines – all today
Death, destruction, blood, and war
So when these kids grow up to hate
I’ll bet you’ll wish you had done more.

Death to Gaza

You terrorists deserve to die
You, who fight for freedom
Defend your tattered nation
Demand fair trade, a border crossing
Water, food, and band-aids for your kids
You all deserve to die

Never mind the fence around you
Look away from smoking craters
You don’t need a gun to save you
Nor vests to stop the bullets’ path
Bow down before our Lord
His vengeance is your death
You all deserve to die

No holy land for you
Sovereign nation you are not
We would enslave you if we could
Spit upon your open graves
Rid the world of your disease
You all deserve to die

We are the victims here, you see
Five soldiers dead
Nuisance dud-bombs tickling our empty land
Our allies give us guns
Then tell us not to shoot
(Too often)
Or, if we do, act like it was you, because
You all deserve to die

Dichotomy of Celebration

Worldwide celebration in the streets
Festival of change
Parade of hopes
Hallelujah peace
Honor our hero
He has come to save us all

Join in jubilant farewell to disgraced fallen leader
Mockery of honor
Spiteful c’est la vie
Good riddance and goodbye
Boo him as he goes
Blame him, now, for all that has gone wrong

Look for change in champion of hopes
Abolish war
Feed hungry mouths
Let freedom ring
Torture none
It is time for tomorrow; watch him bring the sun

Curse the one who brought it on
Invade the innocent
Deplete world strength
Rewrite self-evident
Kill opposition
Such sorrow reaped by one man

Can hero do it on his own?
Share money, oil men
Free slaves, banker-crooks
Build homes, Lockheed Martin
Heal sick and poor, Nazi-druggists
Quite the courage this will take; these are his friends: money-make

A rediscovery of self

I wrote this in response to a change that has come over me. In recent months, I have become so ugly, and angry, and bitter and callous and cruel! I have had not one nice word to utter, no kind smiles to bestow, and certainly not a warm hug or friendly kiss to share with loved ones. In fact, I'm shocked I still have "loved ones."

I've discovered something beautiful in the past week that I had forgotten about. Through the protests and the concerts and, of course, the Festival, I was introduced to so many good people that I'd never known before. I saw generosity in its purest form: people handing out box upon box of free, unopened water bottles to groups of protesters who had been tear gassed ; "free hugs," taken seriously and given earnestly in the middle of the night ; kind words exchanged between strangers ; a sense of true safety and security in the darkest, coldest, times of night because everyone knew that they were among friends.

It has reminded me that life is very much worth living, despite the sick, hard, dark, mean things that surround (and threaten to suffocate) humanity. I have been reminded that my purpose is humanity, is love, is freedom and peace for all. Forgiveness is not a privilege, not a "treat" to be handed out to the most enthusiastic trespasser – it is a way of life, a calm, peaceful state of mind that says, "the one who stole from me is the same one who stole from you, and from our fathers, and who will steal from our children – he is a sickness that has always plagued our people and always will, and the only cure is peace, and love, and forgiveness."

It was my hurt, which became my anger, which stole my heart, which was replaced by my cruelty, that suffocated my soul for all this time. And, it is YOUR love, which has become my forgiveness, which has restored my heart, which has replaced my cruelty, that has freed my soul again.

Hence, the poem "Magic." I do hope you enjoy.

Magic

And as glitter fell from the sky
Like particles of soul,
Or pieces of the sun,
And touched my glowing cheeks
And rained down into my mind
And dizzied my vision
And enchanted the beating of my heart,

And as the music played
And the children played
And the stars and the moon and the trees
Played together
All together, in the glittery midnight

And as the warmth of so much love
And so many bodies
And so many smiles
Came together in mass exaltation

And as the trees began to laugh
And the stars came out to watch
And the rain drip-drop tickled
The shining, upturned faces
Of the playing children

And as the kind, soft earth
Beneath clitter-clotter dancing feet
Sighed its slow, deep, kind approval
I looked around with soulful eyes
And they felt bigger than the sky
And took in more of my world
Than they could ever reach before

And I was loved.
And so began to love back.

A Sad Lover's Tale

There is but one story in my life
For which I have no words.
The telling is not so difficult,
But to hear it as it stands,
And from my own lips,
My very tongue the puppeteer –
How can words form without the beating of my heart?

The beginning is not so sad.
A young man and a woman,
Seeking solace on their own,
Tossed about in fate's chaotic winds
Find one another.

"The feelings I have for you
Are forever," his song plays on in her mind,
First told as a word of reassurance:
We will last, they said,
I will hold you,
And we will last.

And it is at this very moment in my sad tale
That my hands begin to shake
And my breaths are harder to take
As my heart begins to race
And I am paralyzed
From the mind down.

Because they did not last.

Never before one another
Had either of them known
What it was to love
Or how one was to be loved.
And the lesson was not easily learned
Nor was it easily taught,
And, besides,
They had no teacher.

And so their love began to fade
Into the background of their lives:
Messy, angry, ugly, confused, and cold.
And so she began to yell
And scream, and cry, and beg
For the comfort of his touch,
For the warmth of his kiss,
For the assurance of his love.

And he could not find the words to say,
"I love you still,"
I'll hold you still
I want you still –
I need you, still.I always will.

Or, maybe he did say it
But she could not hear it
And she could not feel it,And she could not see it
(even though she wanted to – still)
And he did not know what to do
Or how to make her see.
And, besides,
She was yelling too loudly to hear him anyway.

Now with clammy palms
And shaking fingers,
With a shivering spine
And a racing mind,
I writer, I am still,
And this ending, these words,
This story, I will find.

Tornadic,
And with the violence of Pompeii
And Katrina's sneaking, sudden horror
The two fate-tossed, star-crossed, completely lost
Forever victimized, had-each-other-so-hypnotized
Lovers' dance of destruction
Was difficult to watch.

And as the emerald city they had built
Did crumble to the grown beneath their feet,
He looked at her
She looked at him
And neither one of them
Could feel complete.

And that, my friends, is not the end
Although, perhaps, it should have been.

In months to come,
They tried and failed
And cried and yelled
And knew a darkness they had never felt.

And then one night she heard a knock upon her door,
With trembling hands
(scared always now
that she's alone)
The turning of the knob revealed to her
A broken shadow of a man,
A crumpled soul,
A darker version of her once shining Knight,
With head bowed, his barely audible words
Begged entrance.

Standing aside as lover came in,
She suddenly knew a truth that hurt so bad
She could not speak.
He said his bit:
Confessed his love,
Reached out for her,
Kneeled at her feet,
Begged for her grace . . .
And watched her,
As silent tears rolled down her cheeks,
Her eyes averted
Her head was bowed
Her shoulders shook
Into his eyes, she could not look.

As suddenly as he began,
His speech did find its end
His silence, now
A question hanging in the air –
Love me still?
Hold me still?
Want me still?
Need me still!
I thought you said you always will?

Woeful eyes, still full of tears
His lover's eyes,
His cherished eyes,
Raised, finally, to his

"I do not want to love you anymore."

And, like a knife run through his soul
Her words destroyed his everything
No anger left,
No tears to cry,
Words failed them both, one final time.
And to the door, he walked again
She rose, heart pulled to his with painful force,
His hand did fly into her hair,
Once a source of comfort there,
Her head he pulled into his chest –
Remember this, she thought inside
His scent, his hand, his heart, his breath
Upon my cheek,
One final time.
It was with silent tears all down her cheeks
That he last saw her face.

And this is where the story ends,
With silent tears all down my cheeks.

Uprooted

A poem about my mother; may she rest peacefully forever.

She'd never felt the chill of northern winds,
Never seen a deer standing on lake turned to ice,
She'd never crunched a blade of frosted grass,
Nor seen her words written in the air
like ghosts reminding her of what she'd said.

She gloried, rather, in the warmth of the sun,
Told time by the turning of the tide,
Smelled salt, and sand, and sunscreens on the air,
And she danced to the pitter-patter of the rainstorms,
awaiting the vision of serenity that would follow.

A harsh fall storm could ravage a young maple in the north,
Could tear away the golden leaves, could split the sturdy trunk,
Could leave it broken, and bare, and brittle before the winter,
And so the frost would be too much, and the spring would not be enough
to give the maple back it's life; and so the youth would be lost.

A palm, however, could survive a hurricane, bending gracefully with the wind
And if it were to be wounded, were to loose a leaf or a bit of bark,
The sunrise after, the ocean's calm, and the soothing summer breezes
Were sure to breathe life into it, to nurse the broken beauty back to health,
and so the palm would be invincible, eternal, unchanging.

Her life had always been about survival – about the search for the calm;
She danced to the rain because crying hadn't worked,
She walked the beaches every morning looking for absolution,
And every evening her heart sank with the sun into the waves,
because the day had been another failure, and the night would bring another storm.

She went north for peace, for a way out of the cruel cycle of storms life had shown her,
She went to save herself and her children, and to find reprieve in a new place.
She knew she would miss the sea, and the long, warm summers,
But she was a palm – she bent with the storms, she saw over the horizon, and
she thought herself invincible.

A palm uprooted is no stronger than a newborn child
It needs to be placed into warm, familiar land,
Needs to be caressed by the sun and the breeze,
Not thrown into a foreign soil, not asked to survive without aid,
and certainly not expected to adapt to frosty winters.

It never occurred to her to cover her slender legs with bulky layers,
She'd never dressed her daughters in pants and boots and duck-feather down,
The cold had never kept her in the bars overlong, had never forced the whisky in,
And she was unprepared for the duration of the winter, for the harshness of the cold;
she had never seen a storm without the calm.

She did her best to fan the warm flame of life, to keep herself alive and fighting,
She tried to put the hot liquor down and learn to mother in the north,
But, like the wounded maple whose visage would forever be frozen in death,
Her heart and her drive and her soul, so riddled with tragedy, were too weak to survive
and so her heart frosted over, and her fire burned out, and no amount of sun could bring her back.

Holiday Disguises

Holiday Disguises

For Nikki

Hiding souls behind bright lights
Our sobs are always muffled in a song
Smiles, frowns, coughs, and laughs
Smothered by scarves feigning their warmth

Money slips away so freely now
Store-bought gifts to hide the pain
Wrapped expertly in façade paper
How joyful, now, the pretty bow

Such contrast from summer's time
When souls show through bright eyes
Sobs merely sound an echo from the past
Naked beauty shows her smiles

What it is is how it's said
Each day a commodity for treasuring
Sun's heat can do no wrong
And, even rain is for the dance

Sun's season of our lives
Cheerful, not to dismay
The way things ought to be
Is what they always say

Honesty is lost as season changes
Cold blue, yellow, white lights
For all their sly unfocused shine
Cannot be trusted for our sight

Souls crushed beneath heaviest air
A time to reach out –
But nobody is there
At least that's what we've come to say

Easier to lie in darkness' stealth
Diversionary gifts under the tree
Joy to the world and fa la la
Time not to feel what is not seen