war and political poems/essays

Send to PoetsLane@everestkc.net

"[Poetry] merely speaks to the soul, so the soul can remember.

So it's quite proper to have all the poems against the war.

And it's proper not to be disappointed if nothing changes."

--Robert Bly

"Pity the nation whose people are sheep,
and whose shepherds mislead them."

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Conscientious Objector

by Gary Lehman

My grandfather was always complaining about his life.

The bosses were unfair. The pay was uneven.

The hours he had to work without pay.

The heat. The cold. The rain.

The paints. The brushes.

But mostly the men and their stupid conversation.

“Shut up and work,” he reportedly told them.

“Why did you come to America if you don’t like it so much?” I asked.

Grandfather pushed back from the dining room table, got up

and found his seat in the living room facing the radio.

This is where he contemplated the world from a platform on high.

He reached into his smoking stand and pulled something out.

“Come here, boy,” he said. I climbed on his lap.

Into my palm he placed a heavy spiracle object. “This is the bullet

that nearly killed me when the Kaiser forced me into his army.”

He placed the bullet into my hand and curled my tiny fingers around it

“It’s yours to keep.”

Survivor’s Guilt

by Gary Lehmann

When his brothers, Arthur and Herald, both died of tuberculosis,

Richard Nixon adopted his mother’s grief and turned it into his own guilt.

He felt that he had to make something of himself not only for himself

but to make up to his mother for the loss of two good sons.

In his mind, this justification was so strong it demanded success of him

even if it meant ruthless manipulation and down right lies.

Thus when he ran for a California seat in the 80^th Congress, he had no

problem claiming his opponent was a communist to win is mom’s approval.

“Of course I knew that Jerry Voorhis wasn’t a communist,” he later admitted,

“but I had to win. That’s the thing you have to understand. I had to win.”

Skirt From NowheresVille

McCain's choice for VP
is pro-life and pro-guns
but her lack of experience
makes her look like she might
be serving Post-Toasties from
the bottom of the box.

Her previous job was being mayor
of a small town no bigger than
Sausalito, California,
then she became Governor of Alaska
for nearly two whole years!

I know John plans to live forever,
but if he doesn't, she doesn't sound to me
like she has the horsepower or the experience
to win me a lower medical health plan cost,
stop the war in Iraq, re-kick butt in Afghanistan,
or find me a new and improved
US-based alternative fuel.

Lieberman and Romney must be relieved
or pissed off to be outdistanced
by a skirt from NowheresVille.
I suspect the Republicans all know that
they're now Officially in Deep Shit,
and that's not a small town in Alaska either.
An old fart AND a cheerleader, Wow!
I can hardly wait to see and hear their convention!
¬©Peter Bray, 8/30/08 All rights reserved

Old Man McCain and the Plastic Carhop

He walked too long in the shadow
of the moron that preceded him
and his age said that neither of them
would be around forever.
Darth Vader Cheney and the Moron ousted him
from his ascendancy 8 years before
and so this would be his last chance
for the prairie schooner if not the bus ride
to the White House.

But who needs a geriatric with a moneyed wife
and a beer enterprise if not former pills
in the corroding seat of power
along with failing mortgages, an endless war,
a sinking economy, and a stock market
looking like the Tombstone Blues?
More tax breaks and abuses by and for the rich?
That'll fix everything, Oh boy!

Aha, invent the Plastic Carhop from Alaska!
An earmarked enterpriser who would ban books
from her own library, rifle-whip those wolves
into aerial submission, chase those polar bears
out of the oil fields, fire every staff member
that got in her way, and get a few Creationist prayers
onto every box of Post-Toasties too.
And don't forget the lipstick on each
and every hockey puck and snowcone.
Who cares if she's only been out
of the small town and/or
oil-rich condos for the weekend?
Drill everywhere for the less ingenuous.
Now we've got some candidates!
Fire up that prairie schooner!
Re-light that White Busride to the
Wh-Wh-Wh-White House!
©Peter Bray 9/16/08 All rights reserved

MELTDOWN! MELTDOWN!

This just in:

Duller than Pack Ice -vs.- Gibberish

I used to think Katie Kouric was duller than pack ice, but I've got to hand it to Katie after seeing her interview Sarah Palin last night on the BoobTube: How Katy didn't crack up when Sarah said nothing but gibberish about how:
1. Being a neighbor to Russia in Alaska had anything to do with enhancing her Foreign Relations experience...
2. Why we should or shouldn't second guess what Israel is up to...

Way to go, Katy...Sarah needs to get out and do some serious interviews and show the world her stuff...like putting lipstick on snowcones and hockey pucks...No wonder the John McCain Camp has kept her "under wraps" for the past few weeks...Not a pleasant sight to listen to John McCain's backup heartbeat gibberishing while his campaign is unplugged and he's "rallying to do political theater," and jetting to "look Presidential" with the Bailout Crisis in Washington...Barack summed it up best: " A President should be able to do more than one thing at a time..."...Do we see an early Meltdown in the McCain/Palin Camp?....or is that the Palin/McCain Camp(s)?

Good luck in the debates, Pals...We'll be watching...and Katy, you are way brighter than pack ice, Sarah Palin proved it last night on TV...Even on the BoobTube, all things are relative...
Peter Bray, Benicia, CA

How Expensive These Front Row Seats

we often hear

"what interesting times to be alive."

yes, that is certainly true;

and also it is important to say

"how expensive these front row seats."

we do not know what will occur,

predicting outcomes is not useful.

many are saying:

"don't worry, be happy, baby."

I think that is a wonderful attitude to carry in your heart; but I am not strong on that being　the intelligent interpretation (as attitudes and intelligent interpretations smell and taste very differently).

It is going to be a horse race,

of that I am quite certain.

we do not know the outcome.

let us carry forward the useful attitude lest we fear and defeat ourselves at the outset;

and let us not need to project a naive optimism based upon mere wish forward;

lest we deceive ourselves and miss the real bouncing ball …… as it rumbles down and along this river called, Life.

The Great Mystery as:

"Something we do not and cannot understand

is doing something we know not what."

Listen for that voice. Watch for that hand.

Thank you from S. Akama Thomson

Peace in Pleasanton

There is a hill in California far from Pleasanton
in sight and sound, a hill once green in spring,
brown in summer, now gleaming white year round.

There is a hill in California white with Crosses,
     white with Stars of David, Hindi white
     and Wicca white and Crescent white,
each one a message honoring one who died:
4,000 dead, 4,000 messages, 4,000 memories.

No bodies rest within the ground, no flesh, no bones,
but the souls of those who died roam the hill as ghosts
reminding those who live that once they, too, had life.

Names: they once had names - Who are they now?
     There are those who would forbid us naming them.
They once had families - Nameless, they are orphans now.
     There are those who would forbid adopting them.
They once were loved - Forgotten, they now are lost.
     There are those who would forbid us finding them.

There are those who would defile this sacred ground.
There are those who would destroy these memories.
There are those who roam outside the realm of man:

They spit upon these dead, they scream, they curse, they move
like animals, slobber, drool, they grab their crotches, jump
into the air, stick out their tongues, profane, insane with hate:

Hatred for the meaning of this hill in California, fear and hatred
of reminders that all these dead were murdered by a hatred
of the human race, a hatred now directed at those who love.

If only they would sit among the words, they might see the truth;
if only they would read, they might stumble on a book of verse
explaining love as memories, 4,000 memories as love.

This hill, of course, is poetry: Cross rhymes with Cross,
     Star with Star,
     Wheel of Life with Pentacle,
     Crescent with the cradle and the sword;
it is an epic poem: 4,000 stanzas begging for an end to war;
it is a song, a psalm, a message on the wind, words of hope:

Peace - please make for us a world of peace.

To those who would treat us here as we were treated there,
     Peace - please make for us a world of peace.
To those who would continue killing that we might die again,
     Peace - please make for us a world of peace.
To those who would continue death that we might kill again,
     Peace - please make for us a world of peace.

Ghosts murmuring with murmuring ghosts, soul with soul,
the sound of breathing in the air, whispers of prayer, voices:
4,000 dead - please let them sleep in Pleasanton in peace.

Oh, let them sleep in Pleasanton tonight on a hill so white
the glow of their lives brings tears to eyes that seldom cry:
4,000 dead - 4,000 tears - 4,000 pleas for peace.

               Fred Norman- Pleasanton, CA

The Terror Is Us

The Terror is us

It always has been

And always will be

It may come in the form

Of a suicide bomber

It may come in the form

Of an aerial bomb

But the Terror

Is always us

It always has been

And always will be

It may come from way over there

Or it may come from just next door

It may come from across the water

Or it may come from just over the hill

But, in the end

It always has been

And it always will be

That the Terror

Comes from us

Because

The Terror

Jim Bush

Itsy Bitsy, Iran Scare

What a pleasant surprise,

Today I received a note

From a young Iranian poet

Who liked my poems

Maybe his leaders aren’t so serious

About wiping my family off the map

Maybe he doesn’t agree

With the atomic build up

Or a Third World War

Maybe the bellicose

Threats are only

For ammunition cartels

And all the rest is idle talk,

Perhaps I can breathe easily

And the Chamberlians are

Right this time and

There are no eleven thousand

Rockets aimed at me

The Chinese and Indians

Have made wonderful industrial leaps

And aren’t threatening

The use of Atomic weaponry

Ah but they have A Bombs

So what’s the problem

Iran feels insecure

So let them have a tiny

Itsy bitsy bomb of their own

What was that ,

You say they are irresponsible

And threaten war

Well, it comes from feeling insecure

So, why are we discriminating

Against them

Eventually all the countries

In the world will have

Their own itzy bitzy tiny

Bomb to blow us all to bits

Shimon Weinroth

Rapunzel Akbar

Long hair hip hop Kabul reports
Jail for lewdly selling ice cream to girls

Homeland Security is a comic book serial
Not yet a graphic novel based on a screenplay

The top of the hour is the bottom of the barrel on this Fourth of July
The news is on repeat and I feel like a fool

Minimum wages are rising across
Car bombs are multiplying across

Gas lines in the Levant
She mouthlessly pleads for fuel

The whole planet watches Jerry Springer and Maury Povich
On satellite TV and sympathizes with the Taliban

"Holiday in Cambodia" is or is not a gap-fill
Sing-along around the barrel-fire folk song

Nicholas Karavatos

originally published:Blackbox – a record of the crash (Summer Collisions, 2007)

http://www.williamjamesaustin.com/rapunzel_akbar.html

FOR CINDY SHEEHAN

(written in May 2007)

When Cindy Sheehan announced her retirement

from anti-Iraq War protest,

some wiseass on USENET

compared her to Gilda Radner’s Emily Littella character.

“Oh, Never Mind,” the snarkster said at the end of his post.

You can fight the good fight as long as you can

and ignore the mockery of the people who don’t know

and don’t want to know about what’s going on in Iraq.

It’s not for them to question the deaths of their sons

and daughters and the sons and daughters of their neighbors.

Instead, they see this war as no different from the others:

if the Commander in Chief says the war is just,

then he’s absolutely right.

But what can you do when the Democratic legislators in Washington--

people who do know what’s going on in Iraq—

decide that their November mandate (from the voters) is irrelevant

and that they can’t appear “weak” in front of

the people who don’t know and don’t want to know?

So you go home.

And you wonder how many—or how few---

will dare to risk ridicule and arrest

and take your place

on the frontlines of the symbolic battle

still taking place outside the Western White House

in Crawford, Texas.

Terry McCarty

A Nation of Athenians & Spartans

This nation,

conceived in war,

has always kept it ready.

A solution of

last resort.

Our Athenians want peace

So, our Spartans

prepare for war.

The worst nightmare

of the former,

war,

the height in glory

of the latter.

Our Athenians

scream peace,

at all costs.

Our enemies sense weakness

and attack.

Our Spartans go

to war.

The Athenians

declare

that’s wrong,

we should be

more diplomatic!

The Spartans respond,

that’s the way

its gotta be,

it’s all they understand.

In this nation of

Athenians & Spartans,

is war ever entirely right,

or entirely wrong.

Buck Buchan July-August 2007

^^^

A State of Fear

Keep them in a

State of Fear,

and politically correct.

Shock them with

Global Warming

That they’ll cook or drown

in about a hundred years.

Remind them nightly

of crime and terrorism.

But, let’s get rid of that

nasty Second Amendment.

And, for those who

would protest, complain

or not quite agree,

throw out the first

along with the second.

What has happened to

Lincoln’s nation

of the people,

by the people,

for the people?

This poem was inspired by a novel by Michael Crichton, State of Fear, Harper Collins, 2004

Buck Buchan Aug. 2007

The Kiss

She blew the kiss as the ship inched out of its berth taking him to fight a war somewhere across the ocean. It caressed his face. The kiss lingered on his brave smile until the downdraft lifted it in seagull flight to mid deck. The galley door was open and the kiss swirled in the soup steam and flew toward the exhaust fan. Sucked out by the fan, it took off like a paper beach kite, swirled, loop de looped up the navigation tower, and made a dive for the stern. Slamming the rail, it bounced, rose up and dive bombed into the churning propeller water. The kiss swirled in the foam.

Lifted by the whoosh of the October ocean wind, it zigzagged as it headed for the red, white and blue stern flag that curled around it and batted it over the poop deck to the cannon on the starboard side of the mighty battleship.

Momentarily floating in a ‘he loves me he loves me not’ daisy petal motion, the kiss fluttered like a moth over a flame, slid down the long cannon neck and nestled on the trigger mechanism.

At 0200 on February 19, 1945 somewhere in the Pacific, it shot across the ravaged island beach and whisper touched his breathless bloody lips before it slammed into a moving red sun. SWAK.

Rear Admiral Toshinosuke Ichimaru, commander of the Special Naval Landing Forces on Iwo Jima wrote the following poem as he arrived at his underground bunker:

Let me fall like a flower pedal
May enemy bombs be directed at me, and enemy shells
Mark me their target.

shirley cooper-losak 8/10/07

Abu Ghraib. Guantanamo Bay

You can’t unring the bell, he admonished,

meaning 1948, Israel.

So all these bells are ringing, Nazi, Kamakazi

waves out into the universe forever

and I have seen you, as you were never meant

to be seen.

Anyone who peers into the face of God

dies, that was my girlhood religion. Now

I’m made a war criminal. You can’t

unring the bell. I am complicit with this front page.

So what do I do, O male,

having seen beautiful you?

Apologies, apologies

How dare I say such? But beautiful yes, your faces beaten

but not beyond recognition.

Am I to turn away and say I didn’t see you naked and bound together

your tortured, living flesh?

Am I to say tears didn’t well for seeing the beautiful boy, beautiful

son, beautiful father, beautiful brother, beautiful husband. Beautiful

lover, am I to say I didn’t see

God?

I kiss the torture my words cause, this humiliation

I swallow, this violation your God

will further punish you for, strike me dead on the spot, this

is why this is happening to you, my fault.

I kiss you anyway. I love you. I run my hands down all of you, veil

against our depravity, against our God doing this

to your God, a prayer

that you aren’t further pissed on

in the shower. This is not sexual torture

no matter what is said.

I cannot leave you

on the water board, your

broken knees I go down to

sorry

the electrodes on your genitals, this is not

to arouse you against your manhood

but to drink our bleach and acid water forced down you

now toxic waves forever, my mother’s son, my sister’s

boy, my children’s grandfather, my

lost soulmate, my Ishmael, my Israel, your decapitated

head rolling away, our grandson

packed in ice, nameless

in a secret prison

O Holy Holy I step through

all our Gods

I know who you are

I know what my country is

I kiss you alive, I do not die

I make you again in my body

I give you my breast, warm sweet milk, I kiss the bruises, the burns, drilled holes, cable rapes, castrations, broken femurs, stretched spines, crucifixions.

I take the blindfold off

O Holy Face

I recognize

I do not die

O Holy Body

I pray this past our violation of All,

a bell ringing forever too

***

Sharon Doubiago

What are We Fighting For? (CRAPitalism)

We fight because we were told to fight for our rights.

We fight when someone else steps on our squash plant and we have to retaliate and step on their squash even harder, and preemptively step on all squash plants all around the globe.

We fight because Dick Cheney needs the oil in Iraq to solve his Secret Energy Policy deals so they plot out the oil reserves in Iraq and Cheney has the intelligence twisted so that his marionette Bush leads this gullible country to believe that Iraq is the enemy not Afghanistan where Osama is still able to hide in a cave and save his butt from anyone brighter than a gopher.

And that's The Preferred Intelligence (TPI).

We fight because the Republicans have misled the US for 7 years and the Democrats haven't gotten the will or the brains to decipher trains from cranes and Social Security is still a mess and our borders are as porous as open melons in the hot August sun.

But we need the illegals to be available to pick them.

So the problem becomes the solution.

Brilliant but keep the prices low. Maybe we could grow melons offshore in China and we could pay the freight and buy them cheaper, like pet food and toothpaste, uninspected, now there's a CRAPitalist opportunity...

If you want to have a good time, get elected to Congress and chase a prostitute in Florida, or leak the identity of a covert agent to your pals in the press and do it from a White House telephone.

Bush will back you 'til there are no more corners in the White House to hide in.

If in doubt as to a strategy hire Karl Rove to divide the nation into warring factions, then solicit some good pseudo-Christians to back your attack on gays, flag-burners, or the imagined threat on conventional marriages...anything to divert attention from either Global Warming or the price of ethanol in Venezuela, where apparently no one is dependent on foreign oil.

Good luck, I'm gonna go read my Darwin again and see if the White House really is related to baboons originating from Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, or the Promised Land.

JACKBOOTS

Faintly,
almost beyond hearing, behind my mind,
Jack Boots crack on bloody wet cobbles.

Dreams flicker;
strobe-light strokes of scissor-legging Goose steps
slice my sleep.

Gas hisses in Europe (are life sized death ovens warming)?
The Uzi's rasp tattoos mocking holocaust dreams
for the parents of its makers.

And my children, my own flesh?
They know babies are dying.
They know untainted, unstained, un-sinned children are being
ground and spaded into red-mud unmarked raw-earth graves;
they know trumpeting dogmas can not justify.

They're sad, and frightened, and they feel;
but it does not come to them as
ancient, virulent, consuming, ...and familiar.

It's war, and death, and horror, but they see human plays....
They do not see festering pus spilling from
corroded seams of history.
They do not see the rotting corpse
wrapped within the glory shroud.

The timeless succubus poses as today.

But if they survive enough carnage,
one day they, too, will taste the bile of recognition.

The foul dark beast within us wakes,
is unchained...

         and among us walks.

               (C) Jim Lyle 1993

THE NEW PATRIOTS

They are taking my patriotism
I flinch when expected to recite the Pledge of Allegiance;
I close my mouth when it comes to "under God"
The people who impose this travesty
     insist I subject myself to the vision of our Founding Fathers.
Then, they freely change, rewrite, re-explain and corrupt
     the very documents to which they refer.
They steal my Patriotism with punitive poison and prejudice.

Lake County cowboys fly enormous flags from 4X4 posts
     wired into the rear of their Pick-ups.
They proudly fly them in the rain, never take them down at sundown,
     and do not retire them when they fray.

If I display my flag, am I assumed at one with them?
They steal territory in my patriotism.

Many have never served on a Jury, donated time for civic endeavor,
     or contributed or worked for charity.
Some are criminals even as they absorb entitlements and avoid taxes.
They beat their drums, yet they, themselves, do not rush to serve.
Few have ever invested in that solitary social gift called "Art".
Yet their preaching corrodes and defines and sculpts my Patriotism.

I have an ex-friend who made a lot of money in this country
He lives in Mexico to avoid U.S. income tax,
but he beats his patriotic drum, and
you and I help; our taxes finance his touristic patriotism.

Another proud conservative cheers the erosion of civil rights.
Says everyone should be monitored, says he has nothing to fear.
He doesn't realize that a government which could outlaw Islam,
might also outlaw Democracy; "a small cost for security", he says.

And controls for the "legal individuals" we call Corporations?
"Unnecessary", he assures, "they are never evil and lawless
unless and until government cripples them with control".

These things poach, pinch, and parse portions of my patriotism.
With that which remains… I refuse to participate.
I deny and defy such patriotism;

      it's the most patriotic thing I can do.

                                                  © Jim Lyle Sept 11 02

They Wouldn't Be Fighting At All

Four young Marines

On a roof

Somewhere in Iraq

Four young Insurgents

Down below

Somewhere in Iraq

The Marines are dropping frags

Through holes in the roof

Trying to flush out or kill

The Insurgents below

The Marines fumble and stumble

And discuss what to do

They want to do the job

But without getting hurt

Using their training

Full of the cockiness of youth

And the hardness of veteran Marines

They make their way down a stairwell

Fearful but determined

The Marines fire on the room below

And return-fire drives them up again

As the Insurgents holler, "Allah hu Akbar!"

They make their way down again

But the insurgents

Have moved to another room

Leaving the Marines vulnerable

The Marines leave the house

And decide to "light up the whole place"

Heavier weapons tear the house to pieces

And the Marines return to view the damage

The insurgents lie dead amongst the rumble

There was no Hollywood glory in this

There was only four young men from the USA

Killing four young men from Iraq

Four young, American men

Turned into hard-asses

Supposedly fighting

For freedom, Democracy, and each other

Four young, Iraqi Insurgents

Turned into fanatics

Supposedly fighting

For freedom, Islam, and each other

It wasn't fancy

It wasn't heroic

It wasn't a big victory

It wasn't for freedom, or God

And if they were really fighting for each other

Then they wouldn't be fighting each other at all

If they were really fighting for each other

Then they wouldn't be fighting at all

Jim Bush

Mythologies

God, I hate mythologies

You know the ones I mean

Like the one that says:

We support the troops

But not the war

Or the one that says:

We're fighting them over there

So we don't have to fight them over here

Or how about the one that says:

Let China have Capitalism without Democracy

And eventually they'll come around to Democracy

And then there's the one that says:

We can have the standard of living we have now

And still save the environment

And how about the one that says:

Lobbyists can buy the members of congress

But voting still works

Kind of makes you think of the cliches:

You can't have your cake and eat it too

Or:

You can't have it both ways

But I remember most, the words of Jesus:

It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle

Than it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven

But, Hey!

]Nowadays, Christ has been turned into an avenging angel

Who will destroy unbelievers and save the rich

Yeah, we want Democracy, a clean environment, and a peaceful world

But, we also want our one God, our toys, and to be the top dog

And the worst mythology of all, is the one that says:

We are the greatest country in the world

Why?

Because we said so, and no one can stop us

God, I hate mythologies
I'm sure you can think of a few

Like the one that says:

We support the troops

But not the war

Jim Bush

October Muse

By Hal Zina Bennett

I won't write

poems of war,

except to praise:

Help me celebrate

grief--an unclaimed

open hand, a prayer

as it is shoveled

tenderly into the

wheeled collecting box.

Visioning his father,

dead eighteen years,

stroke at eighty seven,

the shoveler pauses,

notes a photo

of a child, maybe

two or three years old,

picks it up,

dusts off the ashes,

slips it into his

breast pocket,

then ponders the

speed that shrapnel

changes the world;

he checks his latex

gloves and, satisfied,

lifts a naked leg

he has found

into a translucent

bag, grotesquely

overlarge for this

single member,

however precious,

then zippers up.

He remembers

his childhood

at sixteen,

the flameout

of a jet fighter

a mile from his home.

First to the crash site,

he saw the hill

covered in snow,

steam rising,

no smoke. On the

hillside an oak tree

silhouetted against

the starlit sky,

and resting in the

low branches, as if

carefully set there,

not to be forgotten,

the pilot's helmet,

intact except for the

chin strap torn free.

That boy had never

imagined how a

fighter plane could

come apart. Pieces

so small! Or how

the force could

render muscle and

bone so clean. With

jagged edges the

metal still lay in the

pasture next summer

where cows grazed,

as if burned metal

were intended there,

like the trees

catching moonlight

that still night.

III

And so I wondered,

where have we ever

lived without weapons,

without the aggrieved

hearts, without

so suddenly our tears.

We are everywhere

coming together

mostly in times of

great fear, great loss,

discovering we can

embrace strangers

and find ourselves.

So I praise war,

for only here can we

remember that, put up

against these horrors,

our beliefs fade away

and love rises with

the smoke of finality. ~

Hal Zina Bennett

Deserter

Spine-sagged figures trudge

where mottled hill smacks a smoky sky.

A breeze lifts arms but pushes phantom weights,

crosses the shape of forebodings. I plead for coddling. But

gray huddle bursts—those petulant wings derisive of my

intrusion, message on repulsive eyes. I recoil

faceless among faces.

Had I feathers not sticks to heave

survival arms uphill in desert cubicles, where

suns sketch moons over trees. Had I beaks

not lips to warble jeweled clips not

statements of commitments without weight or

facets I could hold out to to some light

or undecided darkness.

Spirit-less I creep up a clump of cypresses those

grave sentinels that now stir: Am I perhaps

who gave up fighting, scrambling to my end where

martinet on my deserter’s trail awaits? Hinted stars

witness my trembling, and then my calming—on my head

twitters drip peace notes, congealing. I turn

balancing my concrete sky.

Alegria Imperial

Vancouver, BC

aurora_cst@yahoo.com

Here are three war poems submitted by me Michele F. Cooper--thanks for considering my work. I've written a lot about war. One of my poems was a finalist in the 2004 War Poems Competition, and two were published in Poems for the Iraqi People, and two on New Verse News. //Best wishes on the new page, Michele

Shell-Shock

Wallpaper has to bear up as the

words hit the ribboned flowers

once, twice per second, faster

than his breath breathing urgency,

great urgency, urgency greater

than a rifle hitting a city wall

every foot, bam, bam, bam,

she’s in a small closed room

off the kitchen, taking shelter

from his fit and where she

always hopes to work at home.

She counts up the onslaughts

she’s storing, the increasing

spaces between whomps as

the words hit the walls. Liar!

Cheat! Money! Never loved me!

But it’ll be over soon.

Breathing will start. It has to.

She is tired, ears clogged with

cotton from taking it in so often.

She doesn’t feel with him, not

since he punched through the

wall so’s he wouldn’t slam her,

then fell to the beige linoleum

holding his fist

like a bruised and bleeding puppy

close to his chest where the pump

makes heat, beats it way

into the next minutes and the next.

Ka-boom, boom, ka-boom, ka-boom.

He’s a wounded soldier, back

from the war in a chair for ten

months, still thanks the lord he

can walk after that, never mind

the headaches and blow-ups.

In the dark of night he weeps

and prays, punches the pillow

and swears to get it together

before Lila leaves for good,

she’s back for now, thank god,

loves enough to keep trying,

even for the last and only

final try, she said, if it doesn’t fly

by Christmas, she’s out,

aspirin and valium half-gone already,

he knows it, the way she leaves

those clipped morning notes

and hardly eats, holds her head back

to watch him, watch his mouth

and arms when he says anything

more than a word or two.

Tennessee Homecoming

Outside the cabin, stripes of shadow

crosshatch the log walls,

loose bark curling and dropping

too often for sweeping.

She’s on the porch, peeling white potatoes

for dinner, and he’s coming at six,

having given up on Baghdad,

bomber’s life taking down his health.

He wants air after the fuselage stink

of his F-16, and she’s peeling and putting

the holes aside and hearing the rocker creak,

dents on the pillow, warm nights.

She cuts the potatoes in fours,

drops their pale white flesh

in the boiling water, adds salt and pepper,

hugs herself against a sudden chill.

She’s jealous of her own peace

from yesterday, but has to work through

the chicken and cabbage and peas

and sprouts, and she’s baked

a pie for dessert, apple,

his favorite, her signature.

Memorial Day

1

The radio’s too loud, static

and explosions at 6 and 11,

counting the losses at midnight,

approval ratings up and down

the body politic, e-mails blinking

till the message leaks all over

and no excuse for not knowing.

It didn’t used to be this way;

we chose our enemies from lists,

marked our territory,

our bills, budgets, and bunglings,

warning our moms to watch out,

our sisters, our children,

as the smiling trumpets passed,

the floats, the long batons.

You think it’s only the Jews

in long beards and yarmulkes,

Islam's looking out

from under their folded scarves

with daggers to their heads

and midriffs?

We’re sleeping with enemies

in our mortgaged homes;

uncles and brothers leave

the table sulking, plates half full

with franks and slaw;

they could kill us for saying no.

2

The bunting, the uniforms,

gold buttons saluting the crowds,

fire-cracking rifles scaring the kids,

fragments of red and blue alerts

racing from brass to brass,

drums and trumpets puncturing

the good will of pacifists

as their families form committees,

inform and reform arrangements

with grandmas and school pals

for the cellar cot or second couch;

the trial’s coming in four days,

news clips on treason still playing out

over black light and sickly green

though it’s only for now, they say,

while the war’s on.

Michele Cooper

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Hi, Cynthia: I think the following won't need too much explaining, although the poem is primarily in tribute to the woman who invented free verse in Iraq.

Best regards,

Tom Goff

Free Verse

for Nazik al-Malaika (1923-2007)

Iraqi woman, you spoke for the women. We have

heard enough, lately, from the men.

You came to fame when Iraq was “the Paris

of the East”: how Eurocentric, should we not say

Paris, the Iraq of the West? But today you died,

creator of free verse in your tongue. Nazik al-Malaika,

you whose very name we’ll mix up, no doubt,

with Nouri al-Maliki, a man, and of a very different stripe.

I have read your poem “To Wash Disgrace,” and admire

the way image filters like sun through its cold glass,

bringing insight into the rhythm of killing,

the man murdering his sister or daughter for honor,

tearing apart a human life and calling it disgrace.

There is a verse form for that tearing, it pounds

like syllables in the blood, it is a rigorous timekeeper.

In your youthful poem, “The Cholera,” you wanted, not knowing

a prior example, the proper rhythm for the galloping of illness

and suffering. This suffering has no motive, feels no lust,

so the rhythm clopped and clattered free in your mind:

“So I tried following the rhythm of the horses’ trot.”

Nouri al-Maliki studied a different gait, not a clatter

or clop or trot, but the lub-dup lub-dup of vengeance:

his heartbeat issued the orders that trained the police that kidnapped

the woman. Sabrine Al-Janabi endured the rape that brought

the anger that gave her the courage that spoke the truth.

You would have admired the courage but broken the rhythm,

in our language an almost-blank verse, easy as leg irons.

Listen to the pentameter in which we render Sabrine’s idiom:

By the light of the Prophet, I don’t do such things. And a retort,

clinching the couplet, from the three policemen:

We take what we want, and what we don’t want, we kill.

Nazik al-Malaika, maker of free verse, you urge us to fling off the burqa, the straitjacket,

the winding sheet, the misshapen scripture. To liberate women,

free the whole universe of its mad, stabbing thoughts,

like the French doctor who threw open the asylums, let the inmates

run free of the constricting rhythm.

Tom Goff

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Reruns

The Inquisition is coming

to a theater near you.

Starr, Cheney, Rumsfeld,

Rove, reincarnate, in white

tunics with gold crosses,

riding steeds of righteousness

right through the Constitution,

Bill of Rights, Geneva Accords--

the four horsemen of the Apocalypse.

One holds a staff of faith-based

violence; delusions in many-colored

streamers light the sky behind him

with hope--and lies. Another still waits

to be adorned with flowers but war

has ravaged fields where they once grew.

Lying about sex is a grievous sin;

lying about weapons of mass destruction,

killing thousands in personal vendetta

is somehow justifiable-but to whose God?

War Poem

I dream a poem will slip

from pink-gartered stockings

or the mist of Sunday's watering

of violets and camellias until

their pouting lips curve up in smile

and rainbows form within the spray.

Or maybe from a stale piece of bread

soaked in café au lait or the headline

sprouting olive branches from the soil

of friendly fire. What's the difference

between friendly and hostile fire

to the bullet in a soldier's leg,

to the dead girl in grandmother's

arms? What words make sense

of a stray bullet, a surgical

strike? I hope a poem

will rise from gunfire

to stop all the bullets.

In Memory of War

The grave was marked

by a slab of granite,

gray as winter, smooth

and cold as ice.

It lay empty for eons,

awaiting the death

of a very bad idea.

People gathered around

but no one

was in mourning

They'd done their grieving

elsewhere, everywhere.

Carol Alena Aronoff, Ph.D., psychologist and writer, guided a Buddhist Meditation center, taught Eastern spirituality and healing practices at San Francisco State, led Healing in Nature retreats in Hawaii and Arizona and worked as a counselor in Marin County for many years. She co-authored Practical Buddhism: The Kagyu Path, published Compassionate Healing: Eastern Perspectives. Her poems have appeared in Comstock Review, Potpourri, Poetic Realm, Poetica, Mindprints, Dream Fantasy International, Beginnings, Hawaii Island Journal, In Our Own Words, Theater of the Mind, Animals in Poetry, From the Web, Heartlodge, Tiger's Eye, Sendero, Buckle&, Iodine, Asphodel, Tiger 's Eye, Nomad's Choir, and Out of Line. She received a prize in the Common Ground spiritual poetry contest and is a current Pushcart Prize nominee. She won the Tiger's Eye blog contest on the writing life and has participated three times in Braided Lives, a collaboration of artists and poets. Her chapbook, Cornsilk, was published by Indian Heritage Council in 2004; her illustrated poetry book, The Nature of Music, and an expanded, illustrated Cornsilk were published by Pelican Pond in 2006. Her Soup Made the Moon Weep was published in 2007.

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