I haven’t visited Poets Against The War in awhile, too busy with all the other information, actions, news, work, etc. etc. etc.. Thanks to Dave, over at After Downing Street, for jarring my memory and posting the following Poems there. You should all take a visit to Poets Against The War, there’s a Wealth of insightful poetry as well as heartfelt thoughts, just what good poetry is supposed to be about, Real Feelings and Real Reality!
The bottom poem can be found at YONIP! Yes, Observe National Independence & Peace
THE PHILIPPINE PEACE & SOVEREIGNTY WEBSITE
I just visited the YONIP!, what a Great Graphic, site and there’s a wealth of information there for anyone who is interested. I only visited a small portion and plan to return.
After a brief history of Poets Against The War the Poems
Short History of Poets Against War
In late January 2003, in response to an invitation to a symposium by Laura Bush to celebrate “Poetry and the American Voice,” Sam Hamill declined; a longtime pacifist, he could not in good faith visit the White House following the recent news of George W. Bush’s plan for a unilateral “Shock and Awe” attack on Iraq. Instead, he asked about 50 fellow poets to “reconstitute a Poets Against the War movement like the one organized to speak out against the war in Vietnam…to speak up for the conscience of our country and lend your names to our petition against this war” by submitting poems of protest that he would send to the White House. When 1,500 poets responded within four days, this web site was created as a means of handling the enormous, unexpected response.
Since then, the “accidental groundswell” grew to include poets from around the world. There are presently more than 20,000 poems in this, the largest poetry anthology ever published. Poems from Poets Against War have been presented in person, by invitation, to several representatives of the U.S. Congress; many of them have since been introduced into the Congressional Record.
The Children of Iraq Have Names
By David Krieger
The children of Iraq have names.
They are not the nameless ones.
The children of Iraq have faces.
They are not the faceless ones.
The children of Iraq do not wear Saddam’s face.
They each have their own face.
The children of Iraq have names.
They are not all called Saddam Hussein.
The children of Iraq have hearts.
They are not the heartless ones.
The children of Iraq have dreams.
They are not the dreamless ones.
The children of Iraq have hearts that pound.
They are not meant to be statistics of war.
The children of Iraq have smiles.
They are not the sullen ones.
The children of Iraq have twinkling eyes.
They are quick and lively with their laughter.
The children of Iraq have hopes.
They are not the hopeless ones.
The children of Iraq have fears.
They are not the fearless ones.
The children of Iraq have names.
Their names are not collateral damage.
What do you call the children of Iraq?
Call them Omar, Mohamed, Fahad.
Call them Marwa and Tiba.
Call them by their names.
But never call them statistics of war.
Never call them collateral damage.
Haditha!
By Jim Bush
Haditha!
Haditha!
Take the name between your teeth
And hold it there!
Let the name dissolve in your mouth
If you can!
Feel the razor edges of the letters
With your tongue!
Feel the pain…
And taste the blood!
Hear the screams!
Do you hear the screams?
The ghosts of My Lai
Are conjured up!
And they accuse:
You have learned nothing!
You have learned nothing…
Except…
How to make excuses…
For your crimes!
Haditha!
Take the body of that child
And tuck into your shirt…
Right about where you heart should be!
Tuck in…
Guts and all!
Feel it’s, still warm, blood…
Trickle down you legs!
Is that a whimper you hear?
Who’s whimper is it?
The baby’s?
The mother’s?
Your own?
Haditha!
The place where the gutters…
Run red!
And the red…
Cradles cigarettes…
Thrown by boy Marines…
Who have just traded their souls…
For a moment’s angry release!
Haditha!
Proof, that we are not…
Who we say we are!
Confirmation, that we cannot kill…
Our way into heaven!
Testimony, that freedom cannot…
Be bought at the barrel of a gun!
Witness, to the truth…
That this war of lies…
Cannot be won!
Haditha!
How Does One Tell Them?
By Jim Bush
How does one talk to them?
Laying there, so proud, with various wounds
And talking the same language as their forebears:
“I did it so my children won’t have to”
How does one argue with this?
How does one say,
“But our children will have to”
“They always have”?
How do we tell them the other history?
That America was built on the myth of freedom
And, in order to grow, it took freedom away
From Africans, Indians, and the working poor from around the world?
How does one tell the parents of the dead
That their son or daughter died for the free enterprise of some
Not for the free expression
Of life’s longing for happiness by the many?
How does one tell them that the threat from the outside
Is matched by the threat from within?
That our own leaders are willing to use the people’s honor and treasure
To serve their own selfish ends?
How does one tell them that it is our own corruptibility
That enables men of hubris and ill will
To dazzle and pacify us with ‘bread and circuses’
And false hope for a better life that will never be?
How does one tell them in a way that does not anger?
In a way that they will listen
In a way that they will see
That being an American means more than buying and selling?
How does one tell them
That the enemy are not really the Saddams, Osamas, Castros, or Kims
But our greed and their need
That make them hate us so?
How does one tell them that America’s success and survival
Depends not on the power of Rome or the legacy of Greece
But the understanding and compassion
Of a Chief Seattle, Reverend King, or Woody Guthrie?
How does one tell them that Jesus
Did not come to save us from the death of the body
But from the death of the soul
In a world that is in danger of forgetting how to love?
How does one tell them?
U.S. Air Strikes
By Shadab Zeest Hashmi
In the four minutes
it took me to mince the cloves,
dump the tea leaves
in the rose bush,
and soap the carafe,
a whole city was lost.
There were feet still in school shoes,
limp flesh singing into satchels,
clinging to a post, a shattered clock.
The children, if not orphaned,
were purpled beyond recognition.
Orders had been carried down,
one signal igniting another.
And a man had let a deafening rhapsody
guide his young hand to drop
a five hundred pound bomb
on a mosque.
Just when I finished rinsing the carafe,
a whole city was under cement dust and smoke,
and I thought I heard screaming behind walls of fire
in the kettle’s sharp whistle,
just when I added the cloves,
the last green lime.Shada Zeest Hashmi is originally from Pakistan. Her poems have been published in New Millenium Writings, Hubbub, The Bitter Oleander, Poetry Conspiracy and will appear in the forthcoming anthology Risen from the East. She is the editor of the annual Magee Park Poets Anthology.
WORSE THAN THE WAR
By David Krieger
Worse than the war, the endless, senseless war,
Worse than the lies leading to the war,
Worse than the countless deaths and injuries,
Worse than hiding the coffins and not attending funerals,
Worse than the flouting of international law,
Worse than the torture at Abu Ghraib prison,
Worse than the corruption of young soldiers,
Worse than undermining our collective sense of decency,
Worse than the arrogance, smugness and swagger,
Worse than our loss of credibility in the world,
Worse than the loss of our liberties,
Worse than learning nothing from the past,
Worse than destroying the future,
Worse than the incredible stupidity of it all,
Worse than all of these,
As if they were not enough for one war or country or lifetime,
Is the silence, the resounding silence, of good Americans.
After posting the above I paid a regular visit to Erics site BUSHFLASH. He has the following posted up, on the regular right side of the site along with other Flash Video’s etc. ‘The Soldiers Heart’. This is a ‘PBS Frontline’ Report.
Here’s what Eric has posted:
FRONTLINE DELIVERS THE GOODS
The Soldier’s Heart– goddamned Bush cuts
to the VA- I DARE you
to watch this to the
end, and not shed a
tear.
I Agree, I’ve only watched the first two parts, and am going back to watch the other two shortly. I didn’t catch this ‘Frontline Report-The Soldiers Heart’, when it was aired, but This Is A Must See as to the Realities of War and PTSD!
This is from the beginning of the page:
U.S. Marine Rob Sarra had been in the military for eight years when the war in Iraq began. A sergeant in charge of a unit of 32, he was considered part of the “tip of the spear” — among the first troops to reach Baghdad. In late March 2003, Sarra opened fire on an Iraqi woman in a black burqa he suspected was a suicide bomber, prompting others in his unit to begin firing as well. Her body torn apart by bullets, the woman fell quickly to the ground. It was only then that Rob saw she held a small white flag. (more »
This Country had Better Realize it has to Start Sacrificing Now or it will be Extremely Sorry Later!! These Military Personal are serving Multiple Tours In-Theater and Suffering from the Trauma’s of same!!!!
“Never again shall one generation of veterans abandon another.”
From Poets Against The War
Terrorists
By Thomas Hubbard
Terrorism
Foreigners send agents, surveillance
to photograph your land
spy on your peoples
strategize against your national defenses
map the resources under your earth
determine profits to be taken
from you and your children
foment unrest in your streets
destroy your culture.
Foreigners send their corporations
to take your natural resources
they manipulate your government
they set up puppet leaders who
impose odious rules on you
give away your national property
they install shipping and pipelines
to carry off your wealth
leaving you with crumbs.
Foreigners send their missionaries
to convert your children
in the guise of “helping” you
they violate your religion
in the streets of your town
they build their churches
on the land of your fathers
they teach their ways to your children
in schools built on your land.
Foreigners send death across your skies
not just one or two explosions, no,
countless explosions, bombs
smart, dumb, clustered
dropping from airplanes
delivered by missiles
killing, maiming, destroying,
flattening whole cities
spreading ruin over your countryside.
Foreigners send helicopters, tanks
to spread death in your streets
they tear down every place of shelter
they defile your places of worship
bring ruin to your institutions
pollute the water you drink
spoil the air you breathe
dump their sewage where they please
then ridicule your suffering.
Foreigners send their armies
to murder your neighbors
they abuse your families
they kick down your doors
they enter your house and
drag grown men outside
they threaten with assault rifles
they curse your women and children
they spread your belongings in the street.
When you fight back, when
you resist with whatever
side-arms, home-made booby traps
any antiquated weapons you can carry
when you hate them,
when you show them a minute fraction
of the suffering they spread
then they imprison you
for questioning and torture.
They call you a terrorist
because you defend yourself
against impossible odds,
rifles against tanks, and
occasionally, when their attention lapses
you give them what they have given you
and they cry out that you are
unfair, you are monsters,
you are inhuman, you are terrorists.
They did the same to my people.
They do the same to any people
who are not like them,
who will not be enslaved,
who will not be dispossessed,
who will not suffer corporate filth
to over-run, suck dry and ruin
the land, the country.
They call it “spreading freedom.”
They call it “Democracy.”
In private, they call it “huge profits,” and
laugh as they count the money.
In My Courtroom, No One Will Be Comatose
By Bonnie Roberts
Go ahead and push your buggies at Wal-Mart
and Home Depot and stare.
They make me want things, too.
I found myself even wanting power tools today,
as though my brain had been washed
by the smell of sawdust in the air.
And at Wal-Mart, I longed for talcum powder.
Something I’m quite allergic to.
But here’s a voice to bring us back home:
Your nephew
Your niece
Your son
Your daughter
Your sister
Your brother
Your best friend
Your mother
Your father
Your grandmother
Your grandfather
Your aunt
Your uncle
had a leg blown off
both arms blown off
half the face blown away
the scalp torn away
the whole body blown up (there are no remains)
vomited blood into the ground.
And this is what it is
to be an ordinary citizen
of Iraq.
And now it’s not so far away.
Drive your SUV into your favorite parking lot
with that something on the windshield
and hate me all you want
for spoiling your bucket of corporate pop-corn in the Deli
for which someone has paid a price you never would ask
your own little boy or girl to pay,
not any nameless neighborhood boy or girl either
whom you would swoop up in your arms
to save from danger.
It’s not a licorice stick, gummy bear, extra big drink movie.
It’s real, and no refreshment allowed.
No dozing in my courtroom.
Limbs and pieces of flesh are flying in your direction,
and they simply belong to human beings
who’ve never shopped at Wal-Mart.
Dear George
By Brian Boldt
In this poem
no families are set on
fire in Fallujah
in this poem
no one is
dragged off screaming
naked into the night
in this poem
all those tens of thousands
of blasted civilians
and soldiers still live
in this poem
the earth does not
shudder and convulse
at the very sight of you
in this poem
an angry Jesus has driven
you out of the White House
in this poem
your words abort
and clot on the podium
in this poem
you and your mad cabinet
have been dragged
to a war crimes tribunal
this poem is a gift
this poem is yours.
Haunting Questions
By Poet Isabella
Where
were you
that fateful Friday night,
when
stealth bombs
and cruise missiles
thundered
against Iraq,
shattering our
disdain of
pre-emption
and the unilateral
strike?
Where
was The Church
that fateful Friday night
when
our trust in
man’s humanity to man
was betrayed
and cast
aside as
inconsequential?
Where
was the Congress
that fateful Friday night
when
democracy,
the clarion call
of the city on a hill,
slipped momentarily
into the
abyss?
Where
was The Media
that fateful Friday night
when
the Truth
of the majority
was vanquished by
the hollow
perspectives
of a few?
Where
were we,
where
were we all
that fateful Friday night,
when
the hope
of a moral universe
slept?
In answer to the Poems question, myself and some 200 to 300 Veterans were in Washington DC. VFP and VVAW members of WWII-Korean War-Vietnam War-Other Conflicts joining forces as VAIW’s (Veterans Against Iraq War) for ‘Operation Dire Distress’, a weekend of Teach In on Saturday {Covered All Day by C-Span} and Wreath Laying at War Monuments on Sunday with March to the VA to Lay A Wreath, by some 1500 Veterans/Families of/and Non-Military Citizens, planned in the leadup to this Illegal Invasion. Little did we know the Cabal would pick that Weekend to Destroy an Innocent Peoples and their Country, and send Us and a Growing Opposition on this Long Journey for Peace, Justice, Tolerance, Once Again! We Intelligent{?} Humans ‘Never Learn’!!
Falling from Our Sky
The once sleeping face
of mother and child’s
Last embrace.
Falling from our sky.
How many tears does a bomb hold inside?
–Diana Morris Holguin