POETIC JUSTICE: iraqi people

Showing posts with label iraqi people. Show all posts

THE SHATTERING OF WAR'S CHILD

Small brown rodents scurry across the shell of the span.
A broken and weeping child lies upon the makeshift bed,
And at the shattered window next to the door, the slumped
Tears of a torn fabric drop in the wind.
Soon the door to that other noisy time will thrash and split
And the barrels of the sun will enter without knocking
And demand of them a fresh, uncluttered room.
(Surely the wave of fabric will startle them.)
After a rather lengthy and determined conversation,
The barrels will find reverie in their clatter
And breathe a sigh of relief at their escape.
Across the alleyway a woman seizes her bread and her child
And runs frightened into the abandoned street.
Looking up toward her sister’s shattered casement,
She calls out to her.

The sky rolls in its troops and the moon calls forth its howl.
A new landscape moves in as the rodents groom their nails
And hone their teeth for a grand feast upon the streets.
Tonight will be no different than the last; the dark queen
Will issue her edict to the fangs of night and forth they shall come,
armed and invisible.
With precision they’ll carve the brief respite of silence like a sword
And yet another shattered child will consume the fabric.

CONFESSION ZERO

(A Poetic Justice Photomontage)

Baghdad year zero:
Pillaging Iraq in pursuit of a neocon utopia
by Naomi Klein

It was only after I had been in Baghdad for a month that I found what I was looking for. I had traveled to Iraq a year after the war began, at the height of what should have been a construction boom, but after weeks of searching I had not seen a single piece of heavy machinery apart from tanks and humvees. Then I saw it: a construction crane. It was big and yellow and impressive, and when I caught a glimpse of it around a corner in a busy shopping district I thought that I was finally about to witness some of the reconstruction I had heard so much about. But as I got closer I noticed that the crane was not actually rebuilding anything—not one of the bombed-out government buildings that still lay in rubble all over the city, nor one of the many power lines that remained in twisted heaps even as the heat of summer was starting to bear down. No, the crane was hoisting a giant billboard to the top of a three-story building. SUNBULAH: HONEY 100% NATURAL, made in Saudi Arabia. (Read the rest…)

CONFESSION ZERO
a poem by thepoetryman

To the immense, retiring radiance
that drapes her fair-haired domes,
I do offer a sorrowful observation;

Small pieces of a jagged existence,
displaced flesh and bones of camels,
slumping across the humus and clay.

Some say it is an alluvial landscape
that spans the ground, but the crimson
rasping this day is more human than soil.

More someone than beast, feet than hooves,
and soiled in the foul strides of battle.
I say onward into obscurity,
or make known your pledge in the redness.

It isn’t clay, or the rose-hued earth, it is loss.

Iraqis are made of the same flesh as we,
feet and toes and a breathing rhythmic spirit.
The same bone, snapping when trampled.
The same ideals and lovelorn heartache.
The same glimmer and smile and glee.
The same child and mother and father.
The same.

To the vast and vanishing gleam
that enfolds her lovely peoples,
I do offer this mournful confession.

Rolling along "C"...

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DO NOT WEEP

At night when we do not sleep
And the faces outstay their welcome,
When horrors touch our dreams
And we tremble their language…

The occupation of our hearts in sleep-
O! The assassination of souls!

And this; our death stained dreams
Carried by gloom nearer to us
Will ever be in attendance
If we nourish them in our days.

THEY WERE GENTLE

READ THE POEM +/-

They tiptoed into my sleep
Wearing dusty clothes and no shoes.
They tried to not let me hear them
But the little girl put forth a giggle
And the boy laughed, too.

Soon the whole room
Teetered in merriment.

A while passed and a hush fell around us;
A silent prayer,
Save for the short breaths of the children;
Petite puffs in search of a throat.

There were nearly twenty in the group.
They had been searching for years
But were always met with sideways glances,
And oftentimes violence.

They smelled like sand.

They were gentle.

I sensed they’d come for my help,
But knew not what I could do.

The looks on their faces;
The pain. The anguish... The truth...

The little boy now began to cry,
Followed soon after by the little girl.
Then, like rain, we all began to weep.

Our crying grew into an unexpected howl;
A sorrowful choir of wingless angels...
And a great wall of water crashed down upon us
Dropping from the shattered roof of heaven...