This is the new blog...CONFESSION ZERO
Showing posts with label peace. Show all posts
Showing posts with label peace. Show all posts

PLAY FROM YOUR HEART



-Zoe Keating @ La Boule Noire Paris Oct 23, 2008/Amanda Palmer cabaret show.


Play from your heart

What's the point of anything if you don't?
What’s to stop us from staying in the middle
While hate’s tangled up in a half-baked peace
And love’s tapping out some half-hearted beat?

Love’s not a liquid flowing between worlds-
It’s now!
It’s the curve of her neck as she turns to gaze at her children.
It’s the teetering laughter heard over the howl of thankless men.

Love’s useless if it only moan’s like a lamb-
It’s loud!
It’s the whispered roar of goodnight as he watches them sleep.
It’s the fearless torrent of immeasurable expressions of grief.

It’s not war… It’s peace.



© 2009 mrp/thepoetryman


-The Point Of It All - "Who Killed Amanda Palmer" Video Series: Part 5-


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A Memorial Moratorium



(A Poetic Justice Photomontage)


When this moment, this now tortured moment
Wraps talons `round our grave limbs…
This day floats down.

When our breath is burdened
Of a heart grown weak of dread
From skies tight with fuming planes
And steel beams bending from the sun…
This day floats down.

When grenades are tossed like flowers
So blooms might flourish in darkness…
This day floats down.

When our country begs for silence
Imploring peace to come head high...
This day floats down.

O Memorial Day should rise up
Bring us to a new battle, invigorate
The sense for peace with man’s daughter.
All of our arrogant and glowing murder...
This day floats down.



© 2009 mrp/thepoetryman


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NO MORE WAR

It needn’t conquer the world
to breathe in us,
wept the paint.

It needn’t strike the stiff and crafty strum
of a tyrant’s impatience,
mourned the brush.

It must turn its very foundation; humanity,
to free its fettered soul,
wailed the easel.

It first must conquer the self to invent an escape
above war’s red casualty,
moaned the canvas.

Peace will never be created through war's shrapnel
upon the scorching sand,
shrieked the art!

No more war...
No more war...
No more war...
No more war...
No more war...
No more war...



© 2007 mrp/thepoetryman
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THE WEIGHT OF IT




Put a single bullet in the palm of your hand…
It lays there, obedient, glistening, motionless,
Weighing no more than a thought.

Sew all grenades into the sleeves of white dress shirts
Making sure to leave the pins fully engaged
And they shall never again need ironing.

Gently lower all IEDs to the furthest depths of the sea
Among the amazing and peculiar mysteries of the deep
And strange creatures shall dance to their silence.

Place all the military tanks on the planet into large pots,
Stoke all the furnaces and melt them down into a liquid
And from them erect millions of rolling libraries.

Hang all rifles and handguns from the surface of the moon
Like an airplane mobile or a holiday tree ornament
And listen to the wind make a joyful noise.

Sculpt all manner of bombs into enormous statues,
Whose eyes look down and whose brows are furrowed,
And merrily stare back into their dreary faces.

Place a world of peace in the palm of your hand…
Feel it gently breathing, exhaling through your fingers,
Weighing no more than imagination.



© 2007 mrp/thepoetryman

Rolling along "M"...

My Past, My Present and My Future

Mad In The Middle

Main and Central

March 19 Iraq War Blogswarm

Martha, Martha....

Mccs1977

MeInAction

Miss Welby

My Page Was Too White

My Past, My Present, My Future



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TO THE CHILDREN (an ode for Lazare Ponticelli)



"To the children, I told them and I repeated to them, do not make war."


--Lazare Ponticelli, 110; the last surviving French veteran of World War I (previously known as "The war to end all wars" and "The Great War"). Read more...



TO THE CHILDREN
a poem by thepoetryman

O embrace the stillness, the sky, green grass, love.
Place the goodness down… with plenty leftover;
The tranquil face of a child smiling on future suns,
Colossal portraits soaring over mirrors of blue water,
Beautiful noise strumming man’s veteran tongue,
Unmistakable truths spoken before the slaughter!

To the children, I told them, I repeated, do not make war.

The history of war need bend to our spirit not crush it.
No one lives alone, it is death that finds them there.



© 2007 mrp/thepoetryman

A tip of the hat to Watching Those We Chose

Rolling along "J"...


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PEACE... COME STUMBLING






Do you know what astonished me most in the world? The inability of force to create anything. In the long run the sword is always beaten by the spirit. Soldiers usually win battles and generals get the credit for them. You must not fight too often with one enemy, or you will teach him all your art of war. If they want peace, nations should avoid the pin-pricks that precede cannon shots.
__Napoleon Bonaparte
We cannot use peace. It must come stumbling.

We cannot force peace. It must enter free of war.
Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding.
__Albert Einstein
Peace, if it rears its beautiful head, will have found its legs in the resistance to bloodshed.

The stepping stones of this event are laid down by the people.

We must choose to walk upon the stones and not be motivated by force.

I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it.
__Dwight D. Eisenhower
But… violent and meaningful reactions to power (or tyranny) are not out of step with the natural path toward peace.

So, when peace stumbles, as it will, it must be held upright by the strength of these actions, not made to fall away.

In other words, any use of force on the way toward peace must never stem from unbridled, unreasonable or unmitigated violence; instead it must always be motivated by and in line with the goal of peace, not power.

The goal toward which all history tends is peace, not peace through the medium of war, not peace through a process of universal intimidation, not peace through a program of mutual impoverishment, not peace by any means that leaves the world too weak or too frightened to go on fighting, but peace pure and simple based on that will to peace which has animated the overwhelming majority of mankind through countless ages. This will to peace does not arise out of a cowardly desire to preserve one's life and property, but out of conviction that the fullest development of the highest powers of men can be achieved only in a world of peace.
__Robert Maynard Hutchins




© 2007 mrp/thepoetryman

A New Language of Peace

Inspired by betmo's Tuesday Post for Peace

on

The Tree



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YOLANDA KING'S EMERALD DREAM

EXPAND THE POST +/-


We declare peace in this; thy emerald dream.

Men, women, children, all and every color
Rise up to meet her in the nomadic vapor.
Rise up! Greet her with thy soul’s civility,
We can ask no more and no less of thee.

Affirm the worlds waiting stillness with her.
Bring thy grace, let go thy mortal weaponry.
Rise up in the streets of the towns and cities,
Rise up! Tilt thy angry faces toward the sun!

Yolanda King, we march with thee this day.
We stride with thee… sharing thy morning walk,
We sit with thee… and drink at thy table,
We speak with thee… though we see thee not.

O! Ghost in the shade of want come forth,
Walk with us, walk with us in our trance!
We declare peace in this; thy emerald dream,
Open eyed to it grasping thy bleeding chance!

O! We tongueless ones in our painful disgrace
Let us not use deceit to twist the patient hands failing,
Instead let us smile upon the poor lives of all men
and carry this emerald sheen with a proud face!


Yolanda Yolanda... Rest in peace my friend.


© 2007 mrp/thepoetryman






Previous Post - BENT BEYOND REASON



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BLOG AGAINST THEOCRACY (Loveless Power)

(A Poetic Justice Photomontage)
"Easter has less to do with one person's escape from the grave than with the victory of seemingly powerless love over loveless power" --Bill Coffin


Flags now drape Easter’s unknown tomb
strapped `round rock
with metal’s twisted brooch,
sorrow stains the air
where steel spikes pierced hands and feet
slinging hope like a missile
out its cage of a valiant plot
into the mislaid reaches of cruelty.
Why must the sycophantic
heave and lick the powerless air
in death’s dark tongue?
The disconcerted
stand silent on dead-end streets
awaiting hope to unravel,
come undone.



© 2007 mrp/thepoetryman






















































































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PITCHING PROVIDENCE

READ THE POEM +/-
(A Poetic Justice Collage using a Ben Heine - Cartoon)


Bomber kills as many as 121 in Baghdad

BAGHDAD, Iraq - A suicide truck bomber struck a market in a predominantly Shiite area of Baghdad on Saturday, killing as many as 121 people among the crowd buying food for evening meals, one of the most devastating attacks in the capital since the war started.
The attacker was driving a truck carrying foodstuffs including oil and flour when he detonated a ton of explosives, destroying stores and stalls in the busy outdoor Sadriyah market, police said.
The late-afternoon explosion was the latest in a series of attacks against mainly Shiite commercial targets in the capital. No group claimed responsibility, but it appeared to be part of a bid by Sunni insurgents to provoke retaliatory violence and kill as many people as possible ahead of a planned U.S.-Iraqi security sweep.
Hours later, mortars slammed into several predominantly Sunni areas in Baghdad, killing at least two people and wounding nearly 20, police said.



pitching providence

“Now goddamnit, now, as the burning flesh is fresh in our head.
Lord knows we can’t miss our darling reality flick of ineffectuality.
O god forbid we peer beyond the shrub and see death-death-death.
Oh no, can’t have us considering the child’s blood on our hands.
That’d mean we’d need consider our own pitching providence.”
…muttered the rain on the limb-strewn streets as we flipped channels.

Yes! Son of a bitch! Yes! I said “our own pitching providence”!
I say it that one might sneer, snicker and scoff such silliness!

I say it that others might think,
“That guy’s fanatical!”
“That man’s off his meds! This is America!”
“The greatest country on earth!”
“Ours is the sopping land of liberty!”
“The kingdom of all things divine!”

Yes! O goddamnit! Yes! I shout it for the dim-witted inundated in lies!
I utter it for the delusional crouch-down-toad deriding the spirit to speak!
I declare it for it’s in front of us screeching, bloody and boiling!

Look! Look! There! Descending the stairs is this awful something!
This thing, it pours all the magnificence and misery down upon us!
Descending the stairway dripping with the fresh blood of others,
It comes down dripping the hopelessness wrought of greed and arrogance!
Look! Look goddamnit! In its arms it carries the vanishing world!

One-hundred and twenty!
One hundred and twenty lifted by the tall indignity of empire!
Lifted apart by those waiting on god to intervene on their behalf!

We are fools! It is not on our behalf that god shall the earth render still!
It is not on our behalf that the long and towering indignity carts the world!
It’s because of our dishonor that humanity needs such nurturing at all!
Our apathy rivals any in the goddamned history of fouled indifference!

“Now goddamnit, America. Do it now you red-lipped whore of free will.
Start praising your miserable god now, America, now, as the burning flesh is fresh on our hands and we scoff at this; our pitching providence...”
Muttered the rain on the limb-strewn streets as we flipped channels.



Copyright © 2007 mrp / thepoetryman


Previous Post - SATURDAY SONATA

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SPIRITS ON THE ICY TERRAIN

READ THE POEM +/-
Individual interests over the truth;
For this reason the autocratic ruler
Must be removed... and the shattered
Spirits on the icy terrain of these events
Again comforted and made whole.
Humanity must once more connect,
Breathe the peaceful essence
Of which the blossoms inhale.

The hour of this resurrection is now...
If not then it will surely surrender.

O! Sovereign of the stars and the wild
Bring forth your trumpet! Call to them!
And `neath our sheltered skies
And within the sacred wilderness
Let us now follow as great oceans
Carried by the wind into the truth,
Let the proud birds carry the frail
And drape their walking upon the air.

The hour of this resurrection is now...
If not then it will surely surrender.

Let us move `neath the skies offering
And remember who and what we are;
Not the mad dash of men, but hope!
A brilliant possibility; a searchlight
Beckoning from these distant shores
Calling out to humanity with hope.
We are the great lions whose claws
Are touching upon the deep waters...

Let us not surrender…




Copyright © 2006 mrp / thepoetryman
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PEACE (by Helen Losse)

READ THE POEM +/-

Helen Losse is a poet, free lance writer, and Poetry Co-Editor of The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature.
Educated at Missouri Southern State and Wake Forest Universities, she lives with her husband and sons in Winston-Salem, NC, where she occasionally writes book reviews for the Winston-Salem Journal. (Helen's blog)

PEACE

If we believe,
as we say we believe,
that there is a
knowledge that passes
beyond all we know
or can even hope to know
now, past all we can dream by
the rushing river or realize once
the frenzy of mystical vision is gone,
and if, in choosing to believe,
we get to knowledge-beyond-knowledge
that we do not fully possess
but believe is God-imbued,
so that just as the stream,
encountering the worn rocks and the urgent falls,
does not question the source
either of its being or its continuance,
but flows—trusting—toward the closest sea,
somehow we know without knowing
that we more than endure,
ride in wide-loving arms.

Now that’s something to know.

So why don’t we live
like the bell-shaped lilies live,
growing and thriving in peace?




Helen's blog
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PEACEMAKER OR RAVENOUS WARRIOR



When the homes rupture into flame
And the warrior meets the peacemaker
Will it not be a humble reckoning?
Will not the nobility of man shine down upon them?
Will this light not rumble at the door of freedom,
The will for excellence and splendor come forth,
Be a splendid ballet upon the stage of governance
Pirouetting over all the ornately cold and corrupt?

Be gentle that our swollen eyes might shut
Or be done with it!
Bring our souls `round to enchanting music
Or be done with it!
Spring a fountain of hope and a child’s joy
Or be done with it!
Offer wine instead of overflowing blood
Or be done with it!

Be a voice to the sky hovering in the heavens
Or be done with it!
Be a builder, a carpenter of love and elation
Or be done with it!
Be a consoling hand and offer it willingly
Or be done with it!
Be a martyr of peace with strength and will
Or be done with it!

Emerge as peacemakers, not ravenous warriors...
Exploding not in shrapnel, creating shards of gloom,
But bringing with you a hope unwrapped and bursting,
A magnificent gift teeming in truth and radiance
With stars bowing their silent expressions upon all
Lighting the paths that lead back to human charity
Where the cities of paradise lift their breathing souls...
Or be done with it…




Copyright © 2006 mrp / thepoetryman


Hat tip to C&L for
video and transcript.







*OLBERMANN TRANSCRIPT*

Finally tonight, a Special Comment about the Rose Garden news conference last Friday.

The President of the United States owes this country an apology. It will not be offered, of course. He does not realize its necessity.
There are now none around him who would tell him - or could. The last of them, it appears, was the very man whose letter provoked the President into the conduct, for which the apology is essential. An apology is this President’s only hope of regaining the slightest measure of confidence, of what has been, for nearly two years, a clear majority of his people.
Not "confidence" in his policies nor in his designs nor even in something as narrowly focused as which vision of torture shall prevail — his, or that of the man who has sent him into apoplexy, Colin Powell. In a larger sense, the President needs to regain our confidence, that he has some basic understanding of what this country represents — of what it must maintain if we are to defeat not only terrorists, but if we are also to defeat what is ever more increasingly apparent, as an attempt to re-define the way we live here, and what we mean, when we say the word "freedom."
Because it is evident now that, if not its architect, this President intends to be the contractor, for this narrowing of the definition of freedom. The President revealed this last Friday, as he fairly spat through his teeth, words of unrestrained fury… …directed at the man who was once the very symbol of his administration, who was once an ambassador from this administration to its critics, as he had once been an ambassador from the military to its critics. The former Secretary of State, Mr. Powell, had written, simply and candidly and without anger, that "the world is beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism."
This President’s response included not merely what is apparently the Presidential equivalent of threatening to hold one’s breath, but — within — it contained one particularly chilling phrase. Mr. President, former Secretary of State Colin Powell says the world is beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism. If a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and former secretary of state feels this way, don’t you think that Americans and the rest of the world are beginning to wonder whether you’re following a flawed strategy? BUSH: If there’s any comparison between the compassion and decency of the American people and the terrorist tactics of extremists, it’s flawed logic. It’s just — I simply can’t accept that. It’s unacceptable to think that there’s any kind of comparison between the behavior of the United States of America and the action of Islamic extremists who kill innocent women and children to achieve an objective.
Of course it’s acceptable to think that there’s "any kind of comparison." And in this particular debate, it is not only acceptable, it is obviously necessary. Some will think that our actions at Abu Ghraib, or in Guantanamo, or in secret prisons in Eastern Europe, are all too comparable to the actions of the extremists. Some will think that there is no similarity, or, if there is one, it is to the slightest and most unavoidable of degrees.
What all of us will agree on, is that we have the right — we have the duty — to think about the comparison. And, most importantly, that the other guy, whose opinion about this we cannot fathom, has exactly the same right as we do: to think — and say — what his mind and his heart and his conscience tell him, is right.

All of us agree about that.
Except, it seems, this President.

With increasing rage, he and his administration have begun to tell us, we are not permitted to disagree with them, that we cannot be right. That Colin Powell cannot be right.And then there was that one, most awful phrase.
In four simple words last Friday, the President brought into sharp focus what has been only vaguely clear these past five-and-a-half years - the way the terrain at night is perceptible only during an angry flash of lightning, and then, a second later, all again is dark.

"It’s unacceptable to think…" he said. It is never unacceptable… to think.

And when a President says thinking is unacceptable, even on one topic, even in the heat of the moment, even in the turning of a phrase extracted from its context… he takes us toward a new and fearful path — one heretofore the realm of science fiction authors and apocalyptic visionaries.
That flash of lightning freezes at the distant horizon, and we can just make out a world in which authority can actually suggest it has become unacceptable to think. hus the lightning flash reveals not merely a President we have already seen, the one who believes he has a monopoly on current truth.
It now shows us a President who has decided that of all our commanders-in-chief, ever… he, alone, has had the knowledge necessary to alter and re-shape our inalienable rights. This is a frightening, and a dangerous, delusion, Mr. President.
If Mr. Powell’s letter - cautionary, concerned, predominantly supportive — can induce from you such wrath and such intolerance — what would you say were this statement to be shouted to you by a reporter, or written to you by a colleague?
"Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government…"
Those incendiary thoughts came, of course, from a prior holder of your job, Mr. Bush. They were the words of Thomas Jefferson.
He put them in the Declaration of Independence. Mr. Bush, what would you say to something that annti-thetical to the status quo just now? Would you call it "unacceptable" for Jefferson to think such things, or to write them?
Between your confidence in your infallibility, sir, and your demonizing of dissent, and now these rages better suited to a thwarted three-year old, you have left the unnerving sense of a White House coming unglued - a chilling suspicion that perhaps we have not seen the peak of the anger; that we can no longer forecast what next will be said to, or about, anyone… who disagrees.
Or what will next be done to them. On this newscast last Friday night, Constitiutional law Professor Jonathan Turley of George Washington University, suggested that at some point in the near future…some of the "detainees" transferred from secret CIA cells to Guantanamo, will finally get to tell the Red Cross that they have indeed been tortured.
Thus the debate over the Geneva Conventions, might not be about further interrogations of detainees, but about those already conducted, and the possible liability of the administration, for them. That, certainly, could explain Mr. Bush’s fury.
That, at this point, is speculative. But at least it provides an alternative possibility as to why the President’s words were at such variance from the entire history of this country. For, there needs to be some other explanation, Mr. Bush, than that you truly believe we should live in a United States of America in which a thought is unacceptable.
There needs to be a delegation of responsible leaders — Republicans or otherwise — who can sit you down as Barry Goldwater and Hugh Scott once sat Richard Nixon down - and explain the **reality** of the situation you have created.

There needs to be… an apology from the President of the United States.
And more than one.
But, Mr. Bush, the others — for warnings unheeded five years ago, for war unjustified four years ago, for battle unprepared three years ago — they are not weighted with the urgency and necessity of this one. We must know that, to you…thought with which you disagree — and even voice with which you disagree - and even action with which you disagree — are still sacrosanct to you.
The philosopher Voltaire once insisted to another author, "I detest what you write, but I would give my life to make it possible for you to continue to write." Since the nation’s birth, Mr. Bush, we have misquoted and even embellished that statement, but we have served ourselves well, by subscribing to its essence.
Oddly, there are other words of Voltaire’s that are more pertinent still, just now. "Think for yourselves," he wrote, "and let others enjoy the privilege to do so, too." Apologize, sir, for even hinting at an America where a few have that privilege to think — and the rest of us get yelled at by the President.

Anything else, Mr. Bush, is truly… unacceptable.



Bush to Address Key UN Gathering



US Muslims say Anti-Islam Bias on the Rise


Many More Dead in Iraq Blasts


Afghanistan hit by wave of suicide bombings


British soldier admits war crime
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LET US NOT LOOK UPON


Rest your igniting treachery within this world.
Give respite to the heart beating `neath the stone.
Gaze upon the earth’s laurels for a time,
Reflect upon the beautiful light of the harvest moon,
Recall the wonder of lights swimming over the ice,
Reach for the song of nature’s awakening.

I will meet you there my friend upon the vast waters.
I will meet you upon the glorious mountains.
I will meet you upon the mighty shore.
I will meet you there, at peace in the valley of man.
We'll exchange the most magnificent of songs,
And with one another trade glimmering humanity.

Come!
Let us not look upon hunger thanking God we're not
For we are my friend; our living is empty.

Give to them not a beggar’s insult
But instead feed of them.
Nourish them as you would your offspring.
Nourish them as you would a dear friend.
Look into the hunger and exchange goodness.
Quench their need and you'll extinguish your own,
Give them drink and you will no more be parched,
Exchange with them your most magnificent song
Trade with them your glimmering hope.

Come!
Let us not waste this, our humanity,
In the breath and mastery of war


mrp

Shelter Getting Homeless Vets
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THE WAR ON PEACE

When men squander their waking lives
God-jawing `bout peace intent on war

The world’s roads will soon be ruined
Burdened in mans self strewn ambush

And our cities will crouch like snipers
Shelling their own decayed manifestation

Humanity then becomes the blinded child
Searching recklessly for its original eyes


mrp
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BEHEADING DEATH




O! Put death away! Put death away!
Lower the bloodied dagger to its crypt!
Leave it snuggled with darkness,
To our dreams in cackled night.
Put death away! Put death away!
Shuttle him through the crease of humanity.
Put him down to rest in natural green plain.
Bring him not out to spectacle, child’s eyes.
Leave him slouched within our bladed shadows
Hunkered down in the dark house of mighty Ares’
With shrieking vulture’s span; its howling wind
And the mongrel’s yowl beseeching the moon.
O! Put death away! Put death away!
The corpse shall find its way soon enough.
The precursor of bomb’s the mighty sword,
Slip it bravely within its lengthy scabbard
And give death chance to come forth alone,
Let its scraggly legs wobble and meander
Find its victim in the natural motion of day.
Do not hasten its swooping blade from empire.
O! Put him away! Rest your demise for a while,
Empire will soon fade `way and lose its seed.
No need for death to plant our brazen youth,
Nor puncture hope with its reddening silver.
O! The living!
Put death away! Put death away!



mrp

Defining the Moment of Death

Beheading History

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BRAVERY



Bravery comes in the grey shape of death
No man or woman shall soon escape its fear
It is not wanted- not bravery- but peace
Peace strips true bravery from the tear

Bravery comes in the shape of grey death
One needn't hold it for it will release
One needn't feel its bittersweet sting
For bravery is not needed in peace...


Bravery (haunting video)

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