I invite you to read the words of others, who like yourself, are reflecting on the world's currnet troubles.
If you would like to share a poem expressing your thoughts or point of view . . . please email me or leave a note on my message board . . . I will be happy to include it on this page.
**poets on this page....Thomas R. Ruffin, Debra Brown, Heinz Scheuenstuhl, Bernie Shelton, Kim Drone, Don Lester, myself...and more to come.**
Index:
- 1. The Beauty of Bombs
- 2. i do not seep easy
- 3. Mornings after
- 4. Thoughts of a Mother Weeping in Distant Russia
- 5. Moral Equivalence to None
- 6. Two Thousand Years
- 7. Karim (an understanding)
- 8. Call of Africa
- 9. Your Call to Africa
- 10. Composing in a Frenzy
- 11. of canaries whose unrehearsed song he profanes
- 12. a silence ... without title
Poem by Thomas R. Ruffin
The Beauty of Bombs
aside from the economy of it all
it makes perfect bloody sense
to drop death from the skies
toward which children have, for ever,
gazed curiously
while wondering
where is this god?
such blue and cotton heavens cannot be but good
such sun and … then at night … moonglow
can be none other than lasting tranquility
and hideously
as much as children caress our souls
we blow ‘em up for little or nothing
that is the beauty of bombs
for their fathers’ transgressions and for the sake of national insecurity
and for redemption
for these reasons
we must detach their heads from shoulders
by way of scorching heat and twisted metal
indiscriminate carnage … collateral damage
that is the beauty of bombs
and though we proclaim righteousness
while living in shadows of shame
we are yet killers of children and thus wholly unworthy
of any such christian mercy at all
… blow ‘em up … sweep ‘em up … incinerate the tiny parts
and inhale the bone dust
oh … the beauty of bombs
copywrite Thomas R. Ruffin
Poem by Debra Brown (debab)
i do not seep easy
I do not seep easy into this sandy earth,
blood flows slow my rubied sorrow.
The ground is hard
there is no sound,
no ache of glory.
Sifting time shutters
dusty eyes, helmut buttressed,
weapons at the ready, retreat to fade;
Brave faces.
News delivered through
the proper channels, numbers climb
another step, voices blare. People
gather to review events, gesture wildly
vent revenge, amass all memories, shrug
their shoulders, scan the skies, weep
and speak of duty, finger coins, scatter flowers;
Proud faces.
I see how the shadow of laurels
engraves itself into marrow's mantel,
how grief festoons unrested emblems.
Oh, my loved ones!
*
Into deeper, tangled roots
history's circled notes sprout faint tendrils
I trickle; darker, thinner
I hear the ancient somber chorus
crooning dirge's welcome.
My broken spear, fallen shield rest beside me.
I am the motion ...
Loam and beetle shift
Time ticks it's futile air
dismantling lighter bones
the future uncovers
unremembered.
copywrite Debra Brown 2004
Poem by Heinz Scheuenstuhl (heinzs)
Mornings after
In the light of day
it all seems surreal
dreamlike
belief dwindles into apathy
as the images fade
yet the terror remains
just beneath the surface
waiting
to be re-awakened to full force
at the drop of an eyelid
or a passing shadow.
It will not be denied
collecting its dues
in sleeplessness
and mournful sorrow.
Madrid weeps
and commerce plods on
its juggernaut course
worshipping the Euro
as the last drops of blood
recede beneath the rails.
Innocents lost
perdition’s henchmen lead
at either extreme --
reaffirming the chaos
of status quo.
3/16/2004
Copywrite Heinz Scheuenstuhl 3/04
Above...Madrid March 11, 2004 Photo by Andrea Comas/Reuters
Poem by jeannerene
Thoughts of a Mother Weeping in Distant Russia
Monotonous rows walked.
Stench rising to shields of handkerchief,
she searches for the smell of perfumed soap
on his ash covered neck
I inhale, in gasps, the disbelief of a mother.
Plastic shrouds suggest dignity
to babies of a newborn holocaust,
forfeited in a combustion of hate.
Why?
Why this sight surreal taped to her scrapebook?
A woman searches with photographs enshrined
of eyes and lips kissed with love.
I know her.
I see with the eyes of a mother.
I walk in cosmic footsteps to her door,
beating my chest with the depths of her despair.
She will
make me deaf to explanations,
and let me hear only the pitch her wail.
Mother,
I place my hands beneath your child’s head,
and stay for an eternity
that never this sleeping face touch the barren earth.
Mother,
I take my cup to catch your thousand tears
and drink them for my morning tea
that I may suffer the taste of your bitterness.
I reason with the thoughts of a mother.
She dreams,
She lives from this day
always on the portal between life and death.
She is, as lost to this world,
as her child taken.
The hint of her child’s laughter,
the slight suggestion of a smile,
a perfect profile on a Sunday afternoon . . .
and she wanders in the shadows.
I pray in her name . . .
Witness her questions frozen for prosperity
as she walks the line between rows of disbelief.
How do we not share
this mother’s world
in which love and hate are indefinable?
copywrite jeanne rene 9/04
Photos below from the Beslan School Seige, Sept. 1, 2004 ... 334 hostages were killed, including 186 children ... hundreds more were wounded or reported missing...
Poem by Kim Drone (kimmyjean) Kimmy Jean Poetry Emporium link copywrite Kim Drone 2004 Two Poems by Bernie Shelton (maiperai) Two Thousand Years i have sat at this bar copywrite Bernie Shelton 2004 Karim (an understanding) copywrite Bernie Shelton 2004 Poem by Kim Drone (kimmyjean) Call of Africa copywrite Kim Drone 2005 If there were a sympathy in choice Your Call To Africa Copywrite Don Lester 2005 **
Living our normal lives
We were awakened with a crash
The tragedy of the World Trade Center
Pummeling deep within our souls
Reality of hatred so deep and rare
Feeling a deep call for retaliation
To those who were held responsible
For the slaughter of thousands
Leaders stating our devastation
To the moral equivalence of none
The pain we took on and bore
Uniting together in the catastrophe
Standing and facing the danger
Of a new terrorism that has spread.
One and a half years later we stand
Behind the justification of the tragedy
To the moral equivalence to none
Watching the desolation we are creating
As the bombs in Baghdad are falling
Lighting up in the sky everywhere
Fires ablaze in a city of people like us
Innocent men, women, and children
Hearing the sounds of sirens ringing
Feeling of terror being passed to them
Fearing what they cannot see coming
Deafening explosions reverberating
Hoping the strategic targets are not near
Praying they will see a future day.
In our pursuit of the war on terrorism
As the death tolls of the innocent rise
Now who have become the expendable?
Will we be able to stand behind our tragedy?
To the loss of the moral equivalence to none.
Or will we be able to pass the titled phrase
To the many souls who will have died
So their survivors can rise against us
For the terror we have imposed upon them
On behalf of the pain we have inflicted
The devastation we’ve brought upon them
To strike upon us with their loss and hurt
Of a moral equivalence to none.
for two thousand years
i have seen the birds,the white doves
fly in and lay their eggs in your beer
which you have drank and destroyed
for the sake of your thirst
i have stood and watched
the old ones,who died yesterday
let their bodys drink the beer today
and i have heard the words of your heroes
repeated by the sheep
and i have seen the sheep
being led to the slaughter
and as the blood of the slaughtered ones fell
i have seen you turn away
and deny it as happenend
the mourners could not linger
death was all around
Four years old is not old enough to die
innocence destroyed in the name of peace
a future burnt and destroyed
under the flare of phosphorous
Waiting was the worst for Mona
each scream and sob
turned her soul
watching the fruit of her womb
Extinguished
in such perfect agony
So Karim,so young,so innocent
became another pawn
in the quest for ?? peace
then the soldiers left
their was a understanding
Tribal divergence
Within genocide
Bloodshed day by day
While a Million plus
Put down deceased
Waylaid along a roadside
Echoes reverberate
In deaths ultimate toll
Manipulation within
Nations of super power
Coveting their secreted
Masked desire
Hear her plea...
Hear her cry...
Turn your ear...
Refusing to hear...
Man woman and child
Of diverse hues of blacks
Pitted against birthright
Within tribal belief
Propagated by
Superficial control
Raising blades in loss
Spilling blood...
To soak upon her earth...
Diminution of populace
Greater powers aspire
Obtainment of riches
Hear her pleas...
Hear her cries...
Close your eyes...
Succumbed in lies...
Industrialized countries
Turns their ethics away
Raping majestic resources
Pleading to absent nations
As masses of homeland
Congregate deaths gate
A international economy
Laced within monetary
Erogenous in their politics
Facing economic strife
In sustenance of material
Turning a blinded eye
Hear her plea...
Hear her cry...
Turn your ear...
Refusing to hear...
In propagation of power
For she holds them many
Her magnificence contained
Within virginal scapes
Prosperity of minerals
Hidden beneath her dress
Listen to and discern
Africa’s call of pain
As you sit in your chair
Feeling decimation of wealth
Upon her native ground
As a world turns in disdain
Hear her plea...
Hear her cry...
Turn your ear...
Refusing to hear...
The Call of Africa...
War, death, or sickness did lay siege to it
making it momentany as a sound,
swift as a shadow, short as a dream,
brief as the lightning in the collied night,
that, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and earth,
and ere a man hath power to say, “behold!”
The jaws of darkness do devour it up:
so quick bright things come to confusion.
Shakespeare-
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Poem by Don Lester (snowtop)
We the countries of wealth
resound through our children's voices,
immune, dismissing death,
guns in school, abortions by ten, choices.
We the children of wealth
respond with echoes of yesterday’s voices
expounding rituals death,
savages, diseased and by their own choices.
The children of the children of wealth
stand, when coins crackles their voices.
concealing reality, sacrificing in death
sublime, contriving, there were no other choices.
The children of the children of the children of wealth
ponder; the sound of yesterday’s angry voices
my rise, an who will be the victims that cry in death.
overlooking, many, many years of making bad choices.
Three Poems by jeannerene
Composing in a Frenzy
If I had my druthers
(wonderful word, druthers . . could rhyme with brothers)
I’d want to release ribbons of color,
streamers flowing out from my fingertips,
promise bouncing off at the tap of a touch
tangling the world with my keyboard sagacity
(sagacity, rhymes with capacity)
Rainbows of wonder . . .
But it seems I can’t tap, tap, tap nothing,
(which really ought to be anything)
except something of which I know nothing about
of the face of a woman I would not know,
save, but from portraits obscurely hung
on flat screen placations. . . .
Reporting the rainbow extinction of the Congo
of deep rivers, the Congo,
mangrove and mahogany,
and rare white rhinos.
And features of women with no expressions left for grief
whose quiet revelations, words of demure demonstrations,
slam into my ears,
bam into my ears,
tap, tap, tapping at my indignation
(let us say nauseous sensation)
into my ears,
the rape, the rapine, the profanation of women and their daughters,
mudcloth, indigo and wax print drapes,
wrapped in flora and fauna, mothers and daughters,
the dragging of women and daughters into perdition (without petition)
by hands totting weapons libido, greed and power
savage manipulations. . .
The binding of husbands
who drop their souls deep in the ground,
but who, mercy will not blind.
Of sons, cowed because they won’t spread the legs of their mother,
won’t give seed to their sisters.
Of sons,
shaped by machetes because they won’t spread the legs of their mother.
And
of babes
who disappear
under the canopies and into the roots of red mangrove trees.
I sit in a frenzy,
tap, tap, tapping a keyboard presentation
of a human kind . . . frothy spittle of the gutter,
the boils and blisters,
the pus of the Dearth of things I don’t know
outside my front door when thinking of
mothers and a phantom hip-hugging child of the Congo.
When thinking of mankind, sister and brothers,
of knowing the sensation, placing my hands palm to palm
seeding my petition, casting it to the wind . . .
I ask
Do we have the capacity?
Do we have the capacity?
Do we have the capacity to heal?
Give me my druthers,
for I’d rather not write
of why women wail.
copywrite jeanne rene 2/05
of canaries whose unrehearsed song he profanes
my throat tightened
as i read of his crime
constricted gasps of revulsion
i argued and calculated his precision
dispassionate honor
bedeviled prudence administered at the bedside
of daughters
and the taste on my tongue was venomous
biting down on nausea
choking
rabid screams lodged in my comprehension
unable to be flushed with a swallow
i needed
to feel what they didn’t
in their sleep
as his blade divides their softness
judgment’s adornment
bleeding pearls of atonement
slit from ear to ear
slit form convulsion to convulsion
of daughters
of daughters
of daughters
daughters who worm between his loins as maggots
who ooze from the ears and eyes of his honor
delivered between the forefinger and thumb into oblivion
my mind runs chasing a tail of the impenetrable
of diaries whose spine is bond
with
apologue, article
biography, book, chronicle
history
description, drama, memoir, epic
folktale, feature, narrative, recital, record, report
news, novel
discourse
of tragedy unfading upon bosoms mutilated
womanhood humiliated
fertility desecrated by the hand of elevation, exaltation
daughter’s lives bled over cancerous convections upon the soft bellies
of fathers
i wail
i wail
i read and i spit
bile upon this man’s kind
and i desire
if only in perception to walk beside their death
to follow with halo of canary in muted song
straddling their graves
the blood of generations flowing brilliantly
down my thighs and seeping deep into the beds of these daughters
jcopywrite jeanne rene 12/05
THOUGHTS UPON VETERANS DAY ..NOVEMBER 11TH, 2006
a silence . . . without title
he slips out of penny-loafers,
shiny new coin catching his eye
tugs at woolen socks
tucking them deep into the toe
shoes dangling from two fingers
his God is quiet
so he stands as if time has ended
he and the sea suspended in its ebb, waiting to surge
gulls shriek over head
setting free the flow
and he studies their commotion squint-eyed
against the declining sun
placing his shoes gently on the sand
he rights himself
with a hand on his hip
and begins
one step at a time
one foot falls front of the other
the walk into this final baptism
cleansed
khakis clinging to his calves
toes gripping the sand
he remembers the force of the tide
on the sea’s horizon
he sees God’s sails ~ again
and his eye is captive
he turns
scrutinizing the shore
"it was here . . .
as far as one could see”
He can see
the huddled
the silenced and littered, assembled,
gawking into the face of humanity
lip quivers
his chin drops
looking down at the sea grasses
now wrapped around his legs
he abides in the truth
"it was here"
he first prayed upon the beaches of Normandy
today
he turns his back to the surf
and listens to the reply
of the breaking waves
copywrite jeanne rene12/05
