One Hope: Our Humanity

If

If there is one person

hungry,

it denies our humanity.

one child forsaken

one man ready to kill

a woman living in fear

a family terrorized by war

one person ill without care

a person in prison without trial

if an infant abandoned…

it denies our humanity.

We are
One love
One soul.

Palestine Burning: Rape of Sanity

Sanity sodomized again this week.
Children
Muslim, Jew and Christian
killed in their sleep.

1. Inferno

Palestine is burning.
Gaza in flames. Children
and families buried alive as Israeli
warplanes bomb their homes.

A child’s lifeless arm rises
from the rubble.

F-16’s emblazoned with Stars of
David offers a holokaustos from
morning till night. Bullets,
petrol, and rockets
for the slaughter of Palestine
paid for by US taxpayers.

King David pimps for General
Sherman as he rides through the
Holy Land shouting,
“Burn! Burn! Burn!”


2. Lamentations

My eyes will flow without ceasing, without respite,

The tongue of the nurslings cleaves
To the roof of its mouth for thirst
The children beg for food
But no one gives to them.


Eye for an eye, the law of the
Talon, and the building of
the Third temple is underway.
The mortar is crushed bones,
moistened with fresh blood,
anointed with children’s tears.

Is there redemption in the Levant?
Is there a garden of peace in Jerusalem?

3. Fall of the Temple
She weeps bitterly in the night,
Tears on her cheeks
Among all her lovers
She has none to comfort her.

IF my deeds could truly turn back the clock,
wrest the hands away from the deadly grip that
clutches the throat of cousin to cousin, brother to
brother, and turn back to the moment before
Adam bit the apple and Eve conceived
a child, then my quivering pacifist finger would
drop like a Roman Emperor to start the fire--

Burn the Koran!
Burn the Bible!
Burn the ‘Gita!
Burn those lies
that aspire to holiness.
Burn every image of a prophet.

If we truly desire to love God,
let our genuine spiritual desire
be devoid of God, Allah, Jah,
Jehovah, Yahweh, Jesus,
Krishna, Mohammed, Satan and
the whole lot of those imposters.

Burn the Koran!
Burn the Bible!
Burn the ‘Gita!
Burn those lies
that aspire to holiness.
Burn every image of a prophet


3. Sacrifice

If there is a need for destruction, for Isaac
to be bound or Ali to be killed again,
then let those lambs be offered freely! Their
pulsing hearts ripped from their chest
and offered to the sun. Let the gnarled olive trees
and sinewy scented cedar roots be the fuel
to burn their corpses completely.

If there are shards of bones let vultures
take them skyward, near to the heavens,
like Daedalus drawn to the sun, let the
vultures devour and digest each
molecule of vitriolic bile and hatred.

If religion is the root of insanity
that is killing our world--
then I say:

Tear down the Holy City of Jerusalem!
Destroy the dome of St. Peter!
Bulldoze Mecca!
Crush the Kaaba to dust!
Level the Temple Mount’s walls!


Burn the Koran!
Burn the Bible!
Burn the ‘Gita!
Burn those lies
that aspire to holiness.
Burn every image of a prophet

4. Salvation

But
will the destruction of the word
return us once again to Spirit

to the instant when god first took clay,
moistened it with a kiss, blessed it with
a breath, and set it free?

In place of a cross, let it be a common pebble;
where once a mosque let it be a glade and a river;
let the Chuppas once more be the sky itself,
and a prayer - let it be spoken as -- Love.

Day at the Gun Clib

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I had been struggling with the noise of the adjacent gun club for some time, large semi-automatic rifles blasting periodically, disrupting my sleep and work. To be clear I had opposed the 2nd amendment to citizen’s bearing arms and foolishly believed that people killed not guns. The argument was somewhat tangle: What kills – People or guns?

Do guns kill or do people kill? It was difficult to remember the correct bumper sticker of ideology, so I decided instead of railing again guns and gun violence, I needed to seize the day, and come to a genuine understanding.

Saturday, in late May, everyone at the gun club was out for their Memorial day shoot, gun members from Connecticut, Massachusetts, and one from Virginia came to celebrate all the skeet shooting, target practice, and good natured noisy fun that a rifle range is open to. I was a little hesitant as I’m a die hard leftist libertarian and realized I needed to challenge some of my assumptions about guns. The guys and the gals at the club couldn’t have been more friendlier, though they did look askance at my “Send Bush to Iraq” bumper sticker, they knew that I was trying to reach out and connect with my southern New England neighbors who love to come up to Vermont to shoot. Liberals only can dream about having so much fun. I leaped on to a monstrous ATV with my 12 gauge shot gun strapped across my shoulders and on my hip was a 44 Magnum that would have made Dirty Harry proud and zoomed away to the practice range. I had finally found my tribe. Little kids were out there with 22’s and a skinny bleached blond girl in a black leather jacket was firing on her little uzzi like a proud aspiring assassin. These are serious folks, no wonder the liberals can’t win an election… they need more firepower. There is little that more orgiastically exciting than coming out for a day of shooting with the semi-automatics, the shot guns, and a hand pistol. As I saw the American flag in red, white, and blue on the hillside I had a lump in my throat, a tear, as I saw the blasting of rifles on that glorious afternoon and recalled the bombing of Fort Sumter where the flag held through that night. Holding the cool long steel barrel in my hands and feeling the portent of pulsating hot plasma of fire, I knew that I was on to something big.

My new found friend Big Jim and Bubba are two good old southern boys (Southern Vermont that is) who love to hunt, fish, and hunt. A few swigs from Big Jim’s Jim Beam and I’m feeling in the cozy warmth and familiarity of “my tribe.” Despite all the progress of humanity, bigger firepower, and bombs of all kinds there was something so reassuring about the basic connection with ones own tribe in the hunt. I was beginning to wish there were a few liberals romping across the field so I could feel the real thrill of the kill and asked Big Jim about it.

“I know what ya mean about getting something meaningful, like taking down a beautiful 12 point buck or dropping a big old black bear. Man, there are few things that compare to that.”

“How about sex?” I asked

Big Jim looked at me kind of strange, “What ya man, sex.” Then looked around to make sure no one had heard him.

“What’s better sex or killing a big trophy deer? Or is there that same rush of sex you get when you kill?”

Bubba said, “That’s a might strange way of looking at it. Why don’t you go over to the target range on yonder and think about it a bit.”

“Sure enough.” I’d give them a little bit of time to think about that one. I had my Magnum and was itching to try it. Suddenly I had an epiphany.

“Big Jim! Bubba! Come back I want to try an experiment!”

I walked over to Big Jim some ten feet away from me, raised my gun to his head and fired point blank, took a half step to the right and shot Bubba once between the eyes. Someone else came by raised a gun and I also fired back at them. It was the slow dream of carnage in the carnival of death. Then everyone ran into the woods. I was so angry, I had made the effort to connect with the club, got over my narrow prejudices about guns, finally made a breakthrough and then they all vanished. I realized that Big Jim was right, guns don’t kill, but people do. Thought I did feel a little badly for him, I knew that he, Bubba, and the few others wanted to make sure I was dissuaded of any of my liberal notions about gun use. I can now cogently argue that it makes perfect sense to keep guns legal.

Winter’s Ferocious Tenderness

winter returns

a hushed lullaby
of sadness

draping the land
in memories