Monthly Archives: March 2004

HOPE FLOWERS

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HOPE FLOWERS

In Bethlehem
a refugee with sadness but no hate decreed
another generation is what we need

And a school where
the children of the refugees of holocausts and
refugees of refugees can learn together
learn to look inward first

This is a most beautiful and special place
with such regard for dignity and respect
so successful in their message of love
so filled with fairness to each side

That Arafat’s Palestinians burn their busses
and Israelis torture teachers and riddle walls

While Caterpillars sent from across the sea
creep closer each day in their wonderful
mindless mechanical way
with levelling intent

To be met with Gandhi smiles
and your help, if you give it

www.hopeflowersschool.org

Hope Flowers School – Bethlehem

GRANOLA GRENADES FOR GANDHI

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GRANOLA GRENADES FOR GANDHI

“Even God himself dare not appear to a starving man,
except in the form of bread”
– Mahandas Gandhi

So many fellow women and men today
down at the corner of have and have not
asking for a little of what we’ve got

Flying cardboard signs that say
“I’m a hungry homeless vet”
or one I saw the other day
“the repo’d my Lear Jet”

Being a poet what I mostly have is words
but remembering the words of Gandhi
I decide instead of something to read
I’ll give them what they really need

It’s simple enough, just take an elastic band
and wrap three dollar bills around a bar
you can place them in their hand
or you can throw them pretty far

If monks balance the world with prayer
perhaps these souls balance it with pain

So if they don’t like granola, that’s OK by me
the carnivores can afford to attack a Big Mac
and the thirsty are half way to a six pack

BARBARIANS 2003 AD

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BARBARIANS 2003 AD

“We thought of ourselves as people of culture.
How long will it be till others see us that way again? “
Iraqi friend of poet Naomi Nye

The collected works of Hafiz
still outsell the Koran in Iran

Today in Baghdad bombs and fear
scattered lovers of Rumi and Kabir

Museum of modern man’s cradle
lost eighty centuries in a day

Book starved minds, educated thumbs
video game cowboys blew it all away

We thought ourselves people of culture
how long before we can look
at ourselves that way again

THANKSGIVING

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THANKSGIVING

The natives did share their food with the
first settlers

But
It is well documented
though not well known
that the first official Thanksgiving
(proclaimed by the governor of the
Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1637)
was in celebration of a massacre of 700 Pequot
men, women, and children gathered together
for their own dance of thanks

Ordered out of their home they were shot as
they came forth; those who stayed inside
were burned alive

We have a long history of freedom

We have freed the Americans from America

We are now freeing the Iraquis from Iraq

There will feasting when the boys come back

PATRIOT ACT

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PATRIOT ACT

There are thousands now
coming back from Iraq
one legged and deaf and blind
dragging the dead they left behind

Yet they speak so well
of those who sent them to that hell

That they are true patriots may be a fact
and this is how true patriots act

Or could article one thirty four be the reason
where one critical word and your pension is
gone plus five years in the brig for treason