WITCHES AND WARLOCKS
I think
that the witches will win in the end
Independent as cats, stealthier than stealths
and higher than scuds they fly
every which, every which, every which way
While the warlocks are locked
into trying to rule
with the clumsy clubs of war
BACK IN AMERICA – NEWS OF BOMBING
Before we came to Israel
this was happening in our world
now it is happening on our street
I STILL DON’T GET IT
When all is said
and oh so much is done
each side makes perfect sense
what they do to each other makes none
MADRID, MARCH 2004
God, Spain again
scraping Guernicas from
walls of trains
ALMS IN THE LAND OF ALLAH
And it will all be returned to you
multiplied ten fold
heaped up and running over
THE WALL
Walls are for wailing
and also for tumbling down
Unconscious fears rise in concrete form
conscious choices less visible rise with it
Inside and out of the builders and the wailers
there are a million voices
starting to hum that old Jericho tune
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
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
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
UNCLE ERNEST
If Uncle Ernie
had not gone off to war before I was four
If he had not loved movies, or sat
in that seat in that theatre when on leave
Where the bomb came through the roof
and through the floor
and killed a few
and then blew up
and killed some more
He’d have been here handsome and bright
helping my father with the ranchers load
and telling stories to my delight
Marrying and making me
cousins in the night