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POEMS ABOUT WAR
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Index of contributing Australian poets |
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Jacinta Le Plastrier Aboukhater
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Energy
It is all for energy.
Death elected. Death decreed.
Simple matters of human power,
and money efface the human heart
complexly.
Even a car fueled by energy,
that marvel of man's genius,
does not quell the roar of guns,
that roar of war
for energy possession
(and human fire).
Will its possession blaze
for other reasons to go to war?
Harriet Zinnes
IN THE BACK OF THE TRUCK
As a pre-teen boy
I saw Combat
on T.V
with Vic Morrow
nah nah nah nah
nah nah
My father would put it on
loudly
nah! nah nah nah
nah nah!...
and the graphics
for the opening titles
included a bayonet
I’d stare at the bayonet
and contemplate it’s usages
it didn’t seemed to be a case
of "But wait there’s more,
your bayonet doubles as a steak
knife, the life of any barbecue"
No, a bayonet only seemed
to have one purpose
to run someone through
and it was scary
In later years
I saw a photo
in Time magazine
of dead American soldiers
stacked in the back
of a truck in Vietnam
Piled six feet high
in the back
of the truck
uniformed bodies
dead bodies
arms and legs
tangled, outstretched
overflowing
with less dignity
than a homeless person
sleeping with a blanket,
who at least
has their own
patch of pavement
Faces frozen
in their final expression
stupefied
that the end
of their life
has come to this...moment
in the back
of the truck
99 dead bodies
in the back
of the truck
What happens
when you go to war?
You kill
or be killed.
What happens
when you die?
You go
in the back
of the truck
Peter Dowe Tue. 18/2/03
THE VISION OF ST
EUSTACE
Four weeks ago a wind
straight from Siberia
scraped through the square
snapping the leaves off plane trees,
hiding the village
behind closed shutters, curtained doors.
Now, the weather milder, nearing Christmas,
small boys are kicking footballs
in the Place Jeu de Ballon
while their fathers
trim vines beyond Tressan
or play petanque behind the Mairie
and Madam Sabatier's idiot brother Robert
sits on his bench
with his one yellow glove
shooting imaginary pigeons from the air.
Straight
from The Vision of St Eustace‚
a young brown dog, too
callow for the hunt
runs down the Impasse des Cigales
with a stolen croissant.
A few granates
still cling to the winter bushes; the path
to Le Puget
is strewn with fallen almonds.
In the field by the highway
the pheasants
have nested over the ancient ice-house.
After the thunder
of the Mirage chasseur
a slender glider
drifts soundless through the light-grey sky.
In the White House, half
a century away,
the President wipes his prick,
declares another war against Iraq;
on the tarmac, intelligent‚ missiles sit
in cold and steely silence, unable to think
of what they are about to do.
David Brooks
'Don't Mention the War'
North Head, Sydney, Sept 2002
Living in a wide landscape are the flowers -
Rosenberg I only repeat what you were saying -
the shell and the hawk every hour
are slaying men and jerboas . . . Keith Douglas
Behind Ned Kelly's rectangular visor
fronting a World War II bunker
I sweep a dilated Pacific.
No migrating whales but a loose pod
of 50 dolphins surf stampeding waves
which shearwaters ride, beneath radar range.
The enemy comes out of the east
and sunrise is accurate, bearings regenerated
by the natural rhythm of a vernal equinox.
The sun hits hot and it's not yet seven,
a first day of summer, bush flies baptise
by scavenging nose and ears.
Two ravens fiddle with a rough-twigged nest,
ritual affection perched right on the edge
of sandstone's papier collé, a lacerated
gestalt of colour and texture, precarious face
in the hands of rock falls and wind fray.
We retreat and watch the city
sprinkled down to the water's edge.
A peregrine falcon cruises overhead,
all relaxed power and beautiful aggression.
A brown quail elegant in grey blends back
into the scrub. Honeyeaters climb the masts
of flowering grass trees, bold feeding and display.
When was word the 'war' freshly minted?
On a morning like this, flush with song?
Or beneath a rhyming moon, elusive speech
no substitute for committing peace.
Or dusk plugged by a blood-red sky
which stains. A rub of smog tools the horizon.
Our foreign minister said yesterday in Parliament
'Don't mention the war.' I just kept waiting
for him to add, 'I think I got away with it.'
(War from werra - confusion, discord,
strife).
John Bennett
'refugees go hand in
hand with war'
razor wire
Number 82176 is two
no toys
adults make kites
coloured rubbish bags
guards confiscate them
Number 82176 is in tears
plays with garbage
what danger is she
wailing waddling
little hands waving
ahead of U. N. inspection
detainees are to be referred to
by name not number
have their rooms repainted
trees planted razor wire removed
red dust swirls
heat no fans
Fatimah (number 82176) stays
locked away
Invoking Peace
1.
Ubaka is beating her drum
in a small Lilyfield community hall
in my memory grown there
seeded from song
Ubaka is singing the world awake
she is healing the earth cleansing the waters
Ubaka is chanting
we won’t fight your war / we won’t fight your war
Calling Peace Calling Peace
Ubaka is beating her beloved drum
magic thrums the air
as women dance shake their booty
bums and bellies undulate
women stomp their feet
bang the beat on drums
we are shouting
we won’t fight your war / we won’t fight your war
Calling Peace Calling Peace
2.
just don’t talk to me of war:
crusades against the Infidel
formidable foes reaping the whirlwind
Satan and the Axis of Evil student of Stalin
homicidal dictator addicted to weapons of mass destruction
the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud
I’m suffering battle fatigue
bludgeoned by speech writers
who never learn their history
don’t tell me:
those towel-heads should pack up their carpets and go back home to the desert
queue jumpers are illegal refugees and you gotta draw the line somewhere
don’t ‘cha
‘Voice of God’ voice-over tells me: warfare isn’t natural
Pyramids of Caral - ‘Mother City of Civilisation’
in Peru trading with neighbours
prospers in peace for a thousand years
the desert blooms irrigated for cotton
no fortifications no weapons of battle
Jenni Nixon 2002
O Say Can You Hear?
The dripping Gorgon’s head
over the sands of Iraq, spittle of snakes flame out
from a thousand gun barrels –
at last! the two worlds unite in the death struggle,
the two as one to make a third:
fantasy is reality is fantasy.
America has become its own horror cartoon,
each thought locked within its renegade cell,
Bugs Bunny holds forth in the senate on
the bankrupt dream-stocks buried at Fort Knox.
Donald Duck meantime jerks off in disgust
over the American flag - quacks
the country’s been bushwacked,
‘ain’t worth a hill of beans’
in archaic colloquialisms of a nation near claim
jumping the Middle East.
The last capitalist gasp v the last medieval groan;
eventually, to make way for the eco-terrorists whose
motto: destroy what you cannot save: will sound
the retreat to a history vaporised – a memory erased.
So we come to inherit ‘Our Common Loss’.
The Space Shuttle Columbia makes
its long wave ‘good-bye’
bright finger nails tearing at the sky (like)
‘morning Lucifer, that star that beckons all
mankind to daily rounds’
scratching down God’s blackboard
as seven souls fly away
toward the Pleiades.
So we make our omens to live and die by.
Stephen Oliver, 2003
DIRTY FOREIGN LAUNDRY
POLICY
They fired a missile
In the middle of the night.
There was a tissue
In the wash. It's all over
Everything. The blood
COUNTING TO ELEVEN: THE TERROR OF BEAUTY
(is rat poison on the kitchen tiles)
ONE Day eleven people poisoned themselves here.
Somewhere between those blinded by disease
and those blinded by rockets.
TWO Eyes that rested in fever and never moved again;
eyes that saw the atom.
THREE Armies who have taken charge
have banned cinema and music and women
on the street; words describing laughter and ball games
and evening. In makeshift beds
FOUR Children on their bellies, without legs and
the skin of their buttocks, are silent as
FIVE Young girls explain, as if explaining will explain,
how they lost their noses, their shyness
and twist their hands at the camera
as if it is nothing; as if it is attention they want,
but don't care if they get (that need is for us,
with our profiles and our familiarity with
the terror of beauty). Between them the
five young girls have only
SIX Hands...
And eleven if counted is eleven,
especially by its own standards,
and by that it is all.
Here it is a family -
SEVEN Adults and four children -
who after sickness and
EIGHT Land mines and starvation and rape
and torture only occasional,
blew themselves up with rat poison.
NINE O' clock and I watch it all in a report
and rub my bare toes over the new black tiles
of my kitchen floor and wiggle all
TEN And cannot imagine what it's like to be
ELEVEN But know that I too would sniff out the poison
if it promised the only promise
that could be kept
MTC Cronin
He murders
He murders words like startled innocents
He cracks a grin like a sloping desert
He pursues an abstraction
He feasts on fearful dreams
He points accusingly across reason
He serves at the table of avarice
He appeals to the lesser part of us
He wins the vote of chaos
He struts in the ruins of civilisation
He drinks the dew of morning tears
He devours the cry of desperation
He whispers the wind of uncertainty
He preaches the litany of occupation
He scratches the sore of hate
He winds up the window against wisdom
He thrashes in the mire of dispossession
He aims at the centre of peace
He embraces the moment of action
He leads the world to watching skies
He jabs at our peaceful sleep
He strides relentlessly towards his purpose
He is the blind man who believes he sees
What’s the time?
What’s the time? Is it time? We must watch closely,
Hours change with the Earth’s passage round the sun,
Across the world, slowly, the shadow moves slowly.
Our hands join together circling the globe. We firmly
Constrict. The strangulation of our Mother has begun.
What’s the time? Is it time? We must watch closely
If we are to stay alive and guard our family,
Facing each other over the garden fence, gun to gun.
Across the world, slowly, the shadow moves slowly
Like a veil over the wide-eyed child and mother crying softly.
Superstition and tormentors leave them nowhere to run.
What’s the time? Is it time? We must watch closely
As we run out of control. Can our footsteps tread lightly
And heal scars in the ground so sweet rivers can run
Across the world, slowly? The shadow moves slowly.
I live for fun and fly around the world swiftly
Chasing shadows. What will be there when I return?
What’s the time? Is there time? We must watch closely
Across the world, slowly, the shadow moves slowly.
One Night/Every Night
I stay awake all night
in the bitter electric light
white winter sheets un-invite
long moments forsake
my unsleeping ache
Blind draped wind-rattled windows
ticking clock curled up toes
flickering box broadcasting echoes
humanity raped
and video-taped
Sofa lain brandy warming
red blanket wrapped listless dreaming
senses warped with misunderstanding
nameless innocent explain
this soul-grown pain
Like me you scream flesh-torn red
fear ravages a sleepless bed
passionate savage your hatred fed
by muddy stream
a dangerous dream
Repetition stuns the truth of the act
a distant observer recounts the fact
another murderer breaks a pact
awakening the guns
of fatherless sons
Deny the futility of flowers in steel
minds healed when emotions peel
compassion revealed once in a real
moment of humility
amongst hostility
Vivienne Glance
Dear Mr
Howard, please be sensible
...
Look
at the bodies awry in the rubble
Smell
the stink of death, sewage, garbage in the bombed city
Feel
the slimy texture of rotting flesh falling away from bones
Taste
the tears of bereaved fathers on your own lips
Listen
to the bedlam of artillery
to the screams of men
to the keening of mothers
to the wailing of orphans
to the voices of your own people
to the shame of your children’s children
saying,
No,
be sensible
there are other
ways
to live,
to die.
Charlotte Clutterbuck
To the Prime Minister
of
Australia:
Please, Sir, do not engage the Nation in war. Remember the OZ of
old?
AN AUSTRALIAN ALLEGORY
In Australia once dwelt a noble race
- honourable, proud and tall -
linked by a broad-based national creed:
"Fair go for one and all!"
That simple faith united them
in all adversity:
famine or war, drought or flood,
from sea to distant sea.
True-blue, they were, these upright men
(and women, too, of course)
and in trials and tribulations were
for good a potent force!
When neighbouring nations were in need,
they swiftly extended a hand
of friendship, succour, relief and aid
to help the hapless land.
Their love of sport was legendary
all this time ago
and there you'd also find their creed
of fair-play and fair-go!
You could see it clearly, plain as day,
and always just the same:
Strive hard to win! Don't lie or cheat!
Play up, but play the game!
A stranger came into their midst
to fight his own dark war
but few there were across the land
knew just what he stood for!
He talked the talk, for he was glib,
but his mind was alien
and he really knew but little of
the ordinary Australian.
He knew not what Australians thought,
nor the things that made them tick!
It was not their style to swagger around
armed with a threatening stick!
While they did take part in some conflicts,
they abhorred all wartime slaughter,
and would never commit to unholy war
an Australian son or daughter!
OUT OF THE CRADLE
With a huge debt acknowledged to
Walt Whitman who wrote his wonderful poem of that name in 1859 - before ugly war
ripped the guts out of his native America.
Out of the cradle (endlessly rocking
in the nursery of heav'n where joy and pain
are infused in all newborn in random dose)
emerge a George Bush or Saddam Hussein.
Out of the cradle, endlessly rocking,
out go God's creatures of every kind:
the great and good, the upright and true,
along with those of evil mind.
Out of the cradle, endlessly rocking,
where Nature cavorts with colleague Nurture,
the world first glimpses stranger danger
- according to every expert researcher!
RISE UP - FOR YOU THE FLAG IS FLUNG
With apologies to Walt Whitman
Rise up! For you the flag is flung!
Give up all frivolous peacetime frills
and join us in our holy war!
Hark! For you our bugle trills!
The hated tyrant must be slain
to end his heathen rift and ruction!
He poses threat to all mankind
with untold weapons of mass destruction!
Where has he buried his armoury?
The Willing gnash their teeth annoyed
to hear him say he has no arms
and they are simply paranoid!
Rise up and crush his ancient land!
Lay waste his fields! Destroy each dam!
Blow living things to smithereens
for the greater glory of Uncle Sam!
Dan O'Donnell
INSERT DAYDREAM
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PEACE
missing in action
JFK
Game
Fireworks over children play
dodging round the remnants
Those distant creators used only
the purest of ingredients As they play out
their game on a markered site do
they remember shells though beached
may not have lost their bite Here - no fear
of father coming home And once moons
proved false mother's mouths fell silent Bodies
barter themselves for bread Others
scrounge - unwinding fisted hands
and stripping scraps from any
whose desperation lacks
size or muscle or
whose strength has flooded
out through slack-walled bowels
Shivering air cannot hold the fertility
of man's cognition Fresh lines
mingle with the old but each comes
with its own howl and whine
to establish
springs of flame
Life - sanitised
Heartening to see a spur added
to a child's race
This fight
a good cause and righteous
Many boast
of giving no pause
And children learn
the hand-print of might
_______________________________________________
" Let Them Eat Rubble"
Her breasts assaulted
they fail to respond
Dry
their flow has set
-brown shadow
its jagged edges hidden
by this dark unruffled
by light Dust yet
to settle shall never
sparkle / never
celebrate the sun's total
lack of discernment
Vibrations form a tread
larger than human
rocking the child
placed there
without trial
he lacks understanding
of his sentence
Howls of poor quality fall
in on themselves Buried
they diminish
to whimpers
Silence
He is
at last at rest
a weaned child
upon his mother's breast
Kathryn Hamman
THE SURVIVAL PRAYER
Iraq should be bombed by magpies,
Palestine besieged with praise.
Hear about the new world order/
a seed cracked, the explosion of oils.
"Avoid excess intelligence"
says the wily cat.
A sea eagle overhead maintains
domestic air supremacy.
People navigate in their own gales
as kangaroos sleep in shade.
White cockatoos land like wedding rice
on a sheet of flowering green.
They don't want bread,
the pigeons have no appetite
for cigarettes.
We must be simple:
me, you & paper.
Buttons burrow into machines,
gasses tense.
Metals refuse the seductions of rust.
Les Wicks
Content's Hammer
"Yes, but it's only now we're seeing it on the tele" - Sybil Fawlty
This girl's dark eyes and huge expression
the doctor's hands as she shows
absence, no words denoting legs with
amputated feet and there clearly
should be, poetry is hard enough
when daily muted by the clamour
of self-righteous suits ˆ
certainty's the sword I'd like to cleave
such certainty apart and thrust
a conscious agony on those who see and don't
checking the list in trepidation
that my name and those I love will be buried
somewhere in the fine print
heavy with inheritance
a person in a room with books to
burn, vicarious forager devouring only
news, flash and breaking from the hills
each curve and corner rushed as the sky
pushes for a semblance of control over
events, asserting, uselessly in
this instance, the naught but here
the gunner's ears leak blood, collapsed
question marks the spot of no return
(I think we've passed this way before)
it makes me mad and even now
as the sausage machine cranks up
khaki collection due
all line up for the shambles
cameras to the right of them
cameras to the left
war/head/lining
I thought I knew you well
what comes streaming in
a greater crack and faces
trapped and offering winter
the wind's on its way
no one sleeps well
where are those voices coming from?
in the middle of your life and none the wiser
the quiet house no peace accords
question the dead where they lie
the living have no answers
this isn't the last word and
who'll recognise the too familiar face
stuttering as it comes
while all who bear its weight
and plod the weary follow me
turn aside to briefly stare
this is where we came from
Geraldine Mackenzie
seas rise–cities crumble
flush with the deepest indigo–suburban aliens stare
thru glass’s smoke–at fiends unfavourable
never does it click–what they see is projection’s reflection
preferring to hate–what is most dear–even to themselves
all in within–weariness flutters
dry & droopy–undercover u drift
who knows–where sky falls
all we know is dark
grinning sentries ov stone
knowing battle’s fierce laughter
carbon targets all scrambled
random dates ov conjecture
what’s old is no more respected
mother urth she b ancient
understand–venerable chieftains
the blue screen u see
won’t hide stars at nite–
messages pulsing–a story ov drumbeats
all we are–falling when moon fulls
gyring thru time–falling rain living
all we are–hirise stories
waiting for urthquake
Paul A. Skec
TO JOHN HOWARD
When I first pulled a thread
on my underpants the whole waistband unravelled.
There was nothing to protect my nakedness.
When I picked at the scab on my knee
I discovered pus and blood. The healing
was delayed indefinitely and not even the itch
had been relieved.
When I started throwing stones in the street
I got more than I bargained for.
No one felt virtuous when vengeance
took over.
Now you talk of a just war
(that contradiction in terms)
and I can see how your fingers itch
and that look in your eyes
holds all the old irrational convictions.
Reason was a hard-won human quality.
You have traded it
for a small thread that will unravel
whole structures and will leave us all naked.
Tom Shapcott
wake-up (call
pain like the night (i.e. insomnia
the burglar alarm that won't stop
(like yr brain
all the negative things you can
think of
stop you drifting in yr bed
the ozone wake-up (call
chernobyl/exon/chile/nicaragua/vietnam, hello!
everything (except everything
stops (eventually
even the burglar alarm
the relief of silence
all the positive things you can
think of
her (him/them
the perseverence of ants
water
the sky
a shady tree in a heatwave
the sun
is shooting us
and we don't even know it
payback
(day/night
negative is in the eye
of the beholder (like a log
so much self- hurt
i'm really a genius (for example
(van
gogh/kafka/dickinson/cervantes
who wants to be a millionaire?
I don't
cause all I want is
you (if only it was true
what about when
you dies or
runs away with the gas man/woman
I took a lottery ticket
but I can't throw it away
(it's stuck to my psyche
you want everyone to envy you
why?
if everyone was as smart as
whatsisname
there'd be peace
(we could have just war
on the level
(playing fields
you know
osama bin laden means
"a bird in the hand"
(all desire is violence
power kills
absolute power
kills absolutely
(except everything
Grant Caldwell
Gacela
There is the sunlight tangled in your hair
And there are the soldiers sleeping with their guns.
'The viper! The world!' Teresa cried, and yet
I want the mango's wealth of juice, the stream
The makes a bird a fish and then a bird;
I do not want the desert's cayenne dust
And statues fighting the the city square.
The chambers of the heart are splashed with blood;
The soldiers toss and turn all night: I want
The road to stop its lazy morning stroll
And lead me straight to you, I do not want
The storm to crack its knuckled overhead
And do its imitations of a war.
At night the student slips past Caligula
While dreaming of Cleopatra's hands and hair
Then sees the asp reflected in her eyes -
I want the road that leads the soldiers on
To double back and tie itself in knots,
I want the bird to catch the stream's creased skin
And fly away with it, I do not want
The soldiers turned to stone by what they see.
'It's not so bad,' Teresa said, 'with just
A single night to spend in this foul inn' -
I want to spin the chambers of the guns
And make the bullets giddy in the air,
I want the snake to shed its skin and fly,
I want to feel the sunlight in your hair.
Kevin Hart
Philosophers and other
world leaders
It seems much later in the history of human thought than merely this evening. A
curl of thin smoke marks the bomb blast obliterating the city that has yet to be
built. An arrow has been fired through a crowded beauty parlour into tomorrow’s
discrepancies. Statistical adjustors have already rewritten the body count and
proven to everyone’s satisfaction that what goes around comes around.
"Playfulness" is already becoming a word untranslateable in the idiom of sombre
morgueologists. In the last days before the theatre of live sports hits the
screen, rhetoric builds bridges to make it easier to part the demonized from the
saved. Ordinary madmen report that Pythagoras of Elea found no problem being in
several places simultaneously. His exemplary calm shone and is shining above
those streets where fleets and armies have just sailed off into the harrowing of
a cancelled tomorrow.
Peter Boyle
extracts from Inferno
(after Dante Alighieri
)
Who is it that I can hear
a sad chorus of harsh languages
That someone had reasoned this commotion
Aircraft strike one to one
the signal air without stars
For me the city is already gone
abandoned ruined
an eternity of pain and rubble
You will see behind
the long draft of people who have lost everything
they are dust
Understanding things is futile
the principle of the new morning
love moments before
those beautiful things
Ahead there are new formations incoming
divine justice spurs them
All the earth's empty ones
sent to the other river of darknesses
The city gone
as people lost between exile and displacement
those who have left every hope
see only their families down like leaves
each alone nearby the others
The ire of 'God' continues
over video reportage
a door for me to see
how we came to the place where intellect has died
-
Fright bathes me in sweat
every unravelled feeling
I have heard in the heard sky
his adorned word
The President saying gentle and flat
with his slow voice
I have your word your very understanding
we must block that enterprise
that false shadow
It honours you that you have heard
It honours us that have heard
For us or against us
it enhances reputations in this hard world
Let me finish my Father's work
-
It does not after all seem dishonourable then
by those prepared to support the war
(one tagged by proximity
in the time of fear)
to join one ennobled
though without high talent
to join one thinking himself of dynasty
of an empire that all but owns the empyrean sky
Tell me
coming down to this centre
do you not feel them watch you
Cast this way by suspicion
where finished one goes to them with fear
I watched up and I saw the cause
I saw that dark coast where thinking is consumed
-
Again they will come to the ancient place
without understanding
(how much of this far world
do you see my friend)
such that another's misery may not touch them
It will visit us by proxy
by television and satellite
faithfully imitating every cruel movement
until we also are removed from you
The fire the flames
We pray
Do not attack us for God is on our side
Not to make but to give
the gross formation of his terrible goods
His overwhelming economy
the cause of victory against adversaries of every kind
Begging Do not open this talent to me
Let me escape this worse evil
We fear those things that have such a power
to badly make others lives
Those who cannot be consoled
when the no longer gentle sky rains
so very many promises
so that living you do not see
that you have already died
-
Some of us recognized
saw and knew the shadow
saw the tired virtue
that arranged The President's words
the suffocating depths they lead to
the ramps that curve gently down
to fumes and heat
Angela Gardner
Thinking Things
Through
Can we think
a thousand times before we kill
the other in the name of power
or land or ideology?
And after we have thought a thousand times,
written down the reasons,
met with friends to test our cause,
renewed the guns and missiles,
cleaned off the button;
when we have stored up food and water
for a siege, sent the children
to a safer place,
shored up bunkers in backyards,
built new ones near the mint,
thought of hero as someone
convulsed and martyred in the mud,
committed maps to memory,
studied up on ciphers, invented
a new history of disease
and buried the family jewels
to foil the looters;
once we have tolled the bells
and prayed our guttural prayers
for the spirit to be named for us;
sent factories into overtime to make the braids
and uniforms, the medals
to decorate the ones who can return,
confused shelling peas with houses,
small kingdoms crushed;
after we check procedures
for the treatment of fallout
from that most unnatural cloud,
and persuaded our young
that it is just to fight this way,
an adventure, safe, no hand to hand;
when we have done these things
and more, could we think
a thousand times again?
Jorie Manefield Ryan
The War Against
Earth
"Power-lines vault the farms," Murray wrote.
He left an image that waits,
And correlates to goods and energy
Pulled from earth by an earthy folk
Then bought cheap by a class more complicit
And sent crackling down the highways to a city:
A story of depletion and injustice which I like but do not trust,
Because in every farm an organizing predator surrounds himself
With his dusty holding pens, or maybe hers,
And his tree-less paddocks.
These fill and empty, fill and empty.
Sheep arrive for processing drily designated by their use:
You learn to call them mutton chops, or woolly jumpers.
The squeamish, carnivorous purchaser
Is tipped a knowing leer.
We're homo sapiens no longer:
Power comes not by knowing
But by contending with success that another does not know
The proper name of a disputed thing.
Beyond the fences, native beasts stop, stare,
Take fright and crash through scrub.
The family tree has been cut down and sold.
2.
Once upon a time, there was a little oil-well -
Say these words aloud that do not fit
In hope they never will.
It grew and grew and grew,
Needing trucks, expert management and then its own dedicated snake.
The first oil-pipe that ever there was
Comes out from under a battlefield,
Careless of the old city's teetering walls.
Goats fossick in radio-active dust;
And the off-spring of the undeserving poor are starving, grotesque or dead.
Their fathers, and their fathers' fathers back to the seventh generation
Should have been the terrors of the earth
For these children to be so cursed -
but this was not so.
It's the top-most predators who've done most harm.
As war is a thing fought between states,
We call this war to stop us thinking. Why?
To judge the assailants by what we've done,
What we want is radio-active emptiness.
The suffering of the earth is wordless.
Building pyramids, we leave deserts.
The social, adaptable animal moves on, shuns memory;
And these are brief advantages
To a gene encoding selfishness.
We kill entire species and poison the womb
So that the oil-pipe might live;
And does it not cross deserts, shrug hills,
Conceal itself and its connections,
Come out again and plunge into the sea?
How could you speak against the pleasure and the power of it?
Must it not be as incontrovertible as snake?
The thing was made by hands, not time:
A right hand welding, designing or directing,
A left hand taking no wage
But receiving an inducement for the evil;
And still the idea and the fact of it live, and thrive.
Rich man, poor man, all know where it ends.
3.
What kind of triumph could there be for humans
On a man-made earth?
Homo triumphans:
Golden-eyed, and slick,
To whom nothing earthy sticks;
And there's a story to show how this is done,
So that we may leave this earth and find or make another,
The noble and the righteous boarding Starship Enterprise,
Its rockets successfully competing for the oxygen that's left,
While millions of our fellow murderers
Scrabble at the air-lock
And the seconds tick down.
I'm not O.K. - you're not O.K.
Wrap yourself in heroic sadness, for a little while.
We could wait here in the dark,
Refusing to forget, for a little while,
Asking for forgiveness,
Praying to a thing that has no common name.
Henry Sheerwater
To a Cyborg
'The child is father to the man.'
William Blake
Lie and tell me you are human.
Grace me with perfection.
Offspring of Nietzsche's tears
what sport fast enough
suits your pulse? Doubtless
you are mean & beatific, machine of paradox.
You look homely as a tank,
oiled god in intricate shoes
downloading a viscous tonic.
I buy the magazine, and you are there -
burnished titanium, whippy carbon-fibre,
geared for an evolution of small improvements.
Deep breather, with your rat-heart pump
your circuitry your poem
isometric kestrel gliding for mice.
Let me grow you like a business,
culture in a vacuum flask
heat-moulded from ancestral scrap
shaped on the wind's lathe, oh legislate
and open sesame you are there.
My laser blunts on you
body jigsawed from a slab.
The rest shall wait, and I fear
your needle, that swoon I thought
immortal.
If I have peaked too early,
sweat and say my lines, will you
lie with me stunning tiger?
Are you mine?
Adam Aitken
The axis of evil
It takes three to form an axis of evil
And another three to form its shadow
If one is K.I.I.
The other is B.A.A.
Any war is welcome
As long as we destroy the enemy as well as ourselves
We don’t need to destroy ourselves
Only those who are not part of us
Who are they?
They are J. G. T. or H.B.B.
The enemies we should destroy
Before we destroy ourselves
(27/02/03)
Ouyang Yu
Bullets, an anti-war poem
...
(War starts at home and moves on out...)
Disconnected from the muzzle, the spout
of luminary sparks that powder-blast
a grainy sunset, carried over wheat-rough
towards a loitering Sunday driver
punctured in the metal belly-apron,
or blowout as unexpected as a near miss with fate;
delivery is paramount in connecting
whistle-stop, crack, and flesh-rip,
forensics of plumage's palette splash,
colours dreamed up by interior decorators -
that tungsten sniff of predatory air
about a hair-width off-target;
but the moment at the gunsmith's
where bullet boxes are weighed up, building
finger and palm muscles, morals of solids
or hollow-points, the pace of burn
against pockets of resistance -
silver coins tossed up and dead-eyed,
this casual sociability turns inwards
and the brassy idiophones are sounded out,
sent leaping into the tissue of night,
into tours and econo-drives,
sweeping deserts and crushing forests,
impacting others until emptied from our spirits.
John Kinsella
Pity it takes the threat of death and war to start this
conversation within and surrounding us
Sad that it will take the loss of life
to galvanize us into effective protest
Angry when truth becomes Old Testamental cliches-
Divisions, battalions, surveillance mega-industries
Disappointed when money goes to weapons
rather than social security and education
Pity when fine folk are broke and broken
and the hard hawks are fat and laughing
Cruel when the children are sent out to die
without a reason - just a flag to be buried in
Homeless everywhere - and they look exactly like us
Jobless everywhere - and they number all of us
You are either employed as a warder or the jailed
Cross-examined or criminal prosecutor
Arrested or in uniform
Free or following orders
A great conversation has already begun
and it will not stop until justice returns
and the bought judge is removed
and the purchased justice is freed
and the jails release all the innocent
and no more racial profiling
and no prison for non-violent ones
and fear loses to truth
and orange alerts become oranges
and yellow alerts bananas
and joy is released again-to sing
to joke about security at airports
to continue the great conversation everywhere
we are gathered.beginning now. we have much to say
and more to listen to. this is the open court
of public opinion. we are our peers
and we have questions. some will be acccused
of war crimes committed during this occupation
of our human spirit by Republicans - and corrupted
Democrats, and every leader who lied
and sent sons to die, and would not even try to change
this is an ongoing conversation
we are speaking and we are listening
and every street and coffee shop is full
overflowing with the buzz of life
and the electricity of urgencies
we need to speak to each other now
we need to listen. deep.
THOM FEB 20,2003
The wheel
The 15th of January 1991, the date demanded by the US/UN as the deadline
for Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait. The televised war that ensued was called
ŒOperation Desert Storm
The day is grey as the threat of war
Rain heavy as the fears of the unemployed
It's a grim outlook from our window Bella child
See the pamphleteers, stuffing letterboxes
With fragments of their souls / Good luck to them
Clocks in New York and Baghdad tick toward the 15th of January
Lottery wheels spin for a single win and the multitudes lose
Cash shrivels in the hand / crops wither in the ground
Peace-seekers set out for the border
To join a flock of doves between the dogs of war
I spoonfeed my daughter as tyrants promise blood will rain
The desert will remain barren / the poor will remain hungry
And the television constituency will feast on gore and retribution
Stop the war / Give us rain / Feed the poor / We want work
I bounce my child on my knee and people on TV shout / question / cry
Our church is empty and our shop shelves groan
Baghdad's mosques groan and their shops are empty
The TV says we are the victors / our democracy won
Is that a ray of sunlight? / No. It is a missile
Bella child in my arms / this is the turning of the wheel
Some will be raised up / many will be crushed
One day the war will end and we will forget
Until the wheel rolls round
over us.
Ken Smeaton
Iraq dialogical 2003
melancholia, a multiplicity of walls
---take a concrete look, the creative
is depressed and my heart goes out
but life's so contra, a finger plunging
itself into crimson then alternately
into vermillion then fluid as joy
it meanders and dances on paper
not because today is Valentine's
and roses are red and so are you
my love but because the finger
is an optimist, has a belief
in the river which is red
is weight-of-life flowing
coiled and uncoiled, asleep and
awake the always electric pulse
but then later a blood moon, its pull
towards a night's news, whose spill
is oil, so that the child of a friend
writes listen, war is not to be trusted
(the one pending the one previous
the one next) once, the child
made a finger painting of the ‘biggest
boa constrictor in the world’, giving
us due warning giving war its due
Patricia Sykes (2003)
ya alim
They know who they're hunting
but they don't know him.
They know how they're hurting
in the rubble of their greed.
They know who they blame
for their losses in the game
where their hollywood of stunting
& their manhattan of blowing
& their washington of blunting
the world they web in greed
has got them all mcveighed
They can't execute
their own blind need.
ya alim - invocation of The Knowing
Geoff Fox
At the wall
I’d written myself into a wall
James Baldwin
our soft little lives
are asleep
sarajevo srebrenica palestine
rwanda kabul
a half-empty bottle
of old formalities
thrown in the mud
‘we are all of us in the gutter
but some of us are looking
at the stars’
said o. wilde
not another twenty years
of that, I hope
our feckless little aspirations
require the lowest
common denominator
so show me the book
that shows me
rows of terrariums
growing horrible viral cells
genetic cultures
dropping enormous
thick clots
the artists
are affected
clumsy vision
stuck with lumps
the artists
could be
lost as well
invited
to a ‘private viewing’ -
an occasion
usually called
an ‘opening’
you see
backward lurchings
& hear vacuous flatteries
& the S&M pose
hit hurt ooh ahh
looking like petals
acting like engines
making minor contributions
to the ‘cutting edge’
(80s talk 90s clothing)
will anyone ever
agitate
again ?
when will they occupy
the privatised academies ?
all talk & theory
older & older
less & less wise
statues are toppling
before they are built
so at the bar,
my pal remembers
a quote
from Mark Twain or someone
ìthe means have become
more expedient
but the goals are lostî
I write it down
on the back
of a blank
TAB trifecta ticket
here, in the country
without guilt,
when will the menacing,
the history,
begin ?
Pam Brown
SHADOWS OF WAR
for JvS
There's no denying those trick zones
where cities stuffed on spin loop
and cajole around the perigee of hope
but if there's no perfume trace after
the missile strike we might as well
spray our luminous selves with mace
until we go holiday blind. War cries
haul the heavy shadows of the past
into the present and with long patriotic
faces, we reveal how bloody empty
our history of habitation really is:
then, the magpie mocks everything
still in use, or spoken. An event, not
exactly a wet dream nor an ocean
pounding the headland's umbrage
nor a rutilant samba quivering
with nationalist fervour towards
the dark potential of anti-language:
though some sounds perjure with burnt
semiotic offerings, others taste gun-metal
blue, torture themselves into a cultural
frenzy. What slowness in a countdown
when the children cannot be heard ó
at the mere mention of another war
useless hands drop to thighs leaden
as petrol fumes. The aqueous envelope
of the globe bleeds but you cannot cry.
Richard Hillman
Mesopotamia
From beneath the sand a still hand
Reaches up for help, perhaps,
Or, fingers splayed, waves
In some forlorn attempt at greeting.
Is it a signal,
‘I am here. Stop.’
Or ‘I was here, before.
All the time.’
Not flesh but stone
That shone in the bloody sun
With war when Ur forgot
How to write its music down.
Simon Mundy
HUNTERS
Before killing each other,
they trained for many years
to be partridge hunters;
to toss pebbles in the air,
marking them with bullets.
They trained to pluck the wings of birds
to make brooms from the feathers.
They tried to grow feathers on their hands,
so they would become birds.
Then they died,
like hunted birds.
HOMECOMING
He was lying,
with half his body under the ceiling,
half under the sky.
He was surrounded by people
when he returned today.
They carried him, covered with blood and dust
and laid him on the balcony.
From a cloud, drops of rain
were falling on his feet.
NAMES OF THE DEAD
He opened his hand and counted on his fingers
the names of the dead.
He used the fingers of both hands.
He added to the list
the colours around him,
the branches of the tree in front of his house,
the trees along the road
and the leaves of the shrubs.
Before he went to bed
he added his own name.
THE EXHAUSTED PEOPLE
The exhausted people were sitting in the square
listening to the soft winds which may have been peddlars
or loiterers who had lost their way.
The exhausted people had their own open square
where the paving stones had taken on human qualities;
if one of the people were missing,
they cried out for him.
The exhausted people were in the open square
and their faces grew more brittle each day,
their hair, softer
in the evening's faint light.
When they glanced at one another, their eyes were brittle
until they thought of themselves as glass
and shattered.
Wadih Sa'adeh, translated by Anne Fairbairn
A MOTHER’S STORY (for Mahmoud Darwish
)
already the settlers arrive
to ruins
when her heart beats
it also measures while the white of their eyes
measures the desert’s dark
the wheat’s ear
the crow’s feathers their chisels are eager for heroes to
sculpt
the length of dock-root
in Galilee they settle on headstones
the strength of rock-salt
from the Dead Sea. the dark ripples over the shoulder of the
hill
she is nameless like the cry of the mujahedeen
but she loves
that underweight son ‘stand by your brother
with the lantern
heavy in his left hand be he oppressor or oppressed’
its light cannot neutralize
the dark inside outside the light
the barrel
*
So strong is his will that it can produce a simulacrum of patience, prudence and
fortitude at those moments when he feels most exposed, fragile and erratic. The
stronger his attraction the more extreme his reaction, so the closer he is drawn
the further he withdraws. Of course nature does not acknowledge whatever’s
absent – it is prodigal with species, variations, effects – so any withdrawal
is artificial, a perverse tearing of the world’s fabric. This is how it appears
to the West. Mahmoud knows that if a bird does not believe in trees it will not
rest; he believes in the tree that is there yet, ultimately, he hopes to rest in
the tree that isn’t there.
David Howard
Poem ("the ice in my
glass")
the ice in my glass goes crink!
as it adjusts to the tequila - keying in
that sophistication - the feel of it - I associate
with these tall buildings, a bit of the
skyline of New York I envisage,
important to me for many years -
or if they weren't, they stood for the idea of importance,
an imaginary number filling out
an order - of which the others were a part:
the finite Melbourne, Sydney, Glebe -
& Fitzroy & Bega. Did I think about it?
And it became less important - & then, almost by accident,
I visited New York, & saw it - specific, real.
Impressive - & loveable, surely - but less impressive
than the rarely summoned abstraction. Strange -
& terrible - to think of it threatened,
New Yorkers frightened - as the city's image
draws retaliation. Clink, the ice again, settling.
My New York - the notional one - the city of poets,
of art. I met one poet there - 'perfect' -
urbane, bohemian a little, worldly, smart,
immensely intelligent. (Art there was in galleries
& historical - great, but not like the poet.) My
second time I met rich people - the sort the terrorists
think of: people congratulating themselves on
the world & their ownership of it - deals, leverage,
new fields, salaries & investment. We were on a penthouse roof
near the UN building, looking out over the water
(towards New Jersey? - somewhere) for
the fireworks of July the 4th. The same UN building
as in James Schuyler's poem, that moves slightly in
the wind, the light, or has that building been torn down & gone
& this is a new one? This is the New York I like,
personalized, romantic - about which I know a great deal,
detail - things that have happened there, what one poet said
to another (at Gem Spa, at the Morgan Library), the
books they read, thoughts they had: unreal again,
a fabled, picturesque locality, of thirty years ago.
A little like the Sydney I now visit, which I left
in the 80s & in fact hardly know - can scarce reconcile
with the site of my former life there: where X said A to Y,
where 'L' lay (or sat) & wrote "Sleeping in the Dining Room",
or 'A' began, "Saussure! Saussure!" - where I lived, round the corner
behind the Max Factor Building. I didn't meet the rich -
tho Sydney has them - resembling New York's probably & voting
just as vociferously to support war on the Afghans.
Frank O'Hara, a hero of mine - a one-time hero, a hero still -
mixed with the rich a little. But as was said in his defence once
recently, he never owned more than two suits. He was not of them.
I don't like the Sydney rich - for wishing to be interchangeable
with their New York counterparts. Which is as I fancy them.
Tho as it said on the Max Factor building below the name -
"Sydney London Paris Rome New York" - & I aspired
in my own way, too.
Funny, all the papers have pointed out
the Auden poem, "1939", has been much quoted -
& some Yeats? Would Rome or Berlin - Paris even -
have sent minds to poetry? It is the enormity of the act -
New York as symbol - & as never attacked before.
I wonder if it is a new era? You'll read about it elsewhere -
not here. I might look up that Schuyler poem