KOREAEBOOKDOCUMENT1.2.0One Hundred+ Poets Against the WarTodd Swift, EditorБ#A>para.xml110poets.jpgnormal.styџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџџ{ …Аpara.xmlОы smaller.styыЩы small.styжеы normal.styСсы large.styЌэы larger.sty—љ—;110poets.jpg   One Hundred+ Poets Against the War Todd Swift, Editor     Table of Contents Editor's Introduction * Are There Children * Collateral Damage * Regime Change Begins At Home * Hot Milk * killer * At Home, At War * Ode to all concerned with that `baby milk' factory in Iraq * Notwithstanding * The Day After * Mickey Mouse came, Mickey Mouse saw, Mickey Mouse conquered * Hyperbole For A Large Number * Mark the Day * un-UN inspected * Why I Want To Be A Baconaut * The Field * Dancer * Other Demands * Georgie Porgie * the war is on the kitchen table * The Virtual Total Information Awareness Office * The Flying Flag * a short list of short lists * Dragonseeds * Water Dragon / * We Accept * Sirens * Treasured Ghost * pEACE iCON 21c * Moonblood * From After The Anti War March * Where There's War * The Man of Principle * War - the concise version * Harvest * Untitled * clash of civilisations? * All Those Home Spun Places * Peace Poem * Imminent * Brainstorm * Miranda Rights * Dubya Anabasis * Talking With The Cat About World Domination The Day George W. Bush Almost Choked On A Pretzel * Yellow Jackets * A Verse to War * Anna's Meal * Rhetoric for Peace * No Seasons, Only Weather * Leavening * Gulf War - Aftermath * A Dark Little Psalm Against War * Even * Still True? * This is the War That George Fought * the killing fields * Terror on Warism * A Light * An Untitled Place * Streetcars and Crosswalks * Bubble Girl Song * Priests' Skulls * Life after wartime * Unleashed * blood in the snow * untitled * Taking Sides * We Believe * Against the War * Nation * After the Anti-War March * Untitled * The Hawk Who Became A Dove * What You Call It * The Paloma's Lament * Broken fall whispers * on the night she didn't feel like it anymore * Haunted House, October 2002 * The Moments Silence * The Tooth * let us step around this time * Wedding War * The White-Throated Sparrow Can't Compare * What Did Adorno Say? * "Christendom" * Off The Record * God Decides to Press the Mute Button on his Remote Control * Sim Shalom * The 20th Century Man * A Poem for My Muslim Poet Friend * the sand that is everywhere * Good Morning Middle Age * On Election Day * Untitled * Divine Haiku for the New Patriotism * To a Veteran of the Last Wrong War * Easy * Circling The Gulf A Gain A Loss, Ingrained * Women in Black * from How It's Been * war is gud 4 bizness in th 19th centur * Psychotic Sea * Women Washing Clothes in the Kabul River * Bigger Than Time * transit * The Land of Hope * excerpts from little dead things * Press conference * Filofax * Nets At Gennesaret * King Rat * In The Abundance Of Oxygen The Refugee Is Choked * Ballad * The Palace of Art * My peculiar talents * I Dream of War * Candle, Flame, Stained Glass and Prayer for Peace * News Theatre * Letter to Hayden Carruth * Unrhymed Peace Sonnet * Crossing Kurdistan * This Sky of Lost Miles * Dear Lady, Fear No Poetry * January meadow, * From Peace Walk & Rally, San Francisco * Can We Have Some Peace and Quiet Please? * To Miklós Radnóti * For The Birds * N.O.T.R.O.T.C. * No War Then * My Collaboration with George Bush * Waiting for the Marines * Rania * The Servant * The Border *       Editor's Introduction Never before has a book travelled the globe so quickly. Or so it seemed the week of January 27, 2003. 100 Poets Against The War was launched at www.nthposition.com to coincide with Hans Blix's report to the UN. Within days, news had spread around the world, via print media, Internet, radio and TV. More importantly hundreds of web-sites hosted the PDF, tens of thousands of people emailed and downloaded the "instant anthology" and many more printed it up and made copies. Our DIY chapbook has become part of various peace demonstrations, readings and rallies world-wide, from Oxford to Seattle. And all this week, hundreds of new poems, from Gambia to China, kept arriving by email. This proves that electronic books still have a future - so long as their content reaches an interested global community. Clearly, a nerve was touched. The interest in 100 Poets Against The War has been in proportion to how unpopular the planned attack on the nation of Iraq is. As the Copper Canyon initiative - and the week's surge of interest in poetic protest - lead to the First Lady cancelling her White House poetry event because "poetry and politics" shouldn't mix, the rest of us realised an important cultural point had been made. Walt and Langston and Emily can't be silenced by any politician - poems rise above the moment, and echo across history with power to speak to all people working to stop injustice and oppression. Poetry does make things happen: in people's lives, in the way they see the world and act in it. One week later, on Monday, there was 100 Poets Against The War Redux . If our first version made history by being the fastest anthology ever, then maybe this was the quickest second edition. But it is more than that. Due to the many exceptional poems that arrived this week, we added more than 20 new ones and corrected some typos. Thanks to Ms. Benoit, President of the Canadian eAuthors Association, the version you have has been designed for access in new ways. 100 + Poets Against The War features nearly all the poems from both previous versions and is a welcome addition to this project, which aims to generate peace through protest and poetry. Once again, let me thank all the poets who have generously donated their work to our project - it is brave and good of them. While we are not able to feature all of the nearly thousand poems we have received since January 20, 2003, every poem has been appreciated and read, and contributes in its way. While the poets whose work is here retain copyright, they have agreed to let you freely share their words. I also wish to thank Val Stevenson, publisher of www.nthposition.com in the UK, where all versions originated and can still be found; her vision and hard work have been indispensable. Val and I hope that you, poet, reader, activist for peace, will email and snail mail this book of poems to friends, family, colleagues, media and leading hawkish politicians everywhere. We want to keep the momentum for peaceful poetic protest going, until we are able to say we stopped this war before it started.   Peace. Todd Swift Editor 100 Poets Against The War 100 Poets Against The War Redux 100 + Poets Against The War Paris, February 4, 2003   Are There Children Robert Priest are there children somewhere waiting for wounds eager for the hiss of napalm in their flesh - the mutilating thump of shrapnel do they long for amputation and disfigurement incinerate themselves in ovens eagerly are there some who try to sense the focal points of bullets or who sprawl on bomb grids hopefully do they still line up in queues for noble deaths i must ask: are soul and flesh uneasy fusions longing for the cut - the bloody leap to ether are all our words a shibboleth for silence - a static crackle to ignite the blood and detonate the self-corroding heart does each man in his own way plot a pogrom for the species or are we all, always misled to war from Blue Pyramids: New and Selected Poems (ECW Press, 2002)   Collateral Damage Jackie Sheeler In a place of sand and wind and want, worn cotton looped across her forbidden face a woman without pleasures tends to her sons. She believes what she is told, owns no flags knows life by the taste of cloth at her mouth. Bread and leaflets drop from the sky, then other things. We meant to bomb the airport one mile north of this village with no name, this village on no map, this village of no more.   Regime Change Begins At Home Sue Littleton "Like fish in a barrel, man, it was like shooting fish in a barrel!" The barrel has no water in it; the fish lie stacked on their sides like silver playing cards, gills gasping frantically, mouths opening and closing in silent screams. The pupils of their round lidless eyes reflect flashes of light as their bodies jump and twitch beneath the hail of bullets, their flesh splitting to release pale blood. The barrel holds no water ... but somewhere in its depths there is the dark, iridescent sheen of oil.   Hot Milk Patrick Chapman Your father would hardly speak to me. One afternoon, he brought home cans Of carrots, peas, Carnation, Spam. He reinforced the concrete walls With mattresses. Strontium in the milk , they'd said, but No cause for alarm . I might as well have suckled you ­ My babe-in-arms ­ On long-range missiles' noses As on the teats of bottles, warmed At four a.m. to quiet you.   killer Marcus Moore a woman's child is ill she will have to buy a pill she will have to pay the bill she will have to earn a shilling she will have to use her skill she will have to use a drill she sits behind a grill the poor woman makes weapons chilling a rich man owns the mill he has an iron will he sits behind the till he likes to watch the coffers filling selling arms gives him a thrill so while on some distant hill a poor woman's blood doth spill the rich man makes a killing   At Home, At War Tony-Lewis Jones Now there is silence in the house, except The pipes tap-tapping under floorboards and The clocks' slow rhythmic messages. You are Late coming home for an argument: The night holds terrors every parent knows. Your mother is away. She, I'm certain, Would have played this same weak hand Quite differently. The morning paper Demonstrates with images how words Can lose all meaning: mouths that cannot speak Tell how desperately we need to understand. Wars begin when language fails us. The missiles Fall, undiverted by the right command. Bristol 20.1.03   Ode to all concerned with that `baby milk' factory in Iraq Helên Thomas Bombs go off and so does milk, And both events make you grumpy, But given the choice between the two, I'd rather have milk that's lumpy.   Notwithstanding Harriet Zinnes Notwithstanding and so forth But it is oil and the dark tunnels disappear and the ghosts of tanks the sand covering dead bodies The missiles, where are they stored? And imports of uranium and of aluminum tubes for making missiles and stores of VX nerve gas and United States spy planes? And weapons inspectors The United Nations Oh, they did not include a meeting with President Saddam Hussein Ah yes, stopping weapons proliferation Notwithstanding and so forth   The Day After Seán Street There's no time now, at least we won't notice anyway, seas can't be tidal any more, no time today. No seasons now, and lost the loving interplay of light and dark. No dusk or dawn, no night and day. No future now, all options, choices gone away. Time signatures? Impossible, no songs today. Just sadness now because Time heals, they used to say, and without Time of course our pain will always stay. Stars? No. None now turning, nothing dances today, no winds, there's nothing linear, today's the day all ends, this now is when, this stasis is the way. Transmitters fail, the clocks are still. Time stops today. Mickey Mouse came, Mickey Mouse saw, Mickey Mouse conquered Vincent Tinguely Looking for clean copies in a post apocalypse with skewed scan lines. Whenever I stand up straight my head smears across the screen; still, the soundtrack's good. If I lean at a forty-five degree angle, walk laterally across a grassy knoll, one hand keeping balance, the other against the ground, I almost seem to be what I am. George W. Groovy and his GWGs electric chair their way to the Oh So White House. God, I remember your father and his father before him and all the fathers before that. Brows knit in the media glare, a penchant for current affairs leaving songs like legal briefs littering the clear cut swath of history. The stupid shall inherit the system and everything else shall follow, like unto dominoes or fractal equations. Sail on oh mighty shit of state. It's the end of a thousand years of book-keeping and I'm doing my bit. A gunshot across the bow of the ship of progress. At least the Egyptians had aesthetics, Amerika has all the bad taste money can buy. Power rabid and destructive just out of view, the other side of calm pronouncements. They march in video formation in their desert camouflage, their helmets, those Aryan cutaways. There's nothing worse than a good idea whose time has come and gone. Religion, the car, capitalism, it's all turned into a freak show for the living dead. Actors all around me chasing the script, everybody should just fuck their time away, forget the oil and the geopolitical bullshit. A good, healthy obsession is all anyone really needs, take that shampoo hair and jazzy beer ad body out of the television and re-install it in reality.   Hyperbole For A Large Number Stephen Brockwell Not the hair that you or I have touched but the follicles all lovers hands have combed their fingers through, that number so much greater, say, than all the teeth from speechless mouths that now the fish and birds perceive as stream and garden pebbles. Not the breaths our mother exhaled since mud filled her father's lungs at Amiens but all the breaths of children put to rest since Iphigenia's sacrifice. Not the drops of blood that have fallen on all the battlefields of spring but the particles of mist the sun has scattered from them - enough to weigh your khakis down after a patrol, enough to resurrect your face from its evening mask of ash. Not the number of the stars that burn and burn out like eyes of but the number of the particles that give the stars their fire surely exceeds the number of our crimes.   Mark the Day John Asfour I will light a candle and read Justice books, only to find out that justice will be abused. Light a candle and talk about humanity, only to find out that humanity, in the time of crisis resorts to revenge. I will light a candle and talk to the children, ask them how they tolerate one another, how they abandon play once they disagree and later invite their playmates to the same game. I will light a candle and die for a day, only to see if death would teach us to choose peace over war. un-UN inspected Tony Hillier five hundred marched to Fairford stealth home of wealthy Yanks. Marchers came in peace for peace for Pete's sake. December grey skies threatened but seeing five hundred march to Fairford held back their inconvenient though life-giving rain. Even the cold war gave its respects to these peaceful, non-military marchers out of step with some legs in step with millions of caring minds worldwide to Fairford's barbed wire front door came placards, plays and protest came music, singing and love. Yellow Gloucester bobbies shielded from exposure khaki-violent yanks whose mass destruction weapons lay another day un UN inspected lay, until another day when five mill will march to Fairford with letters and es to MPs and quiet talk with neighbours Why I Want To Be A Baconaut Eileen Tabios Sometimes when I put something full of flavor in my mouth, I close my eyes and feel like I'm flying--drifting into eternity, above and beyond all the craziness of the world below, and I dream that all there is in the world is love, harmony and bacon. --Dan Philips, Owner of The Grateful Palate and "Future Baconaut" A painter lays down his brush to speak the unspeakable -- "The artist painting white flowers against snow while others march is as political as those who laid down brushes to wield placards." Today, I am a poet writing bad verse because a headline blares "Politics and Science Mix Badly." I read its significance as the inexplicable inability to understand BOMBS AND BULLETS KILL, KILL, KILL... I begin to search for "comfort food." I find a "Family-size" package of bacon. I fry and eat them all, welcoming the heat burning my inarticulate tongue. With the most avid mouth I eat and eat -- cramming the strips quicker and quicker into my ravaged, ravaging mouth. I eat them all, I eat them all, I eat them all... The Field George Murray The sky has been aged, is ancient enough now to have lost its teeth, clamping one smooth gum down on the other in a wry horizon's bite. That the violence we have witnessed was not random while the kindness was, how insulting to our attempts at existentialism! Can we not even frighten ourselves with philosophy anymore? That intent could replace randomness as our greatest fear speaks of how far we've come; from there to here, from right to just left of right, from fallen to the lower part of down. The corn that stretches into the distance, once an orderly army, has grown slack, wild, and hoary, each stalk standing at ease instead of attention, and in a place of its choosing, bearing those heavy yellow arms in a silence similar to hushed anticipation. Listen to the wind, the brewing rain, the field of fire, the flight of distant machinery, the coded plan of attack.   Dancer Hugh Hazelton we are watching the dancer spread her arms music body forward into space beyond the light robot armies push through gutted streets fire into straw villages empires of death's heads reflection in poisoned molten rain circuits connected set at command waiting the dancer arms clasped with her companion rolls herself slowly across his back slender shoulders linked through steel-plated insects bullets coming from their eyes there is no Official Violence lies in a conspiracy to kill the dancer slowly raising her head beautiful throat held curved taut against air   Other Demands Colin Morton Peace makes other demands: unfailing years of neverfailingness; the courage to reach into a wound and begin to heal; the bravery of a Barry Armstrong, the blue beret doctor who stood up in the Somali sun and told the truth to power. Retired from the military now, demobbed to the woebegone lakes of northern Ontario, he feuds with the hospital, which would cut corners, and the picture over his mantel at home shows it is conscience the forces drove out, paid off, retired and forgot: in the muted colours of a tent at night somewhere in the Kuwaiti desert the army doctor bends over his task of suturing the shrapnelled brain of an Iraqi soldier wounded at the start of the war and found on the battlefield at its end days later by advancing allied forces. Georgie Porgie Rochelle Ratner Georgie Porgie pudding and pie Kissed the girls and made them cry When the girls come out to play Georgie Porgie runs away. Except it isn't girls, exactly, But women in veils, Who without them might look As old as Mother. And it's not the Father Going after the bully But the Son setting out To avenge the Father. And the oil, of course. When even Tony Blair Turns against him, He pouts. Damn the UN, We offer them a home And this is the thanks we get. They're foreigners, all of them, Not part of this One Nation, Under God.   the war is on the kitchen table Myrna Garanis the war is on the kitchen table the war is on the kitchen table waiting to be read, I brew the coffee black as buildings, charred, collapsed, I load the toast with butter, chew my way through cluster bombs, smear raspberry jaw on screaming headlines which do not disappear I flip the page to guaranteed results: hockey scores, ice dance competitions, there the gains and losses line up in soldierly columns, no wavering parades of souls, filing down disfigured roads, walking, falling, left behind, long after the page is closed The Virtual Total Information Awareness Office Allen Cohen After Sting and Santa Claus The Virtual Total Information Awareness Office is watching you virtually wherever you are. It knows what you are buying. It knows where you are living. It knows where you are working. Every step you take every move you make the Total Information Awareness Office is watching you. It sees you on the street on the train and in the buses. It knows your diseases and measures every drug you take. It knows who your lover is and keeps track of your divorces. It wants to put a chip in your head and give you a number like 666. It counts debts and can collect. It can steal your identity and make you dead The admiral is keeping a data base and he's checking it twice in the total information awareness office. Every step you take every move you make the admiral will be watching you.   The Flying Flag Eric Paul Shaffer Call them mad, call them evil, they are men with ideas like the ones we celebrate on the proper occasions: God, freedom, forgiveness, justice. But none of us love one long. Witness now: we turn again, arms above our hearts, to pledge allegiance to vengeance. Eyes raised to blue, we look without learning the first lesson of the sky, stars, and stripes: The flying flag follows the wind. a short list of short lists devorah major miracles: silk worms pearls thousand year-old redwood trees lightening the sun rising every day the ocean and its tides human existence in a universe that is mostly ice rock and fire tragedies: starving children oil drowned gulls sonar beached whales rape murder uranium dust bullets and bombs that shatter peoples' walls, doorways, beds, heads, hearts, lives remedies: justice peace love Dragonseeds Jem Rolls On a white field stands out the red flower.bodiless names.baying voices of death.the sun catches the dying, exposing their grief and terror and destruction to the looking eyes of dawn...the heavens singed, tattered... bodies dashed on the random reefs of war.the dead and dying lead the living into death .to the boy who falls comes only the sound of other bullets making other death ...death the almighty rolls in remorseless from afar, visiting where it will with impunity, crushing the strongest defences, annihilating the strong the weak the proud the fearful the bold ... perfume of death...men planting rootcrops of death...flames climb high onto the sky... harvesting the dragonseeds of hatred sown by previous generations ... the skeletal arms of the last war's dead youth reaching up through the earth to bitterly strangle the finest hopes of this world turned to nidorous hell, this life turned to victorious death...horizons topple... house of god implodes... stuffing muddy insides back into wound ... the head an eggshell smashed, the brain spattered on the wall, the congealing blood dripping down the dirt . cry bursts out, shearing through the long night with unspeakable terror ... but who shall return them their sons? ... burst bodies ... smiling corpses ... death by lead death by steel death by fire...the life through flutter dyings struggles going going struggling goes...the steam of sweat rising from the already dead into the wintry morning still ...the dead and dying leading the living into death... hours tautened, elongate with fear...daily words with avuncular death sat grinning on the sandbag wall... choking the very lungs and life from a body now cored by death...a world always to be, now ending...but who shall return them their children?... life despoiled crying out up to the emptiness ...have you forgotten yet? look down and swear by the slain of war that you'll never forget...gone howling and screaming, bitter and tormented, into the void of death...a child weeps now for the death he shall die in ten twenty thirty years time as besuited men stride proud and pleased from peace conference hall...river of death overflows... innocence kills innocence fear kills fear youth kills youth strength kills strength father kills father ...no red roses no glows from the hearth no sunday worship no nurtured pie no grimy-faced children ... a sorrow as far as the mind can stretch...a world always to be, now ending.     Water Dragon / Jason Camlot Twelve years ago my love left me for the war. He was no soldier but he swore he must go or else random accidents would destroy our home. Take care of our little one , he said, pointing to this terrarium and the strange sea creature that lived inside on a tiny island, shielded by these thin glass walls. Light from one flickering, yellow bulb was all the food the water dragon needed to survive. Likewise, my hope and comfort fed on the flickering of some remote war. I used to watch the dragon pace the strand, survey the water that I changed religiously, afraid that parasites were there. Once I even touched its skin and let its threadlike tongue draw gleams of tea from a spoon my lover left with me. I clutched my arms in my sleeping gown and watched the monster sleep beneath the little mango tree- fallen now, and petrified. What can it mean? I fear what it can mean. Last night before I went to sleep I thought I heard a whispering and rose to find the amber bulb had left a million glistening shards across the dragon, lying dead. We Accept Vicki Hudspith We accept that things have changed Walk past closed shops to the movies Little League fields hold equipment, debris trucks We accept that everyone Will wear photo ID necklaces Bags and briefcases will be searched, scanned, X-rayed We accept that though we walk through all of this We may still pass through metal detectors to enter a building We accept that we won't eat as well, sleep as sound Too many appointments will produce confusion, inertia We accept that we will check exits Crowds will make us nervous The subway will be a target of captured life Overflowing wastebaskets will be potential hiding places Sirens will make us jump Sudden, loud noises, will irritate, even enrage We've accepted mountains of information but so few facts We've accepted politicians who don't read their mail We have waited and waited for the other shoe to drop Accepted seeing ordinary people in air filter masks And that everything is fine, for now We've accepted so much Will we accept or even recognize When we've given up? Sirens Pat Jourdan They waited for you on the landing on winter nights, black figures ready with guns. on the way to the bathroom, the bedroom, they hunched in the shadows. at the peak of my terror and bravery they disappeared, until next time. (Torches or candles made it worse, menacing shapes against the walls.) They could appear at any time - always be ready to run, leave the plate or the bed. I don't know where we went or what we did. Pyjamas, coats, cold, running; crowded shapes, hushed voices, adults in adult talk. A mattress under the stairs - why? and her making tea at the corner of the iron table, a slice of light showing exhaustion in the set of her shoulders, the radio sacrosanct, the only guardian we had.   Treasured Ghost T. Anders Carson Fields of turmoil sown with pain. Festering wounds hold power. Free the foothold of insanity, as the sacred bush of Golgotha is charred by military observers. pEACE iCON 21c rYAN kAMSTRA The red g-tar is larger than hysteria. Anyone who plays the red g-tar is stealthier than atom bombs. Anyone who sings can have my phone number. Anyone who looks to the blue sky not expecting a sleek all terrain coffin knows that clouds are the river's soldiers. To kill them is poison. Anyone who helped build those buildings keeps them standing long after death. In desert clubs, playing a red g-tar. This is the valley of death. A mass grave inhaled at red lips with a hint of gloss. Or you with us or against us?   Moonblood Sharlie West my wooden pail is split from carrying: mother's at home with brother where have all the people gone? faces of towers in the distance haggard against the landscape pebbles stones cutting rocks of mite dirt mounds and glistening red objects night-circling buzzards the heat is all around people wind across the desert in bands of yellow the colors of coughing and spitting - onions mixed with salt a fog of sulphur sends our heads reeling into dawn likening the empty streets to a doom of lessons a house with gashed shingles and gutted windows an old woman staring out From After The Anti War March Neeli Cherkovski ...The news had been one-sided as usual quick to point out most of the people are for destroying whatever remains of Ur of the Chaldees and the ziggurats of life we are doomed, the National Security Advisor said as much, we either bomb them first or they'll bomb us eventually, we either step into the abyss or get pushed into it The Security Advisor is a nice looking woman, she speaks in clear, even tones unlike her boss who has a mean expression whenever he invokes the name of our patriotic god ... We're victimized by one conspiratorial voice demanding silence, we don't even have to listen, we are asked to surrender our bodies our minds, our children On the way home it's the Secretary of Defense defining our desire, telling us who and what we are, the radio screams and I manage to listen At home the President tells us he is running out of patience like a storm offshore, he is ready able and willing to make his move It's the day after the march, I should have been there, but here I am now walking through my words to where we must reclaim the land and its language Where There's War Ken Waldman Where there's war, there's an anti-war of writers writing, readers reading, veterans recalling what they served for -- to make the world more open for children, to share understanding. Where there's war, there's an anti-war, and in between a heavy warped door old, creaky, and infuriating. Seething veterans, recalling what they served for, can't find sense in making only the poor pay for the needs of the rich -- and suffer dying. Where there's war, there's an anti-war of you and I walking into the music shop, the food store, greeting friends, finding peace in being. We're veterans who recall what we serve for-- not god, not country, but the chore after chore that is the daily chore of living. Where there's war, there's an anti-war-- writers, readers, veterans recalling what we serve for.   The Man of Principle Mr. Social Control I absolutely refuse to go on this insane and murderous suicide bombing mission to Oxford Circus unless we first have the full agreement of the United Nations Security Council. War - the concise version Rachel Bentham contention between people this is how we begin specific conflicts armed hostilities   the "art of war" - it's certainly not a science, but doesn't art create? strategy and tactics been in the wars? war baby war bride war crime that which violates international laws of war as if laws are effective in wartime war cry war of attrition war of nerves war grave war weary, just reading the words.   Harvest Barbara Berman For Amos Oz and David Grossman There are no enemies insist your rugged hands and muscled backs half hidden in olive branches shading women darkly veiled. There are no enemies but the enemy of a piece of fruit, its oil, its balm for the rest of us who need to be so brave. Untitled Tom Bell Dearest Angel, I have a story to tell you, today. They just told me that pill popping pilots are protecting you from terrorists. We've watched television together, you and I. I know you didn't understand all you saw, but also felt your fear of the pill poppers. I don't want to hand your care over to the world out there. It's not all hippos hoppin'. It's not all mamas shopping at the mall and grampapas bopping. Be strong, dearest. Love, Grampa clash of civilisations? Ilija Trojanow (on the bombay suburban) swallow your pride an elbow in point choke on the last morsel of comfort there is no doubt we all are one shedding our skins to reach the exit pick up the odour like a callus a cold strain with the flow catching a whiff of border when the jostling starts grab the waist of the nearest prayer stumble to shanti to amin body-reading your way onto the platform protected by union from another other. All Those Home Spun Places David Plumb The old man's fist thumps the dais again. Flags wave. Slick cars stream cool. The price of gas runs down, runs up. Cell phones ring. Oil Oil Oil screams the endless whopper click click game show of them all. Bombs bomb bomb pipelines run who knows where the stink started? What do we dance on this moonless night of cut off thumbs and business as usual? Peace Poem Charles Potts "The young men and women standing against the war have made a green place in my heart," sang Robert Duncan protesting the Vietnam War in a former time but in the same place. The earth doesn't need us; we need the earth. Let us try to act as holy as we'd like to think we are. War is the attempt to control the economic future by force. There are better ways to be secure than by making paranoia public policy. Intellect and moral integrity are under assault and must survive. Where the powerful sleep in fits and starts with their troubled dreams of death, the death of their system with its interlocking privileges, no amount of security devices can ever make safe. They want a stage to pose upon from the depths of their gated communities where they can throw fear into the hearts of others to eclipse the fear in their own. We are safe in love with truth willing to march, live and die by and for it. Peace is the way you live your life. Imminent Fred Marchant even the heavy machinery seems tentative, as if the engines would like to quit, as if the road itself was glass, as if iron or ice or anything solid we touch wants only to fall apart, give way in relief the jets cut across the morning nothing seems to stop them, says the pessimist but sometimes I think the cold deepens forever and more, and like us even the bombers will be grounded and all good pilots will want to stay inside go nowhere all day, speak with no one they do not love 1/23/03 Brainstorm Bruce A. Jacobs We've got to Um, Protect families children Weapons mass destruction Yeah, that's it, A war fought from An SUV. Stomp Saddam In time for soccer practice. Trust me, they'll buy it. Uh-oh: North Korea. Shit. Okay: Um, It's different. Help me here, Colin. Possession isn't everything. No proof he'll use them. Huh? Contradiction? Well, Shit. You tell me How to duck a fucking A-bomb. Okay. Okay. Think Story. It's all in the Telling: Mustard gas becomes Weapons Mass Destruction. New Hiroshima becomes Matter of Discussion. See? We'll rev up an SUV, Splat Saddam, give Kim the finger And peel out. He'll never dare. Damn! That's it. That's definitely It. Miranda Rights Marcos Flores You have the right to remain silent. Silent about the injustice that exists, about underground modes and methods of survival. About love and compassion and peace and giving and sharing. And all that this earthly experience gives, what life's cycles bring and more. You have the right to remain silent. And be arrested for the homeless, for the sick, for the lame, and the poor, for those faceless, nameless, invisible human beings suffering, right outside your nation's living room door. You have the right to remain silent. And go home to your family while political tyrants plot paths to war. You have the right to remain silent. And live your life.living and looking through glass. In a pseudo democracy, forgetting the past, forgetting to pay homage to all those things that truly make men, women and children free. You have the right to remain silent. And not ask questions, when you already know in your heart the answers. You have the right to remain silent. Because action is needed.words have no meaning.time is fleeting. The world and its peace.our community.they're calling for more, not war. January 2003   Dubya Anabasis Richard Peabody   Dubya Anabasis. Original name, George W[alker] Bush. (1946-?) 43rd President of the United States (2000-?) and the man who started World War III. It's difficult to understand how Dubya became president. His Republican Party (GOP) was famous for rewriting history in the style of evil dictators Stalin and Hitler before them. What we know now, post World War III, is that he was installed into power after a disputed election in which he lost the popular vote but won the electoral vote. A petty criminal, it appears he was a pawn of the corporations who expected to get rich on military excursions into Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, and North Korea in order to corner the market on the world's oil reserves at a time when natural resources were dwindling. The son of the 41st President (George Herbert Walker Bush) Dubya is thought now to have been a puppet of his father and his father's staff. He disappeared in the fallout following the vaporization of Washington, D.C. For years it was claimed that he died in a bunker in West Virginia, or was hiding in caves in Texas or Argentina. (See Dick Cheney, Chomsky, Gulf War, Heroin Smuggling in Southeast Asia, Iran-Contra, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Zinn). Dubya appears briefly as a Taniwha in Keri Waratah's rock opera Whiro, he is presented as a bland and puritanical man of relentless torpor, the "child is father to the man" who gradually mutates into a mythical demon, as contrasted to the heroic characters like Good Soldier Schweik, or Xing Zi famous for his magical feather cloak. Dubya is to this day a curse word passed down by generations of Maori people. (See also: fuck, merde, scheisskopf, walker, wang ba dan, et al.)     Talking With The Cat About World Domination The Day George W. Bush Almost Choked On A Pretzel Kevin Higgins Now that pretzel's gone and done something an expert like you never would - loosening its hold a split-second too soon - I think it's time we revised our strategy. Just sitting back waiting for the big collapse? Face facts. It isn't happening. If there's a job to be done, why not us? This time tomorrow we'll be in Washington telling Bush to come out with his hands up. Faced with me and you, Puss, I bet he'll just crumble. And we'll whisk him off to Guantanamo Bay where he'll share a cage with the Emir of Kuwait. I see from the frown wrinkling your brow, you're worried, perhaps, how Mariah Carey fans everywhere might react. Too late for all that. To put it in terms I think you'll understand: after the years wasted here in this litter-tray, it's time to deliver for me and you, Puss. Our battle-cry? Something snappy? Like? Yes, I have it! Repeat after me: Don't make me angry, Mr Magee. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry. Yellow Jackets John Rybicki I inhale this yellow bell, too late to warm the car engine to the emergency room. I kicked the dirt from a woodchuck hole, and thought, that soft tear of the arrow through the cardboard deer in my yard: woosh it went through the lungs, that wind hole just like love. Watch with me as the dead leave their bodies lunging like Astaire up no staircase at all. I'm searching for the arrow when those yellow jackets swirl up from the scrub grass to twang their stingers into my vocal chords, which need cutting, of course. All over my eyelashes, in my ear lobes and hair, these little people with their harpoons. See your cartoon Johnny pantomime a man on fire, into my house and flailing my shirt about, my love up from her own nest of a nap, woken by Jesus Christ, I'm a tall building, and , they're all over me. Shocked awake the way soldiers spring to when bullets rip through their tents. She's swatting yellow jackets off my blue jeans and stomping embers on the carpet. I have gasoline. I'll pour it down their hole tonight and light the match. Late night another tickle along my throat I swat down on my knees now with my Buddha, my boo-dawg beside me sniffing the carpet to find that yellow spasm on its back. I swat swat swat at it with my tennis shoe. My hound awes over my power, God knows he might be next. D on't be scared booger , I say and we lower our noses together to sniff the little carcass. At least with the crusades all we had were swords to butcher each other. Let's see what we have learned: abcdefg. here we go again. A Verse to War J. R. Carpenter I am afraid (of what will happen of the rhetoric of the silence of not knowing). I am afraid I don't know what to contribute. I am afraid (of destruction of waiting of doing nothing of adding fuel to the flames). I am afraid I don't have any answers. I am afraid (of trivializing of propagandizing of margins of error). I am afraid it is but a meager thing to add a verse adverse to war. Anna's Meal Nuala Ní Chonchúir If it had not been for the fighting in Dagestan the two of us might never have met: the tinned meat of the Semikarakorsk processing plant and my digestive system. I was invited to share a meal with the troops in a border cellar, two flights down, and if the darkness wasn't enough to scare, the slovenly guardian of the kitchen was. She disembowelled rows of unmarked tins, slicing the aluminium as easy as silk, "Tin 23, rotten. Tin 39, the same. Tin 42, for you. Try a sample of our daily fare, and tell Moscow how we feast," and she plunged the blade through each tin, so I sniffed and licked - what else could I do?- then spewed my bile all over her floor. The soldiers earn twenty-two roubles a day, for no medicine, no fuel, no faith; and for hours of ducking bullets their bellies are rewarded with putrid meat from the government's stores. If it had not been for the fighting in Dagestan the two of us might never have met: the tinned meat of the Semikarakorsk processing plant and my digestive system.   Rhetoric for Peace Susan Hankla Let us examine the loneliness of war, how when something is ripped it can never be restored. How we make ourselves bigger than God and then, that done, carry all we love in frayed coat pockets - sometimes whole villages end lining coats. Why do it? Why rip, then think things will be better? Why strip earth, never to build it up again? Why say goodbye, wipe out memory, civilization? We're more same than not - DNA isn't reserved for Capitalists. Why can't we stop and live again? Why do we cling to death? Why hasten the leaving of birds and miracles? No Seasons, Only Weather Meghan Nuttall Sayres You say about life in Kabul that you remember a childhood of orchards and roses. I see you in sepia tones, Ramazan, in this newspaper photograph: white turban, beard and robes. Are you proof that it is possible to carry on when your children have been blown up by a single bomb? Javaid 7 Zamoor 6 Hidayat 4 Mushabana 1. Your eyes asking will Allah hold them; restore peace "like it was," wish the pomegranate trees into bloom? Leavening Kate Newman Walk beside us hear our time. Know that a perfect purchase is heaven here as leavening bread on Clark Street, likewise the pane gathering light on the east line down. If I catch a spark of knowledge on Tuesday, maybe Wednesday ever after I will give thanks. Lie as I have not lain sit without disdain. Crows shelter at the smack centre of the four way on Main while somewhere a lark sings what will not be heard. Gulf War - Aftermath Mary Trafford " Depleted uranium is the super weapon of the `90s: [it was] used in the Gulf War and conflict in Kosovo." One decade down this hazardous way wrings a freak show out of Iraq, where silver bullets of depleted uranium linger in dust and debris, detritus of war, infect the babies; split atoms / split genes, and a toddler stares at life's cruel turn through a single eye - all that nature can bestow of beauty; twisted hairpin turns of chromosomes, unlike anything scientists have ever seen, while young mothers bleed out fetal remains: unrecognizable might-have-beens the teratology of war. A Dark Little Psalm Against War John B. Lee "poem written after seeing a documentary on the rise and fall of Hitler" lost between fear and the fairgrounds to the cult of fire and the idolatry of death these skull-browed men in red and black bowing to accept bouquets from bare-legged little flower girls blowing almost away in thin summer dresses or patting the forehead fidelity of dogs their own fuhrer in final scorched repose his uniform coat his pair of pajamas a burned body in a bomb crater in April in Berlin bearing the tight-boned grin of eternity with sixty-million souls for company, remembering those sentimental interludes that poisonously sweet tea-cake ambrosia tasting of the smoke of burning flesh and the ash-drift confection like a Christmas evening snowfall oh, the wrong gods are in the mountains above the overcast or riding a red river of crushed roses when weeping and harp-willowed is the world it dashes our children on stones.   Even Nathalie Handal Nothing is even, even this line I am writing, even this line I am waiting in, waiting for permission to enter the country, the house, the room. Nothing is even, even now that laws have been drawn and peace is discussed on high tables, and even if all was said to be even I would not believe for even I know that nothing is even - not the trees, the flowers, not the mountains or the shadows. our nature is not even so why even try to get even instead let us find an even better place and call it even. Still True? Clive Matson Yesterday I dreamt the sky turned orange and white, spawning giant mushrooms. I jumped into a ditch. Held my head in my hands for a few seconds until everything went. Today the western hills are hazy green and brown. I have things to do. People wander in and out of shops. Sun shines on the shimmering road as if nothing happened.   This is the War That George Fought E. Russell Smith This is the land where the war was fought that George fought. This is the oil that comes from the land where the war was fought that George fought. This is the tractor that runs on the oil that comes from the land where the war was fought that George fought. This is the farmer who drives the tractor that runs on the oil that comes from the land where the war was fought that George fought. This is the son who lies in the sand and this is the oil that burns on the land. This the war that George fought. the killing fields Di Brandt but don't we all dear Em doesn't everyone have cut off hands gripping knives in their too big heads aren't we all blood crazy thirsty in our midnight selves to avenge the curdled mother's milk rotted on our parched cracked tongues convinced the death of the little princes & princesses in the baby tower & the enemy their king will release us from her untimely abandonment like the Pharoah like Herod like Hitler like Bush is this a dagger divine Will Shakespear said giving the words to regal Lady MacBeth I see before me handle toward my hand come let me clutch thee we must be able he taught us to imagine at least this much darkness in us & then & then Em then to wrestle down the spirits who would delude us into attacking the living breathing world turning to face the hot fanged wolves that haunt us who if we're brave enough would rather play & full leafed trees dancing toward us & the frozen child huddled asleep deep in her forest bed shivering in slow thaw as we remember ourselves her father her mother & the enemy our sister brother Terror on Warism Ian Ayres   Bloody warmongering perpetuates the endless cycle of bullets >>>>>> of weapons >>>>>> of mass destruction * Unthinking obedience is the point at which democracy breaks down: DE C A Y m o c r We must speak out when we feel our / government / is / wrong. We have that right. In a time of terror, PROTEST IS PATRIOTISM Our flag isn't some bloody rag to be waved by politicians. The red, white & blue is for Arab Americans, too. S T O P T H E W A R ! S T O P A N N I H I L A T I O N ! Bombing people only fuels anger, resentment, & desire for revenge. & let me tell you, there's nothing casual about casualties. Such rhetoric that deafens us to slaughter blinds us