Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Posts Tagged ‘war’

After the Bomb Blast, a poem

Posted in poetry, tagged , , , , , , , , on June 28, 2024| Leave a Comment » 

There are two days in the year that we can not do anything, yesterday and tomorrow .
Mahatma Gandhi 

After the Bomb Blast

Where is the cameraman’s face, 
as he zooms in on the hungry bleeding child?
Is the small boy frightened of a creature
carrying a camera? Does that person
bring bread and bandages? 

Then the camera moves to the next atrocity
and delivers sensationalist stories for the 6 o’clock news?

On the other side of the screen 
viewers chew carryout pizza 
and wait for the next commercial
to get more beer from the refrigerator.

Where is the cameraman’s face?
A minute-long film
can’t tell the full story. Somehow,
may the captured moment ignite help
and not more hunger and pain.  


originally published in For a Better World 2024

Read Full Post »

My Name Is World Hunger, a poem

Posted in poetry, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on July 29, 2023| Leave a Comment »

“It is important for people to realize that we can make progress against world hunger, that world hunger is not hopeless. The worst enemy is apathy.” – Reverend David Beckmann, president of Alliance to End Hunger.

My Name Is World Hunger

My name is world hunger.

I am both well-known and ignored.

I appear anywhere around the globe

where war has assaulted and destroyed

dignity and peace. I live where

there is too much or too little water.

I flourish where greed sings

every important song and

silences smaller voices.

I was created, not born.

Like disease, I am not normal.

Yet, I long to be healed,

to be in tune with the whole,

rounded into softness,

not rounded inside the bellies

of my victims.

My name is world hunger.

I did not choose existence.

May I slip inside history,

remembered as a shameful plague,

corrected and shaped

inside a power known as peace.

I am willing, so willing

to belong to the past,

gone, but never forgotten.

 

 

 

published in For A Better World 2023

Read Full Post »

One Less War, Eventually

Posted in inspiration, tagged , , , , , , , , , on October 9, 2022| 1 Comment » 

An eye for an eye will only make the whole world blind. 
― Mahatma Gandhi

Men willing to break their own arms
rather than race into fire and death,
war games played without winners.
The news spreads in endless loops
on screens with color but no dimension
while some watchers gasp, yet
others pass a bowl of snacks,
grateful the pain strikes in another
language, continent, time zone.

Human beings willing to reach
beyond a huff or pant. One country
touching another. One person
letting peace stretch beyond a closed
room. We will not let war
cage the world with hate. Or apathy.
Or depression. It will take time, but,
let us discover peace. Together.

Read Full Post »