Born to Strife and Contention

Hamas Hangs Children to Act as Human Shields

when will and passion are removed,
when resistance double-talk
is branded onto never-ending anxiety,
when determination and satisfaction
are as fundamental as food,
a mind-blowing similitude is imprinted
of one’s self crawling over pulverized concrete,
as the gnawing sound of military boots
carries out abductions for victims
headed toward open graves.

why make weapons of destruction,
if not to inaugurate a bloody war,
to spate abuse and death by genocide,
to create statistics of shelved body parts
and to encourage irrational ideology?

chilling to the teeth,
tranquil in scorching sun,
courage is to be remembered.
dogmas and –isms draw us
into the non-poetry of decomposition.
coexistence mutates into an abstract,
bipolar state of observance and malevolence.

when level-headed ethics never prevail,
and macho men rampage with sincerity,
madness undermines every rational practice
of benignity and simultaneity.

left untenanted, in our public world,
impotent diplomatic development
extorts us to applaud like a game show audience.

when the statistical death count,
and the itemizing of landing points,
and the remembrance of range
and the particularization of cultural transformations
is so unlimited that no one can distinguish
between the beginnings and the end of combat,
then puerile decapitation shall fail to enrage.

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Hear this on Sound Cloud

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Written for:

Poetics – War Poetry

Today, Gabriella prompts a war poem.

Image credits: HAMAS TERRORISTS USE CHILDREN AS HUMAN SHIELDS IN GAZA In Stand Up For The Truth

Hurricane and Jordan: White House Protectors

Hurricane and Jordan the Belgian Malanois security dogs that help stop White House intruders this week.

invitation to White House, never sent.
unknown suspect calls for attack:
an issue of trespasser versus master.

trained to highest degree,
their world is to bark an alert.
watchdog inclination; vigilance strong
sufficiently powerful to kill a bear
they might, to kill, as well as guard.

peaked species. barking in this case,
would not protect at word of command.
an act of whim, seen in expression.
lead removed, in existential wind.

were punched ‘til they cried,
but held on, with calcified canines
tearing flesh and bringing down
the gatecrasher.

praised with delight for
performance, outstanding
impressed by a touch.

though trained to pounce,
each would rather wave a tail, actively
through the wind, beckoning stray cats
to play in the garden.
life is not easy,
when always on alert.

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Hear this on Sound Cloud

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Written for:

Meeting the Bar ~ I’ve Got a Little List

Today, Tony Maude prompts a list poem.

Image credits: Meet White House guard dogs Hurricane and Jordan In USA Today

Hubble — Poem in Pleiades Form

To celebrate the 21st anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope’s deployment into space, astronomers at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md., pointed Hubble’s eye at an especially photogenic pair of interacting galaxies called Arp 273. The larger of the spiral galaxies, known as UGC 1810, has a disk that is distorted into a rose-like shape by the gravitational tidal pull of the companion galaxy below it, known as UGC 1813. This image is a composite of Hubble Wide Field Camera 3 data taken on December 17, 2010, with three separate filters that allow a broad range of wavelengths covering the ultraviolet, blue, and red portions of the spectrum.

Hubble

Hazy tidal bridge with
hot and bright newborn stars
has lopsided structure
highly warped from the plane.
How this spiral pattern
hauls swaths of blue-jewel stars
hitched to galactic disks.

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Hear this on Sound Cloud

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Written for:

MeetingTheBar: Pleiades

Today, Vandana Sharma prompts us to write a Pleiades Form Poem. This consists of seven lines, each line starting with the same letter as the title. The title is a single word. Preferably it should be about space, which is NO PROBLEM for me.

Image credits: NASA Rose of Galaxies