October 27, 2023

Peace Building

Can we stop believing in armies and guards and soldiers and policing? Can we clear the road to go another direction? Away from mass displays of power and might in the form of tanks and weapons of mass destruction.

Can we be dazzled, awed and impressed by our own and others’ ability to sing, walk, convert combustion engines to solar power? Can we see through clean sparkling windows; can we be dazzled by water: seas, oceans, streams, lakes, rivers, creeks? Can we open each and every threat? Can we open each and every threat face to face in open trust?

Can we sit with each other and make lists of what scares us? Tall people with beards, unfamiliar shades of flesh, people going hatless in winter and wearing coats in summer; where does our distrust begin?

When, how does exploring and curiosity turn into interrogation and opposition? How do we deescalate hatred fueled by adrenaline fear? Can we open the grip, run the energy?

Can we run and run and run and jump and scream until we can breathe free hear free see free into the face of threat, recognize our face, sit down with our face, rest, eat, talk with our face. Can we continue clearing our road being dazzled, awed and impressed by our ability to just be?

Living Peacefully Every Day

Don’t make another bullet, no ammo holders, no chambers for bullets to pass through. No more bullets, not one last one for one last shooting. Let names fade, let children live; erase the names on those bullets: John, Maria, Shatequa, Carlos, Arianna, Alice, Dimitri, Yaseen, George, Yacov, Susan, Kwasi, Mark, Nihm, Mohammed, Yaso, Harrison, Rachel, Paolo, Yuri, Ahmed, Khadisha. Sand shrapnel, let filing dust strengthen road to peace. Lay water pipe lines with pistol barrels and rifle barrels; irrigate dry.

Bare your arms; reveal your beautiful loving arms. Use them to carry, use them to embrace the wounded. Bare your arms as you build peace. Bare your strong arms as your brain tackles the art of peace, the skill of resolution, the patience of conversation, the task of rethinking. Bare your arms, prepare your arms as you ready to dig through right, move boulders containing your rightness about rightness that becomes your every breath and thought, that you kill for, die for, live for.

Let’s get naked, wrestle with mud until covered completely, until we’re all indistinguishable mud, like the dead and wounded spilling blood and bone. Enemies and innocents, combatants and artists and musicians and skaters and dishwashers and mothers and planters and lovers all; the same blood and bone and torn flesh in every city, town, hamlet, village, in every state, government, country, republic; the same victory, the same tears. Bare arms, become naked in the mud, wrestle with right in mud until earth and dry fashion you into sculpture born of the same mud; soft wet, squeezed through your hands and fingers, slightly gooey harmless mud.

Don’t make another bullet, bomb, weapon.