Hello? Hello? Oh. Yeah. I think I'm ready. Hello? Hello? Hello? Hello. Hello. All right. All right.
Here we are. This is the beginning of Peace Week. And I am honored to be here. And I'm honored to be
representing Peace Week in the Poorhouse.
And we are having a poetry reading. And right now, I would like to start out by introducing Thomas Tukarski.
And he is right here. Thank you all for coming tonight to talk about peace.
My first poem is actually about war, but it's a different kind of war. It's a kind of war that I could
support. About five years ago, Patricia Coleman put out a call for people to write poems about biscuits.
And I wrote this poem at that time. It's called Biscuit Wars. You know biscuits, those little wafers
that we have for breakfast? Biscuit Wars. What if bullets were biscuits shot from pastry guns? If land
mines were unbaked dough that exploded,
into warm, moist biscuits. What if snipers hidden in trees and tall buildings threw down biscuits on
the unsuspecting enemy? Wouldn't that be a blow for peace? Biscuit bombs would be such a surprise as
they bounced off soldiers' helmets. Parents would sigh with relief. Their children were finally out
of harm's way. Wouldn't it be a better kind of war if medals for bravery were homemade biscuits
of various shapes and colors filled with jam or wildflower honey. If giant statues of the biscuit were
erected in plazas and public squares around the world, biscuit generals would be welcomed with open
arms instead of deadly arms. Instead of guns and tanks, if we sold tons of ready-mixed biscuits to needy
countries and rebel groups, wouldn't hostilities decrease?
Suppose some rogue dictator got out of hand, couldn't noble nations of biscuit lovers everywhere, sit
him down over a homey meal of biscuits and gravy, and explain in no uncertain terms, stop this nonsense,
or you will eat nothing for the rest of your life but cold, freeze-dried, shrink-wrapped spam. That
horrific thought would certainly cause him to repent.
I believe biscuits could easily win the Nobel Peace Prize. For peace and welfare of all peoples, wouldn't
frequent outbreaks of steaming neighborly biscuits made with baking powder have a more nurturing effect
than the heartburn of metallic gunpowder wars? Among the most peaceful creatures on the earth are trees.
And they make life possible and unfortunately in many parts of the world we are at war with trees. We
must learn to make peace with trees. And this poem is my small bow to these peaceful creatures. It's
called Merging. A huge oak tree, lifeless in January, exposing massive trunk and thick spreading limbs
that thin to the smallest twigs
to the finest tips that merge with the vastly blue sky. Beneath the tree is a scattering of small birds,
weak winter voices and lean saplings. What is a tree but the roots of the sky and the fingers of the
earth quietly holding the world together? War brings out many kinds of heroes, violent and nonviolent.
This poem is based on a true story and a real person by the name of Smilovic. Perhaps you've heard of
him. The event occurred during the Bosnian War, and it is about a different kind of hero. It's called
a war story. Smilovic played the cello in a bomb crater for 22 days, one day for each person killed
by the blast. Then he played among the ruins of Sarajevo
to the tears and stares of all the war's victims until the cynics who could not bear his music of shame
threw him out. Smilovich was connected to a different sky than URI. He played his music with eternal
pain and hope. Though the dead were not revived and the killing continued, patiently from the tomb of
war rose a song of resurrection, the persistent memory of peace.
And then finally, if we are to have peace within ourselves, among ourselves, and peace with the earth,
we must begin to think in different ways than the way we think now. And the natural world has much to
teach us. I began the search for peace within myself by asking questions. This poem is called Another
Way. If you were immured in melancholy,
And I gave you a field of purple asters in autumn, each mauve disc encircling a bright yellow center
like the light of morning, a field of a thousand mornings. Would you take them with you into winter?
When the press of hours pushed like hairy crowds at your back and I showed you to a wide shore where
blue waves curled in line after line, scrambling and swirling over boulders,
pulling back to reform fluently, and I offered this rhythm as my gift of time. Would you call me impractical?
If you felt as empty as a line sketched on the crumpled scrap of paper, I told you of an old field where
seed-ranked growth of mazy colors woven with webs and songs overflowed, and I said that you could walk
in this fullness and swell like a chrysalis.
Would you dismiss me with incredulous eyes? I know an old apple tree twisting and gnarled that bears
sparse fruit. If I made you a seat beneath its thick and graceful limbs to nourish you with its age,
would you smile but think me foolish? If you were subdued by grief and I asked you to come with me where
waves rise and break like imagination,
Could you sit silent remembering until your sadness became the cry of seabirds? And if you grew haughty
and I asked you to leave your cities of glittering props and stay alone in a shadowless forest night,
could you wait there as the trees for the splintered light of morning? Thank you and go in peace.
penetrating to all of us and words to think about. And our next speaker is Thomas DeKarste. No. Oh,
Ray Zidonic. Yeah, I'm sorry. Sorry, Ray. Hi, I'm Ray Zidonic.
The first poem that I'm going to read is entitled A Nortista, and it's dedicated to Sister Dorothy Stang.
Dorothy Stang was an American nun who was an advocate for the poor and for the environment in the Para
state of Brazil. And a couple of years ago, she was killed by the thugs hired by rich landowners down there
are the same ones who are decimating the rainforests even as we speak. I noticed in the latest news
that they've arrested several people and they've gone to prison, but the ones who are behind it, the
higher ups are the ones that are getting released on appeals and so forth. And the people, the lower
soldiers are the ones who are still in prison. So justice is not fully done yet. Al Nortista.
Above the kingdoms of mud, the white bird soars. These peasants have trudged 20 miles under a gunpowder
sky. Lean men in rags, girls with ancient eyes carrying hopeless children bundled in dreams. Their patience,
their relentless faith, the deepest of mysteries. Strangers with guns,
horrors of greed and waste and violence, the spoilers who can never stop the beauty that surrounds them
like the rush of a great river, the holiness that rises from the earth itself like the breath of God.
Their souls will be left to wither in the equatorial sun, just spoiled fruit.
on a lighter note. Small Pleasures. The small pleasures, a dry, quiet place to sleep and read, access
to trees and water, food and laughter, the open air, gentle words, time. At Cedar Creek Farm,
We took a walk at sundown through bare trees, across frozen ground, down to the creek, cold and hard
as a diamond. We talked of peace, glad we'd remembered gloves. Later at the wood stove, we settled in
to watch the sky redden through the western wall. As the dog fell asleep and we lapsed into a mutual
silence, I thought,
Let the hope begin right here. Oh, brother, subtitle Pacific Political Polemic. In whose name, friend,
does the war machine operate? In your name, America, the teacher from Topeka, the realtor from Poughkeepsie,
the retired steel worker from Youngstown, the disabled veteran from Seattle,
In your name, Congress has exposed its war chest, the homeless grandmother in Oakland, the CEO vacationing
in Aruba. All of us load the cartridges into our bank accounts, launch the reconnaissance drones with
our investment portfolios. We point the rifles with our indifference, reboot the weapons systems with
our capacity to deny. In our silence, we languish.
and self-deception we linger. And when all else fails, we just gasp up the car and go. Vox populi. It
is the definition of wonder that we are here on this crooked road. Here the journeyman of truth must
now trace out the elusive outlines of peace.
After all, the blade is a weapon to the soldier, but a tool to the surgeon. In the end, we all share
the same breath, that primal breath that is the mother of time. And my last poem, Martin Luther King
Day, 2008. Nina Simone sang, the king of love is dead.
Her words still caress the walls of empty rooms in Harlem. Hers is the voice of the eternal outsider,
forever on the threshold but never crossing. The mountaintop speech, the last he would ever make, traveling
at the speed of hope to the end of the known universe, like a burning star growing younger, ever younger.
until it is born. Thank you. Wow. Our next poet is Patricia Siegel.
Good evening. I had planned on reading a story from the Tree of Peace, and instead I pulled an excerpt
from it that I'd like to read first. Dagana Wita, also known as Hiawatha, spoke long ago of the great
lie that has become rooted in the hearts and consciousness of the world's peoples. He called the lie
the Tree of War,
Asking the people to eradicate the habits of the tree of war by releasing the habits of warfare and
violence from ourselves and all nations, by replacing the lie with the truth of love. Working together,
we have the power to plant ideas and actions to seed and create a loving, sustainable world. From a
sacred people, we all came.
And we all came from a sacred people, even if we have forgotten the knowledge of our soul stories drawn
as thin starlight strides, it is all timeless inner knowing. Within we hold the only key anchored upon
ancestral and genetic memories, swimming invisible and silent, twining perfect threads that bind one
generation into the next.
We are all partners of unspoken desire, ever to search creation cradling shadow dreams. We are manifest
seeds of possibilities, capable of new snow wholeness. We travel through what we call living, mostly
unaware and untouched by our true selves, bypassing memories of truth that ache our dreams.
and weigh our hearts with desires, feeling heavy like water, washing strong like black syrup sap, sweet
and sticky. Try to remember inner streams hidden like shadow rivers coursing deep within our earthly
bodies, ever flowing us toward opportunities for sacred knowing.
Turn hidden corners with conscious understanding. Place the taste of stars upon our skins. Let mindfulness
pull on our tongues. From a sacred people, we all came. Always each of us dancing toward the breath
from whence we came.
Through timeless sacred sources where once we knew the knowledge of riding light, memories of wholeness
cut through shadow shroud, knowingness of inseparable being, let each determine inner sense of peace,
inner sense of being, of love flowering open like a rose or lotus to the radiant self source emerge.
Say it like a mantra or we might yet find our way. Written after watching a PBS nature documentary about
a life study of humans through the observation of baboons. In some remaining ancient languages where
no word for war exists, like the disappearing Nahuatl, where the closest they get to addressing the
heinous violence of
human against life is through the word pakelistili, which translates to no war. I like to use it like
a mantra, pakelistili, pakelistili, pakelistili. Sometimes I say it in rounds of seven as I move through
the day. It brings my attentive mind back to sweet, lilting sounds of hope. The way pakelistili rolls
easily across my tongue,
Consider it like a rare, rediscovered fruit, Pakalistili, blossoming just for this moment,
the next day, next year, beyond into the next seven generations, and farther still, Pakalistili.
When aggressive male baboons who tortured and attacked females, less aggressive males and children died
out after greedily consuming diseased and poisoned foods, leaving none for the other tribal members,
they left behind a gentler, transformed community of nurturing females and males to assume leadership,
pakalistili. Immediately, this skittish
culture of violent uncertainty grew into a thriving, playfully content culture and community where,
even as decades have passed, these baboons still do not allow violent, dominating males or females to
become established within their community of supportive accord. Remember, this is a true story, Pakalistili.
I recall another true story, that of the hundredth monkey. There are others among us who recall it too.
Like a mantra, Pakalistili means we find a way to know war on ourselves, our home earth and co-inhabitants.
Pakalistili, Pakalistili, Pakalistili. A dreamer I am. With all who imagine the possibility of no war,
Now and for what I hope we may dance as a real tomorrow, Pakalistili. In my dreams, I see chrysalis
around us. We might yet find our way collectively toward peace as we open to heart meaning of the Nahuatl
word, Pakalistili. Thank you.
an overwhelming thing for me to do because every single person that comes up here and speaks just takes
me to another place. And now I would like to introduce Elizabeth Hoover and Mitch Rice will be doing
the music.
to thank the organizers for putting this together and also for inviting me to read. And when I was invited
to read, I started looking through all of my poetry. And I realized that I don't really have anything
that I would characterize as peace poetry. I have tons of anti-war poems. But it seems that none of
them would be characterized as peace poetry. And at first, I was really disappointed in myself. But
I think it attests to the fact that
Our society has become so militarized, and the military is so entrenched in our understanding that it's
nearly impossible to imagine what peace would mean. This will expose my youth, but I was in eighth grade
during Operation Desert Storm, and we've been bombing Iraq on and off ever since. So it's almost impossible
for me to imagine what the world would be like. So I think it's really important for us to come together
and try to imagine it.
I'm going to lead off. This is called the altar. And it seems to me that one of the ways that we convince
people to participate in war is to create myths about what being in war does to you, and it makes you
heroic and it makes you glorious. And it seems like these myths have been going on for millennium. This
is based on the Odyssey, the final episode in the Odyssey. The Altar. Odysseus's final task was to walk
into the bronze wheat and ore nested next to his shoulder mound as people came from their houses like
schools of curious minnows. Walk.
until a farmer who never knew the surprise of salt asked if he was carrying a winnowing fan. There he
was to stop, plant the ore, and erect an altar to the hoary god who had dogged him, clawing his men
one by one from his ship to helix, unwept in the current. The ore stuck from the altar like the arm
of a drowning man,
as he walked lighter back home to his newly forged soldier son and his wife's weaving arms, while the
altar grew dreams of the ocean that splashed over the lintels, sprinkling the sun's who woke, crunching
the salt foam that tipped the crests of their desire to follow the astringent path the stranger left
in the air and make the air stranger there.
They journeyed through forest felled for ships, toward the flickering maws of smelting ovens, the bright
spin of shields, the netted hull of blades. Such willing fodder, following the promise of adventure,
the promise that their churning needs would be sated, husks blown away on the sea as they stand, golden
at the prow, shearing through the blue to glory.
This piece is called Helen's Face. Contrary to popular belief, Helen's Face did not launch 1,000 ships.
It, in fact, launched 1,186 ships. And we know this because the poet of the Iliad cataloged each one,
naming its home cove. Homer spends 300 verses
giving each harbor a lineage, noting how each tree shuddered into the shipmaker's yard. Even the fishing
villages that contributed only one ship never to return are mentioned. After all, they too had to marshal
an entire forest, leave themselves surrounded by stumps, their hills blank as those fields in Iowa dotted
with hangars
where women in floppy shower caps pat the belly of the bomb before cross-hatching it with chalk, hoisting
it on a chain, and sailing it across the room where straw-lined boxes weight like mangers. Didn't that
little cue ball Eisenhower say something about this, about how much each weapon cost in terms of wheat?
No matter, they are weighed out in vague tonnage
somewhere in the Midwest, in places that look oddly familiar when we drive by. But who could name them?
Who remembers their names if we ever even knew them? We have trees and faces in spades. Thank you. I
just want to thank Elizabeth for bringing out the fact that with peace, there is also war.
There is an epic we cannot get away from. Thank you for bringing it into perspective for us. And our
next poet.
As we all know, many songs are poems, and quite a few poems are songs. And I'm going to bring the two
together. This one is by Ewan McCall, well-known folk singer of Scotland, songwriter, singer-songwriter.
And some of you should know it, so sing along if you feel like it.
I just dreamed, I never dreamed before. I dreamed the world had all agreed to put an end to war. I dreamed
I saw this mighty realm was filled with women and men. The paper that they were signing said they'd
never fight again.
paper was all signed and a million copies were made lay all joined hands they bowed their heads thankful
prayers were said while the people in the streets people were dancing
So the next one up is by Buffy Sinkferee. I once had the pleasure of meeting.
This is a really great song of hers. If I can find the right harmonica, I don't even know that I need
it. It's got a lot of words in it. If you know them, sing along. If not, listen, they're pretty doggone good.
He's five foot two and six feet four. He fights with missiles and with spears. He's all a 31. He's only
17. Been a soldier for a thousand years. He's a Catholic and a Hindu, an atheist, a Jain, a Buddhist
and a Baptist and a Jew.
Now he knows he mustn't kill But he knows he always will Kill you for me, me for you He's fighting for
the Russians He's fighting for Japan Fighting for the U.S. of A He's fighting for Brazil He's fighting
for Japan He thinks we'll put an end to war this way
Universal soldier he really is to blame For his orders come from far away no more They come from him
and you and me People can't just see This is not the way to put an end to war
Do I have time for one more or should I go into the poets next? Okay. One last one, a little bit of
a sing along. This one is by Anonymous. And that anonymous person wrote this with other anonymous persons.
And you all sing with the chorus, I hope.
I'm gonna lay down my sword and shield Down by the riverside Wave down the riverside Down by the riverside
I'm gonna lay down my sword and shield Down by the riverside Study war no more I ain't gonna study war
no more Ain't gonna study war no more
Ain't gonna study war Gonna study war no more Ain't gonna study war no more Ain't gonna study war no
more Ain't gonna study that war no more Take a way down the atom bomb Down by the riverside Down by
the riverside Down by the riverside And don't lay down that atom bomb
Down by the riverside, study war no more. I ain't gonna study war no more. Ain't gonna study war no
more. Ain't gonna study war. Ain't gonna study war no more. I ain't gonna study war no more. Ain't gonna
study war no more. Ain't gonna study that war no more.
I say we shake hands all around the world Down by the riverside Down by the riverside Down by the riverside
And we'll shake hands all around the world Down by the riverside And we'll study war no more I ain't
gonna study war no more Ain't gonna study war no more Ain't gonna study war
I ain't no 31 no more I ain't no 31 no more I ain't no 31 no more I ain't no 31 no more I ain't no 31
no more I ain't no 31 no more I ain't no 31 no more I ain't no 31 no more
Down by the riverside Study war no more I ain't gonna study war no more Ain't gonna study war no more
Ain't gonna study war Ain't gonna study war no more I ain't gonna study war no more Ain't gonna study
war no more Ain't gonna study war
Thank you. Thank you, Mitch Rice. That was awesome. And we needed it. We needed a little uplifting.
And now we have Joya Duds. Yeah, I know. You're welcome. Sometimes I'm a Heimer dad. Sometimes I'm a dad.
Sometimes I'm just Julia. Just Julia. I'll start out with solemn and move toward tender. I think that's
a direction to go. In the sand. You've watched the news footage bootlegged from the cockpit. 40 or so
insurgents. No, humans.
blown up from above, left below a pockmark in the beige desert, shadowed by metal wings. Dude, says
the boy at ground control to the boy who pushed the button. So like my son, thumb pressing the controls
of the game he networks into, earpiece and microphone, ignoring the insurgent little brothers in his
background, his focus shrinking them to static
eddying specks behind him as he flies into an imagined future. You are solemn, integrating into your
day this newscast glimpse of thus it has ever been. Me, I am mother to one or to all of those boys,
all of them lost. And like all mothers ever, thus ever on the ground, foreign and familiar in their black,
mouth open and shouting at the sky, another language dust on the tongue, sand in the teeth, no holding
here, hands scrabbling the unkind air, my black open mouth sounding a sound longing to be forgotten
that leaves no mark behind, no track or trail, a sound that we all finally must utter and understand.
Chogim Chunpa says that,
The spiritual warrior walks around with a tenderness so deep that the tears are right at the brim of
our eyes. I think loving life does that for us. The wing is hollow bone. Here in heaven, bird flight
describes the turn of my head, the lift of coffee cup to mouth,
ink on a page. Here, right here in heaven, breeze catches the chimes eye and the two fall in love. In
the way of those who have loved before, tentatively with meaning. Here in this small heaven, dew and
dirt and the exultant grief of peony beckon skin towards shiver.
If I wade into this tide of vine and leaf, the undertow of honeysuckles swoons into the swell of wild
rose, their lips of silk tonguing sugar's first breath into mine, here in today's only heaven, the flitter
of pulse thoughtlessly lifts its wing as if it always will.
If the dead could speak, do you think they could warn us off our summaries, the grandeur and delusion
of putting it all together? The whetstone of history here milling our present sharpens us to grieve
through or laugh, whichever the moment calls for.
Like how breaking open that black sunflower seed is all this chickadee is about. That is what it means.
How the stream means bank and watercress, oxygen, fish and frog, rain, lake, ocean. How it means blood.
And how blood always means change. And change means death. How death means a seed, a chickadee, a stream.
Yes, they whisper lovingly. Nothing but lovingly. Something like that.
How to build an ark. Stop counting. Empty all vessels. Do not sharpen what cuts. Can we attend to others
so that we may forget mere politeness? Let the wind of noise die down. Let the light of action play out.
Breathe in what is unbelievable, that which seems most obvious. Heartbeat and bread, firelight, the
beating of night upon leaf. Like the past, it is only in the face of perishing we find a way to float.
Unlike the past, lumber is not needed.
and the timing uncertain. Meanwhile, whenever possible, discover sky and laugh. Practice. Practice floating.
And thank you, Julia Heimer-Datz. That was riveting. Thank you.
And our next speaker is David Kepfer. I'm glad we had such strong and hopeful poetry.
I am guilty of writing anti-war poetry, perhaps more than peace poetry. I would only say that naming
the unacceptable is itself an act of hope. Broken interrogations. I still do not know whether I did
what you will always know was done to you.
Did I hold a dog to your terrified nakedness or perch you on a box, your outstretched arms wired to
the current of fear? Did I pile your bodies in a pyramid of shame and photograph you as Pharaoh's phallic
souvenir? Did I bar you from the home
you dare not return to because I dare not leave. Tell me what I have done. I beg you as you begged me.
Tell me what I can do. Now there is nothing I can do to make you forget that my people never remember.
Or if my plea for forgiveness is a new twist of torture, then let me thirst in the dryness of your memories
until you reach the waters of my oblivion. The Burial of the Landless. This is about Brazil like an
earlier poem.
this evening. It floats to light between the glassy sky and the cracked earth's glare down a rolling
road to nowhere. They walk against the light, burden resting like a bird, a lighting on the father's
shoulder. His fingers web spread
like the arch of a column under the box that is his child. The mother carries nothing toward the earth
that offers nothing but a home for her dead. Easter, the island.
Easter falls autumnal on the island named the day of its discovery by sailors of fortune and immortality.
You rose from volcanoes into the peaceful ocean. The ring of water married you to birds and seeds and
trees whose hollowed trunks
brought hallowed people, worshiping the bond they changed for bondage. In towering stone faces, they
pulled across the island's face on felled trees that grow no more. Easter, you are distant. Easter,
you are near.
Across a hemisphere, you ring in morning bird call and the coral that filled your eyes still shelters
schools of fish in the rising oceans of a warming earth. In recent months, I'm afraid I've been working
in the language of prose, not of poetry,
writing letters to members of Congress who do not appreciate poems. So all that I have left here tonight
in the way of new work is sketches, but I will read them unfinished in the hope that the members of
Congress may be more attentive and we will have more time to write poetry. This synesthesia of suffering, light
becomes sound. No, only ones and zeros, Bach's little numbers. A laser reads the harmony of anguish
coded on compact disc. After the lightning, a dry crack of thunder and the parched wood takes to flame.
At a computer in New Mexico, ones and noughts target a drone that strikes the synesthesia of suffering
across a world of wars and unites in death those gathered for a wedding. May we work for peace in Afghanistan.
Under the milky mist, a fungus creeps up the mountains and climbs an amphibian's back. The golden toad
is gone. From extinction, there is no back. Poetry is what we remember. Poetry is what we make. Poetry
is what we feel at the edge of wilderness
that is forever lost to chainsaw and asphalt. The hamburger eats the rainforest as Alzheimer's eats
the brain, but the other returns in terror and invasives, kudzu and zebra muscle, virus and al-Qaeda.
The last Amur leopard
is skinned for a coat to wear the wildness whose eyes we cannot meet. Thank you. I think we all want
to thank David for his compassionate words, sharp edged and right on. Thank you.
Next we have Nazarene. This is Nazarene.
Which one I should use? There are two. Any of them? Is that better? That one works. In the 10th century,
in a little village in the south of Iran, Persia, there lived a mystic poet. People came to see him,
the villagers,
and emirs and sultans alike bowed before him and listened to his poems. His name was Baba Tahir Orian,
which means Baba Tahir the nude, perhaps because he shed the superficial exterior or perhaps because
he just didn't want to wear clothes. So Baba Tahir,
the nude, the mystic, wrote these poems that are very short. They're very simple, and I translated some
of them. One of them I read to you. In Farsi, because you have to hear the sound.
It is in the dialogue of the south. Sweeter than hyacinth is the breeze passing through your curls.
At dawn, the scent of roses fills my bed when all night long I have embraced your image close to my
heart. Last December, at the time of election, I was so touched
So I wrote this little poem and you can guess to whom it refers.
The trees were brocades of agate and gold. Suddenly a man rolled, enough killing, enough bloodshed.
People turned their weary head to the side and with sad eyes gazed through the deep shadows of the unknown
to a beam of light scintillating.
He smiled gently. People chose the man from nowhere and everywhere. The world held its breath and watched
in disbelief. Its dream hung on the man's voice and the wisdom of his words.
now dare to dream once again of wondrous things to happen to this injured human family and this troubled
little planet to dream of eternal peace covering as breathing air each far corner of earth and of happy
children who dance.
With each poem and with each thought that goes out, I am more overwhelmed. And now it is D. D and Louise.
And I don't know how to, is that right? D and Louise.
This is a last-minute decision, and I'm not the poet of this poem I'm going to share. A local poet,
Barb Schwagman, wrote this back in 1998. And it still fits today, obviously, because we're all on a
continuous journey for peace inside, as well as sharing it with the children and the world so that we
will live in a better place.
So here's a sample of the continuation of peace for all of us. I'm waiting on my music.
It's hard to stop throwing rocks on the playground. Every Monday afternoon, Gracia comes to the room.
She rings the Tibetan bells once for peaceful bodies, again for peaceful voices. Sometimes it works
and sometimes it doesn't. And peace circle begins.
She leads the four and five year olds into a journey of peacemaking. Peaceful puppy comes to play, stories
are read, conflicts are talked about. We have worked for weeks, piecing together a community of children
who will hopefully grow to care for each other. One morning I tell the children that I know it is not
easy to stop fighting. I know because of
my own past, the times in anger, I broke a favorite picture or vase, or worse, when I hit someone I
love. I do not share those details with them, just the feelings. When I ask, is it hard to be a peacemaker,
they all nod their heads yes. And one child raises his hand to say, it's hard to stop throwing rocks
on the playground.
I think our next performer is Brownie? Brownia? Brownia, I am sorry. I don't believe I had the pleasure.
Hello, everybody. Yes, indeed. So many wonderful poems.
so much passion that has been expressed here today. This was also a last minute decision for me to come
and read a poem. It's going to be a mystical poem. I have been experimenting this week with reading
Rumi and writing variations on his poems. And this is what I came up with.
It doesn't really have a title. Probably the title should be variations on Rumi's poems. A great Iranian
poet. I am lost in the call of all. The calling and the called are one. I am the garden, not just its
rose. I am the sea.
not just its fish. I am the sky, not just its cloud. I forsake existence for emptiness. That is the
path of love. That is the path of peace. Revelation and light of God are one.
The colors and perfumes we know are but a reflection of other colors and other perfumes, those of the
heart, those of the soul. They are the joy far away from this earth made of water and clay.
going back home to the soul's ocean. There is no home here where we are but the remembrance of the sea,
a pearl separated from its shell. The death of the carnal soul is a blessing, allowing us once again
to be in union with eternity
the peaceful wave of God. The emptiness we fear provides us sustenance and abundance. The object of
desire is in truth a scorpion pit. The beautiful expanse around it is life giving. The attachment to belief
comforting habits and blood ties imprison us and make us afraid of living, thus depriving us of true
delight. While here, be patient with your body's longings and discomforts. Knowledge of mysteries which
illuminates the heart
comes after mind is emptied. Freedom comes with being free from self. Move across the sky as an anonymous
star. The power of hashish, heavy wine, and blessed sleep will not free you as well as drinking from
the presence of the spirit.
Therefore, choose carefully from the bouquets of freedom. Choose ecstasy unadulterated with urgency
of need. Beyond space and time is the invisible world. The wine of this fleeting world makes your head ache.
For it is a phantom giving you false signs. Shoot for the bull's eyes of bliss. Words and talk bring
you pain, which can be relieved only by resting in the arms of the beloved. Turn to love's peerless
cup instead. Your frame will wither, be old and dead,
yet your soul will keep the eternal youth. The bells of parting sound for those who hear, who long to
leave the momentary slumber for lands filled with heavenly tones, where friend meets friend in realms
of secret glow and sacred fire.
Here, water of the spirit too purifies and washes tears away, then filled with pollution not its own,
returns to the well divine, to the fountain where it is bathed to trail again its course of glory. Like
the king's arrow is pure heart, like lion in the mountains,
like wind sweeping us to heaven with which we'll never part. For there we'll laugh at the phantom grief
we suffered in the time of dreams. For there we shall behold the everlasting home. God here is invisible to us.
For darkness he knows not of this perishing land, of this home of Travaille where ignorance and folly
take us from palace to prison in a blink of an eye. And love is calling, ever calling for us in this
diamond space cross of a waiting room.
I have been honored to witness and feel everything that has come this way. And I just want everyone,
every what? Okay. These are kind of those things that happen when you just
Most of my family has fought for peace. And I guess men have been fighting for peace forever. My father
was a Marine in the Second World War.
He fought for peace. Oops, backwards, sorry. I had several uncles that fought for peace in the Korean War.
Vietnam veteran. I fought for peace, too. But men have been fighting for peace since the beginning of
time. Will there ever be an end? We may never know.
Maybe we won't find peace until we all die and go to heaven. I think that's where my final peace will
be in heaven. As I said, we will never know when peace will come, but I will always have peace in my
heart and my soul.
I just want to say that this has been more than anything I could ever imagined. I think the words have
impacted all of us. I think they have hit us, and we all have a lot of thought to sleep on tonight.
But I know that we're all here for one reason, and that is the compassion of peace. And I also want
everyone to know that there is
Also a movie downstairs. And it is definitely worth your time to watch. It is Soldiers of Peace. And
we also have a word from Dennis Kucinich. And it is powerful. And it was written to Bloomington, Indiana.
So to me, that is very huge. But before I, I just want to thank everyone that has shared their
passion for peace. Okay, we're gonna have two more songs. I have no idea who's singing them. All righty
then. Mitch, I like your singing. I do.
So without social justice, peace is sort of a dream. And so we have to work both towards social justice
and peace itself. We don't have that. The two have to go together. And this is a song written by Ralph
Chaplin, better known for writing Solidarity Forever. He was an IWW songwriter along with Joe Hill in
that same era in the early part of the 20th century.
I love Solidarity forever and it's a great rouser, but this one I like quite a bit too. It's called
the Commonwealth of Toil.
of mighty cities, amidst the roar of whirling wheels, we're toiling on like chattel slaves of old. And
our masters hope to keep us, ever thus beneath their heels, to turn our very lifeblood into gold. To
this good part here. But we have this glowing dream of how fair the world will seem when we each can
live our lives secure and free.
the earth is owned by labor and there's joy and peace for all in the Commonwealth of toil that is to
be. They would keep us cowed and beaten, cringing meekly at their feet. They'd stand between the worker
and his bread. Must we yield our lives up to them for this bitter crust we eat? Must we only hope
I know we have this glowing dream of how fair the world will seem when we each can live our lives secure
and free. When the earth is owned by labor, there's joy and peace for all in the commonwealth of toil
that is to be.
cause is all triumphant. We regain Mother Earth and the nightmare of the present fades away. We will
live with love and laughter. We who now are little worth will not regret this price we've had to pay.
But we have this glowing dream of how fair the world will seem when we each can live our lives secure and free.
And the earth is owned by labor. There's joy and peace for all in the commonwealth of toil that is to
be. All right. And one more little social justice song. Or let's call it environmental justice here.
And in honor of Tom and Sandra here who fought so long to save the forest.
of Southern Indiana. It's one of the few tunes that I can say, hey, I wrote this. Well, now the big
boys up in Indy, they like to spend our dough. When they drive down to Evansville, they feel, well,
that's too slow. So they want $3 billion. Going to save eight minutes time.
As we tear up southern Indiana, a land in its prime. We've been down this road before one too many times.
Paving over Mother Earth, it really is a crime. We don't need more semis roaring through our land. Back
down home in paradise here in southern Indiana.
They say we need this highway to trade with Mexico. You know, we'll trade off jobs and industry and
southward they will go. In the land of revolutions and cheap labor, they'll hide. So the average Hoosier
just gets taken for a ride. We've been down this road before one too many times.
Paving over Mother Earth, it really is a crime. You know, we don't need more semis roaring through our
land. Back down home, it's paradise here in southern Indiana. Highway 69, they say, it'll bring us all
great wealth. Breathing all those diesel fumes, well, it ain't good for your health.
While working at a truck stop is the best job you could find. You know the nation's better jobs and
days are now behind. It's sad. Hey, we've been down this road before one too many times. Hey, the over
mother earth, it really is a crime. Now we don't need more semis roaring through our land.
Back down home in paradise, southern Indiana. Now the Amish, they don't want it. It would tear their
farms in two. But the governors say, building this road it's going through. You know, we've got to stick
together to save our rural lands. We've got the power.
The future's in our hands. We've been down this road before one too many times. Paving over Mother Earth,
it really is a crime. You know, we don't need more semis roaring through our land. Back down home, it's
paradise, southern India.
Nah, you heard my story. You know what to do. Just call up the governor's state legislators too. Tell
them we don't need this road. It'll do no good. We know they can cut the pork now if they only would.
We've been down this road before one too many times.
Waving over Mother Earth, it really is a crime. We don't need more semis roaring through our land. Back
down home, it's paradise, southern Indiana.