---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sun, 16 Sep 2001 02:35:59 -0700
From: Allen Cohen <SFORACLE@prodigy.net>
To: sixties@lists.village.virginia.edu
Subject: Acts of Peace
John Bryan, editor of Open City, one of the first underground papers and
first publisher of Bukowski and I are going to put out a fast Peace Paper
called "PEACE" We hope to get it out by next weekend with a copy deadline by
Wednesday . Can you contribute something at such short notice? I had in mind
under 1000 words that is analytical and accessible and that points the way
out of this mess or at least enables us to survive Bush and the dogs of oil
and capital until we can again evolve a more sane world.
Here is a poem I wrote today
Regards
Allen Cohen
editor San Francisco Oracle
The Fallen Tower - September 11, 2001
Images indelibly burned
into the silver coated mind.
Planes flying into towers,
erotic symbols of power and wealth.
The towers falling in upon themselves
like a person slowly kneeling
in submission to a divine will.
But inside the debris
lies the crushed and torn bodies
of 5000 workers.Their dreams
and their futures terminated.
Their loved ones walking aimlessly
around lower Manhattan holding
the pictures of their lost loves
bled from their computer printers.
Five thousand lines of future history
sucked into death's black hole.
Words merely describing the images
spreading a dread into the light
while darkness remains adorned
by the ominous moon
and its necklace of stars.
The vast world encircling
web America has secured
to the four directions
is now shattered and torn.
The threads of our security,
our wealth, and enormous power
are ruptured and we will try
to repair the emptiness
and fill it with the marching bands
of military might and righteous anger
The spider will flail and destroy and injure
the guilty and the innocent
and more enemies will find
new ways to blind Cyclops
and defeat Goliath with a slingshot.
We are the leaders.
We who care about all life.
We who imagine a shared humanity
on a lonely planet floating through the heavens.
We who care about our endangered future.
We who are disheartened
about our enormous appetite
exploiting peoples all over the world.
We who want an end to oil politics
and to begin a new era based
on the natural energies
the creation has provided us.
We who need to live
for the well being of all.
We to whom the saints taught
of love and compassion.
We to whom the martyrs in those
crushed buildings and the fiery jets,
their ghosts hovering in our hearts,
have called not to revenge
but to a new crusade
of reconciliation between nations,
between the rich and poor
between humanity and nature
between the present
and our children's future.
Allen Cohen
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