Collaboration in idea and with other poets including those no longer with us.

The lineation and stanza breaks are off synch on this one as I cut and pasted from the archives of www.poetsagainstthewar.org
Which is a collaboration of individual poets writing toward the same idea which is
hopefully the expansion of peace consciousness, and this poem is an update of the WW 1 poem as explained in the title.


(Based on the Title of"Dulce et Decorum est Pro Patria Mori - It is sweet and fitting To die for one's country" by Wilfred Owen)
The old recoil from acrid fumes;Blazing eyes of the young
are fixed in wonder on explosives
tossed by mud-stained boys
tanking their way through the valleys,
"liberating" the free.Women with lives torn asunder
claw their way around trees,
draping garlands for missing lovers,
leaves curl into brittle brown,
crackling under their feet.Those who make it home
live with rattling serpents forever in their heads,
their dead eyes interred in dying faces,
drowning everyday in the blood of strangers.
On shaded verandahs, misshapen men
wheel through more days of gray. And still the warlords rage
for the love of the land."all for the love of the land".
Listen to the sounds of hate,
hear the urgent murmurs of necessity.
The soundless doves gather into silence.
Copyright © Frances-Marie Coke February 2003