Jeff McCallum

I dragged out the following six-year-old poem, a six-year-old rant, but I still believe we can and should, in fact need to find common values to which all human kind can agree and embrace whatever the apparent cost. To me they are simple:  no genocide, no slavery, no murder, no torture, no child abuse, no rape of the earth, the basic freedom to practice what religon one does or does not see fit to practice.  Yet, politics and money leave us with Bosnia and worse, the United Nations paralyzed by the politics of economic advantage.  I believe if Christ had spoken out against slavery He never would have made it to the age of twenty before the inevitable end. What's a poet to do?

The war continues, the years drag on, our freedoms continue to erode here at home as we continue as a nation to practice what we preach against.  We are a nation that functions as though the Constitution is to be taken out only at mass and that some magic confessional will somehow absolve us of all our transgressions, all our personal interpretations and exemptions.  After all, it only took  muliple generations to abolish slavery and the threat of Communision or terror for liberty and justice to  be explained away by politicians decades removed from each other, eroded away by the seeds of mistrust, planted and nurtured by those willing to manipulate our fear to their political advantage, those who feel they are beyond consequence, fascists and fanatics alike. This in a world where like minded, power hungry people create an environment where oil for food is considered an humanitarian act, where our earth is often like the beaten, bleeding assualt victim crying unheeded on the street or in the apartment building hallway while we close and double lock our doors.

TWIN TOWERS:

Babel Revisted

September 11, 2001

As god the heart of man

Nor turn believers in their faith

It’s only god who can

Yet know that we of any faith instructed by our god:

“Instill true love in hearts of all, including in their vision

Peace, respect, concern for humankind.”

Thus shriven in compassionate love believe....

“These TRUTHS self-evident

ALL HUMAN KIND created equal….”

ONE EARTH

With LIBERTY and JUSTICE for all….

And in believing,

Weave a world that Keeps THE DREAM

Fans the flame….

Judges all by character’s content,

And deems that deeds of loving-kindness

Reduce the LAW to commentary.

We had a dream!

As old and new and worst imagined purgatories spin and bleed

And darken most mysterious VEIL

Whirlwinds suck the fog aside

Revealing what can come

What was

Before the Tower.

Men crying greatness unto man

Till ripped and split and toppled as was Ishmael from Hagar’s grasp

We were cast as we were:

Day players,

Acting only as we are,

Creating nothing

Save illusion

Audience and actor believing in this dark tales weaving

Something

Was created

Other than that which is and was

The character of these same players:

No range,

No rage against the ravishment of earth,

No self-effacing change to new creation…

No new and joyous birth.

Only hollow, scripted, stilting sham

Designed to grant a power to creature man

Existing in no Book or Song.

Legend, liturgy,

As long as man expounds to man

Exclusive tale or secret song

We but deepen, darken, and prolong the Veil.

Machiavelli

Hitler

Joe the Senator

The priestly pedophile?

Necromancers!

Who use the Veil to cast their spell,

Gnaw on human flesh,

Wail and gnash their teeth

All the while disguised as us:

Created in the fall of Babel .

Now another tower

Godless man to godless man has brought to ruin.

From this din and dirge and fright,

Dare we hope a phoenix yet may rise?

As worlds unite, men bear their souls

And at that core

Above the fear,

Beyond the raging sorrow,

A spark of hope, a gleam of Light,

Salvation found in fellow’s mindless end.

Their last good night

A dawn where nations stand together

Old enemies now friend.

And language does unite

As spanning sea to sea

We open hearts, acknowledge human kind as You and He and She.

Opposing those who wish to isolate

Divide

Ignore

Sow hate.

United now as ne’er before,

Acting side by side

We cast aside tradition, preacher’s folly, ethnic pride

To cease to suffer slavery, genocide

Or actions humankind abhor.

UNITED NATIONS

Free all politics, embrace the true jihad:

Free the earth from those who slaughter in the name of any god!

Fix our will on that and those who would dishonor our sisters;

Starve our children,

Deplete a nation

And with bone chilling calculation,

Have them toil as mad men rape their mothers and their soil

Unrestrained, allowed, because they lack the atom (or is it oil?)

Days and decades pass in shame

As vote bound leaders, PAC purchased,

Power bought (perhaps for more than 30 silver coins)

Or by the death of lambs as sweet as any on this earth

Fret

And fearing death, discovery, plotting coups

Hold brave warriors long in check

Who proud would give their LIFE FOR HUMANKIND

They wait and would no action take;

Reasoning this debating that.

As humans cry,

Which ones of them grow fat?

SHARE THE DREAM!

And foiling dervish, dybbuk, devil, man

Clear the mist

No longer blind, the veil now pierced;

And in rebirth

No fear save that of losing our and all and any human kind

For lack of action, care or policies that bind us to a course of separation.

Toil to nurture whole and free our earth as one

UNITED NATION!