Poets Against War continues the tradition of socially engaged poetry by creating venues for poetry as a voice against war, tyranny and oppression.
Joop Bersee
Joop Bersee's was born in Holland and lived in South Africa for a decade. His poetry has been published in a number of countries and has been translated. Visit Joop on www.joopbersee.com. He is editor of www.southernrainpoetry.com which features South African poetry.
Soldier
He is scared but used to it, like a banker to stress; a tree, hole in the ground can finish him in seconds flat.
Letters from home, only two the last two-and-half years, are charred by his worn hands, he's tired of collecting faces for his brain,
pounding nightmares, the horrors of a sweating, quiet staring moon. He's sick of being the spilling breed. His unlit song moves on its stem.
Village
Eighteen disfigured children. Seven fingers, eight daughters. Followed by the staring, missing limbs
of the harmless villagers, another platoon marches past over the dusty, sunburned roads.
Their guns are satisfied; their holes rest in the chests of sons, like cattle -
Endless rows of swords stab the land that wails like sirens gone mad.
The fly infested horizon cries vultures, hopping, dancing, their beaks deep into this wonderful feast.
And not too far away a machine gun rattles a piece of bread into thin air.
Message On A Shell*
Message On A Shell*
With the smile of Innocence or not, Israeli girls write their names on US shells made to obliterate Lebanon because it is evil and kills small children, women, husbands, civilians. The shells with names and ‘from Israel with love’ plaster the walls of ruins,
the stitched faces of survivors, amputees, with layers of flesh and blood. Pink limbs rotate in the air, metal and bone, fragments of a neighbour. Hospital beds contain chunks of flesh, beating hearts. In a street a dog is searching for its owner who seems to be everywhere.
*Israeli girls write messages on shells at a heavy artillery position near Kiryat Shmona, in northern Israel, next to the Lebanese border, Monday, July 17, 2006.
