Poets Against War continues the tradition of socially engaged poetry by creating venues for poetry as a voice against war, tyranny and oppression.
Anna Ruiz
61 years old
At the moment I am a poet activist, I belong to the Middle East Peace Forum started by Dennis Kucinch in Cleveland after the Israeli incursion in Lebanon. We are close to taking speaking engagements.
After 23 years as a Realtor, I know the innate need for one's own free space to enjoy our human rights, if not suppressed nor oppressed. I am now a caregiver and work with the elderly and dying.
The Humanity Tree
"Hence, the greatest cutting does not sever." ~~Tao Te Ching, Lao Tzu~~
The Taste of Freedom is not in a freedom song, whether or not we know the lyrics, ever knew passionate sonatas of fallen grace, or have forgotten every battle hymn we learned along the way, our long long walk throughout human history,
The Place of Freedom is not a Prayer facing East, or a tear-stained face wailing against a wall in Jerusalem, or a Pledge of Allegiance to any flag, an homage to a cracked mission bell in Philadelphia,
It is not a small flame or a roaring bonfire into which hatred and fear are thrown in like sentimental ghosts of an enduring past, the scent of rosewood and apples wafting to the stars,
Freedom is not a putrid shade of green, in an open, empty and dirty prison cell, smatterings of blood on its walls, nor a white-washed bed flowering with starched rose of St. Theresa, in an easy peaceful death,
Freedom is a branch from a living tree, pruned by unseen hands,
binding the Darkness to the Light.
The Ganges Fills With Umbilical Cords
The Ganges fills with umbilical cords bathers in their white dhoti never get naked funerary pyres are lit with shriveling bodies of widows sometimes little candle armies illumine the night the Cuyahoga caught on fire in 1969 and the world laughed at the rustbelt state of the Nation the year Armstrong walked on the moon, planted a flag on solid rock, spoke a few words about stepping lightly
they called the Euphrates "Cradle Of Civilization", "look Mom what they've done with their song", they're bleeding with soldier blood they're bleeding with innocent blood and they're bleeding with terrorist blood
the oil wells keep on a-pumping the black oil muck of lies,
politicians are born, soldiers are made, and God is fanning the fire.
Peace.
Promises
The sky holds no animosity to even the darkest of clouds, gathering bolts of lighting and thundering crashes like vengeful tools of angry gods
The sepia earth shows no rancor with the children of a lesser god even as weapons of mass destruction fall by the wayside, erode with time, rust in the belly of the proverbial beast, slow vines growing green like tentacles of forgiveness
The ocean of endless salt, the river of cool sweetness harbor no resentment to the muck of oil and the garbage decay of a hundred million civilizations, even as life slowly disappears like the bleeding-heart dove, and the Great Barrier Reef breaks down and returns to it nothingness
Yet the Mother of all possibilities gives us a chance once again as the sun also rises to make peace with ourselves before the Last Poem of Earth disappears right before our eyes.
There Is a Red Book
There is a red book lying on my floor rows of crimson-robed monks sitting in meditation on its cover… there are rows of soldiers marching to a different drum;
the monks are falling in Tibet and Myanmar, the soldiers in Israel and Iraq,
there are voices of despair,
hope and innocence in rows of graves where all colours fade into bones yellowing with age
…burning ash fills the night sky,
and time keeps marching in the lament of my begging bowl, I am shrouded in white along the mountain path of peace and reconciliation.
I Don't Know How To Give You Peace
I don’t know how to give you peace, how to heal your wounds, make your scars disappear,
I don’t know how to ride the wild wind today, form the sun from this blood-wet clay I hold in my hands,
O Israel! O Palestine~
You were radiant then, in your olive groves~~ your loaves of bread broken in friendship, your fish bountiful, unspared…
I don’t know how to carry a cross across the ocean,
your exodus of narrow streets, black veils of mourning, our tears filled with Gethsemane,
I don’t know how to scrape fear from the bottom of my begging bowl, I don’t know how to summon the dove of peace, find that far land time has forgotten, needing no amends.
Saalam. Shalom. Peace.
Turkey Shoot
it’s a turkey shoot out there, the sky is falling, bullets hailing everywhere there is no safe place left on earth, no sanctuary for the innocent streets of anger are spilling blood and the earth is a vampire, we’ve forgotten how to be light of heart and I wonder if language is the fruit of all evil, Jacob’s ladder is burning through the clouds
money flies like dreams out the second door of persuasion as if everything is taken for granted when the boat to China slows to a sudden stop, lies our parents told us Santa Claus is snowbound or moribund and the Easter Bunny is a recluse now, there is no merciful God to pray to, there is no end, no Ramana eyes to see through the disguise into the heart of what matters, dark and significant we are hunters still, gathering up the wild wind,
vultures circle like bankers taking government handouts to the higher road of selfish gain and the economy bails, we’re looking for a golden boy, a Maitreya, a Buddha, a Jesus to make his way back and light the candles in our teeth,
In Hungarian, Barack means peach, I wonder if summer bears fruit I wonder if America remembers how to grow.
Let My People Go!
The bombing of Gaza started a year ago today, man's inhumanity to man continues in every possibility conceived, give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses
I knew a poet who said: I'd give up my pen for a gun surrender the gun for a feather let the feathers fly where they may and if May comes, I'll take up my pen again
veni vidi vici are words that bring down civilization after civilization
rust settles down sooner than later ring around the rosey and we all fall down
there are no stars when the sky is ablaze and vultures steal your eyes there is no Arab and Jew Christian, Buddhist or Hindu when the death mask is worn 6 feet below,
and the song you would have sung had you lived long enough is frozen on your tongue.
