Thursday, January 25, 2007

violence


The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. So it goes. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction.... The chain reaction of evil — hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars — must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.

Dr. Martin Luther King

Thursday, January 18, 2007

the Heron's wing





 

Her dark eyes sparked like flint
Drinking an oolong of the sight
In the Winter chill by the reservoir
Look at the heron in flight!
she, pointing toward the open sky
The lanky beauty soaring above
As rubber tires and steel lumbered by
On the spread of stained asphalt
Under our feet
The heron took it from there
Her voice trailing now
Like the brush stroke cirrus
For one moment, we thought of nothing else
Happiness, uninterrupted by machines
Or words about people and things
The heron lightly stepped from flight
To a nest of new life
As we walked back onto the earth

Thursday, January 04, 2007

Turnips











 


 

Somewhere in Texas he awoke
Sore, startled, scared
Seeing a sight he would long remember
Out the boxcar door
Men running with turnips in hand
From a farmer's field by the tracks
Eyes glazed with hunger
Like they were on hop
Sprinting desperately back toward the train
The big machine gaining speed
Struggling, like the men up the grade
In the late Summer afternoon
They, risking life and limb
to stop the ache in their empty bellies
They held their noses
Choked down the things
Quieting the demons temporarily
Ahead in Needles, he jumped off
Dusty but not disheveled
and spent his last quarter on a shoeshine