Poetry Page #2

INSOMNIA, August 2005

It is too early, my wife protests,
As I rise in the dark of a summer morning,
August 6, 2005,
By the European calendar,
But sleep will not come.
Sixty years ago,
But later in the day,
We listened, excited, to a new President tell us
That he was ending a war,
By attacking a military base,
The Hiroshima Naval District.
I joined in the cheering,
Not knowing then that Presidents lied
Through their teeth,
Whether their own,
As were my
Child’s teeth,
Or as false as old Washington’s
.
I pick up my hometown paper
And see
The lies innocently repeated
By victims blinded
By the fog of war.

Today, taught in their schools
Half-truths,
Misleading statements and
Lies,
Many Japanese children do not know that
Their army still hides
The Rape of Nanking --
So that they will be willing
To abet in new crimes.

Most Americans
Especially those who read their assigned texts
And daily papers,
Do not know that
The ‘Little Boy’ who spread destruction
And tortured deaths
Among the Children
Of Hiroshima
Exploded precisely where it was aimed,
Miles from the Naval District headquarters
Which it did not affect,
But in the center of the civilian city,
Where the few soldiers
Included
American prisoners of war.

Even the sycophantic
Strategic Bombing Survey
Had to conclude that
This WMD did not end that war;
Did not hasten the end of that war.
It was not intended to do either.
Pleas for surrender terms
From a new Japanese government
Headed by opponents of the war --
As if Dan Ellsberg had been elected here
In ’72 --
Had to be denied
So that the war could be kept going.
Civilians and soldiers
Kept dying for a few more weeks
So that
The bullies could
Prove
Who were the baddest after all.

Many of the terrorists
Continue to believe
That their brutality saved lives,
Because to even suspect
Otherwise
Would be
Too painful!

War and greed
Are the twin diseases
That murdered innocence in that holocaust,
As in the first holocaust of the last century,
Carried out in the American concentration camps in
The Philipines
By U.S. Marines,
And as in the Rape of Faluja
Last year.
They are fueled by lies
We tell others
And ourselves.

As the adorable babies of Hiroshima continued to die,
As doctors pleaded for information needed to save them
Lies were piled on lies.
Lies are needed to cover lies.
We must never mention that
We condemned to death others
Who killed Guernika
On a market day
To quicken the end of a war.

The child who sees through the
Imaginary cloth
Must be silenced
In all places,
In all times
Or we will learn
That power does not come
From the barrel of a gun
Nor wealth from
A filthy piece of printed paper,
Even if printed in pretty colors,
But from
Refusing to treat others
In a spirit we
Would not like to be treated.

No contract can bind anyone
To do otherwise.

Adolph Hitler died with the position and money
Prescott Bush and Harry Truman aspired to.
General Groves’ coat
Was covered with glorious medals,
Like Stalin’s and Chiang’s.
None left their heirs
A legacy
As rich as that left by
Penniless
Aesop
Or Hillel
Buddha
Jesus
Or Mohandas Gandhi,
Jeanette Rankin
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Or the ladies of the Rosenstrasse.

Love. truth and
And the recognition
That everything I do to the
Worst of us
I do to all,
Are not frivolous
Cosmetics,
But the only tools that
Can defend us,
Can unite us,
Can set us free.
Can save this spec of life
Lest through lust for dominance
We shall no longer be.





Copyright by author. You are welcome to print this poem & share with friends providing this copyright notice is attached.
Zev Aelony
4228 Lyndale Avenue South
Minneapolis, MN 55409-1814
August 6, 2005


Civil Rights worker, political activist, cancer survivor; husband and father of four sons and two daughters-in-law, I earn a living representing companies in the electronic security industry [Zev Aelony, Manufacturers’ Representatives]. On principle, we represent no products intended to injure or kill.