Sonnet VII: Satan’s Silence

Could God’s devout assail with flame a room
Of helpless innocents whose only crime:
Descent from their inferno without time
To don a hooded veil, so to their doom

Were sent? What god commands her to a tomb
Half sunk in earth, and rent with stone by grime
Stained hands, a helpless girl? What paradigm–
That knew the violation of her womb,

Then learnt this travesty her god offends!?
Whose crime could be the punishment of rape?
What god is this?  What votary attends?
While gawkers ’round the world in silence gape?

If God gives love, redemption, hope, and breath,
I name him Satan, feignèd god of death.

This sonnet is part of a short sequence; click here to read it all:

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Sonnet VI: The Peace Prayer

She sang her hymn before her eyes had seen
The glory of the coming of the Lord,
The blood and death of mortar, gun, and sword,
And brother killing brother long had been.

Then callow-sang of peace, with freedom won,
To eager faces, white and brown… and black,
Whose liberty had just been gifted back
Still soaked with blood by mortar, sword, and gun.

Imagine men had heard that hymn four score
And seven years of blood and death before,
Heard next her callow, pacifist’s decree,
Laid down their arms to study war no more:

With shackled peace from sea to shining sea,
What hue would now such eager faces be?

This sonnet is part of a short sequence; click here to read it all:

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Intro 6: At Any Cost

Peace at any cost?
When you pay with a blank check
the price is too high.

Your blank check never seems
to buy you very much.
Best you shop around.

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Sonnet V: By Their Fruits

I saw and I believed and then I knew;
As brick and mortar fell, and glass and steel;
And blood and flesh and fire, mien, and weal,
And hope, and dream, and aspiration slew;

And friendship, love and heart, and sky once blue
Now green with envy, angry red with zeal
Of hate, of lie, of wound no lie can heal,
And speculation knowingly untrue.

I heard, I disbelieved and then I thought:
How typical that supposition grew
So cravenly away from where it ought
To rest; from certainty that, shining through
This calumny, these wailing filth have wrought
This death–these filth who hide from what is true.

This sonnet is part of a short sequence; click here to read it all:

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Intro 5: 9-11-2001

To all those who died,
Or who lost the ones they love:
I dedicate this.

To those left behind:
I wish it could be more than
A few empty words.

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Sonnet IV: The Valiant and the Craven

So valiantly hast thou thy battles fought
For everyone we love, as well as we.
Our fathers and our mothers lived to see
The grandchildren thy blood and valour bought.

And what a crime that none today are taught
The sacrifice thou chos’t as thy decree,
The horror thou hast braved so valiantly,
Thy blood with which their apathy was wrought.

How they will rage when next the bugle sounds
And none are left to stand before its call.
How they will curse thy gravestones one and all;
Yet none may wake thee in thy hallowed grounds.
With ramparts left unmanned, they’ll know the why,
And know thy sacrifice before they die.

This sonnet is part of a short sequence; click here to read it all:

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