Editor's Note: We bring our original 2008 publication of Mankh's poem back to celebrate the extraordinary announcement that the Nobel Peace Prize is being given to Barack Obama, even as he bombs innocent civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Any questions you may have ever had about the credibility of the Norwegian Nobel... » read this article

    SO LONG!   Sufi, my Moslem friend Let's pretend that the world is a long poem with Quarter-tones and tambourines, Whirling children, women and gentlemen. Sufi, my Moslem friend, Let's pretend and turn gold into dust, tears into silver streams, thoughts into frozen mountains every meaningful gestures into an... » read this article

Ah, lowly objects of mundane human existence, forever condemned to carry on your backs the weight of the world, this ode is to you. Because of you we tenderfeet are able to trudge through burning deserts and freezing slush. We slap you upon the pavements of great metropolises and quiet... » read this article

This thought about war came to me today on news about other nations around the world seeking to rein in aggression by the USA.    My thought was about using the last stanza of W.H. Auden's poem "Oh What is That Sound" for a letter to friends.  While looking for... » read this article

Originally published on Axis of Logic on May 8, 2007. There is a great hue and cry over the May Day demonstrations in Los Angeles (legitimate) that saw the LAPD in their military gear - assaulting mostly Mexican immigrants. Nobody should suffer brutalization by the police.This has been given a... » read this article

The Canaanites pounded wheat and baked bread on me. The children of Abraham carried me to the Temple of Prayer and I became a Wailing Wall. Then came the Romans and the Hellenized Jews put me in a flower garden where they drank wine and expounded on the virtues of... » read this article

Cartilage and Steel (Children of Iraq) Youth, soft in their cartilage, sleep beside Kalashnikovs; escapees of consciousness and bloody killing fields. Daylight bursts blade sharp, and lunges for the shadows where innocent children hide. It calls them, name by name, Each day, fewer answer. - Linda C. Straub January 2007... » read this article

It became necessary to destroy the village in order to save it." -unnamed US major as quoted by Peter Arnett, Feb 7, 1968   America as the Village of Ben Tre First came carpet bomb wire-taps to soften us up before Napalm, today's water-boarding (a Khmer Rouge torture loved by... » read this article

Cortez The Killer He came dancing across the water With his galleons and guns Looking for the new world In that palace in the sun. On the shore lay Montezuma With his coca leaves and pearls In his halls he often wondered With the secrets of the worlds. And his... » read this article

Guantanamo Always a long-shot for the public's ticket - a tortured, sub-titled script never likely to be an academy favourite. The establishment remake: stripped bare pasted, slapped on the good & evil billboard. For those who like a scare, but the good guys win. In the end no jury requested.... » read this article

And when you said, Mr Clauswitz War is politics by another means, you gave to something destined to fall bloodied, and come limping back, an equal footing, a legitimate feel to that which is nothing but a failure of the politic; a failure of the patience; of the memory; of... » read this article

IF ON THAT FIRST DAY   If on that first day Of shock and awe When we sat well back In our armchairs, lit The blue touch-paper;   If on that first hot day As aqua-eyed Marines Trespassed, watchful On unfamiliar sand A million miles from Big Sur, On a... » read this article

A BEAUTIFUL DAY What a beautiful day. Off coast, seabirds are swirling in a half mile circle catching fish like crazy. Pelicans punctuate the situation here and there with their spectacular plunges. Under the surface a massive ball of fish is being chased by hungry seals. Hungry seals are being... » read this article

This Night in Fallujah: Lailat Al Qadr in Ramadan Tonight, in Fallujah We wait For the known For the follow-up To the fighter planes To the rockets To the long days of shelling To the depleted uranium killing us slowly, We wait To see their tanks Their tanks will come... » read this article

Killin' Time People polishing guns They've got nothing better to do Though they think they're having fun They're just living to die, if they but knew Now, now   All day long they sit at home Waiting for the milk to come Watch them turn into stone Thinking 'bout the... » read this article

Waltzing Mattilda   When I was a young man I carried my pack And I lived the free life of a rover. From the Murries green basin to the dusty outback I waltzed my Mattilda all over. Then in 1915 my country said "son Its time to stop rambling coz... » read this article

Voices from The Dead Quietly we lie, scattered across the land separated from our comrades in battle, returned home in a pre-paid coffin draped by an American flag, and put to rest in a hometown plot. We are the dead. They told us that we would be heroes fighting for... » read this article

From the Halls of Montezuma To the Bridge at No Gun Ri We fight the corporations' battles In the air on land and sea.   From the shores of Guantanamo Bay To the secret torture cell We'll transform each quiet village Into an everlasting Hell.   We are the Planetary... » read this article

  Death in Baghdad My heart is heavy, My body is full of tears! I saw the armless child, The pregnant mother dead, The headless father, His brother�s mangled body. My heart is heavy, My body is full of tears! I saw the black U.S. soldier, His bullet-riddled body. I... » read this article

One Wonders  As they feed, do they sometimes fester? Statesmen. Dignitaries. Magnates. Kings. Their toys are armies, corporations, oil fields, The globe their flag strewn chessboard. One wonders if, when sitting at A sumptuously laden table with Their family surrounding them They hear, beneath congenial chatter, Many worlds away, the... » read this article