WHEN TERRORISTS CAMP ON THE WORLD

1
An idea takes form
on paper,
Becomes
a paper plane,
Grows fangs,
Becomes a tiger
with wings,
Becomes real,
Is launched by terrorists
toward proud places
To terrorize,
de-stabilize
And throw us to our deaths.

The stability of the mind
retreats
As airplanes filled
with liquid rage
Demolish civilians,
and kill great structures.

They detonate
to punctuate
their declarations.

America responds
with new explosions.
Continents away,
civilians die.

Seed forms of hate and rage
keep being born and blown about.
Tracked everywhere,
they stick best to bloody wounds.
Seed forms of hate
sprout as deadly spores.
Ancient tribes,
still alive today,
Resuscitate plagues of antiquity,
with 21st century technology.

From this mating dance
of science and hate,
Come flames, diseased spores,
chemical wars,
And plagues that float
like feathers,
But stick
like leeches.

2
Fear and hatred,
will these twins descend like night
And slowly chew up
the light of day?

Or will cries and curses
be hushed
In a rush of energy
from uplifted wings,
The wings of the great being,
The Spirit of Peace?

Will old problems,
laboriously fleshed out,
Grow flushed,
Heave final signs of relief,
And be resolved?

Will the Spirit of Peace
Leave behind some feathers
To touch and brush
the ancient spores of modern war
Back into the earth?

Or will the Spirit of Peace
become a spectre,
Bloodless,
without power?

3
We choose
to win or lose.

Better to lose this game
of win and lose,
Let it float
and be forgot,
And become a worn out
thought form,
Rotten and forgotten.

Let us throw our hatred back
to the last century,
Like an old bone
from our pre-history.

Let us see hatred
as a mind game gone bad,
A mime game that distorts us
into our fears and frailties,

Let us realize a future,
Where hatred is but
a charade
Whose meaning
is long forgot,
Because we act from compassion
set firmly in our nature
And in our history.

Let compassion be
part of the way we move,
The way we think.
Let us focus on our higher
destiny
Guardian species
of the planet.

—November, 2001

Copyright 2001 by Paul Dolinsky