Anderson and Adams

Rachel’s Song        

by KEMMER ANDERSON

            for Rachel Corrie

A voice is heard in Ramah, weeping and lamenting,

Rachel weeping for her children

And refusing to be comforted because they are no more. (Matthew 2:18)

In Rafah the sound of weeping voices cries out:

Soldiers arrive rolling great stones

Turning homes into rubble, houses into tombs,

 

Words into perpetual acts of burial and deceit.

Bulldozers invade; tank tracks clack across artifacts,

Narratives, football pitch, and orchard –

 

leveling the playing between rocks and rockets,

Imprinting the genetic code for massacre through a generation.

of warring brothers.

 

The Herod engines of blind Samsons

Drive bladed bulldozers through a slaughter of innocents.

Your crushed body rises in lament for Palestine:

 

Rachel weeping for her children, refusing to be comforted

Because they are no more.  Rachel kneeling before the Army

In her orange jacket speaks against occupation.

 

Swallowed up by dirt and bulldozer, shoveled aside by force,

Flattened ribs and crushed skull break the peace.

Tank tracks pass over your body.

 

A voice is heard in Rafah and Ramah weeping and lamenting,

Rachel weeping for her children

And refusing to be comforted because they are no more.

(Previously published online at Poets Against the War. On August 28, Haifa District Court Judge Oded Gershon ruled in effect that Rachel Corrie, herself, was to blame for being murdered by Israeli forces.)

Kemmer Anderson may be reached at kanderso@mccallie.org.

 

EVOL

by SUSAN ADAMS 

Authorised war is the muse

its oil pulse

and forgiving heavens

mock our growth.

Revenge is an ego

an eye for a million.

Let shame give hope to those huddled

homeless under that same tobacco moon.

We fester in this winning glow

defeated by the loss of ourselves.

Let’s crack the mirrors

start a new language

MODSIW          YTIRGETNI

ban all words that allude to truth

if we cannot change our behaviours,

erase the words that define them as moral.

Let’s break the windows and beg

on prayer mats of blood

our knees in rubble.

 

Escape the Beloved Country

by SUSAN ADAMS 

The foetal curve

is a question mark

we revert to

not a haven for a life

lying curled on our dark side

Cry the national anthems

 

Hiding from the outside,

the inside of ourselves

escape is not a plan

in this State of drugged control

 

There are no light switches

in this suck-thumb-bare-room

loose skin is a soap polished shroud

the wall a full stop at the bend

 

Breathe me alive

brand me to struggle

make me scream with honest air

let me out

Susan Adams, PhD is an Australian poet published in nine countries. She was awarded “Commended” in the 2012 O’Donoghue International Poetry Competition (Ire) and “Highly Commended” in the Val Vallis Award 2012. She has been read numerous times on ABC Radio National. Recent publications include Quadrant, Westerly, Southerly, Eureka Street, Hecate, Social Alternatives, Cordite, Visible Ink. She lives on Dangar Island in the Hawkesbury River. Her first book, Beside Rivers, has been accepted for publication by Island Press for release early 2013.

 

 

 

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