A PEACE POEM FOR THE WORLD PEACE POETRY FESTIVAL

 

 

FENCE GRAFFITI POEM: VOICE, LOVE, PEACE

Five Poems Celebrating Peace

By ALBERT B. CASUGA

...No time to rejoice for those who walk among noise and deny the voice/...Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehoods/ Teach us to care and not to care/ Teach us to sit still/...Our peace in His will/...And let my cry come unto Thee. ---T. S. Eliot, “Ash Wednesday”

1.

That would have required a lot of fences,

a lot of denuded trunks, fallen trees even.

You would have to stare at backyards

green with revived spring grass, risking

life and limb. “Is this your graffiti? Is it?”

But the three words I stepped on, walking

on the trail, in dotard cadence: Peace, Love:

they were temple bromides. But Voice?

They were sprawled on the grime, like

drunken derelicts, one did not have to look

but be accosted by their urgent demand

on winding asphalt: Peace. Love. Voice.

Like four-letter words, they surprise one

whose habit is to look down in timorous

gait, troubled by daily lust, greed, and lies

dreading mayhem from a gaze at the sky.

2.

Peace. A span of walls for a five-letter word,

perhaps havoc among the mansion lords

writhing in the spasm of murderous oath:

“Let me not catch the spineless vandal!

Or heaven forbid, I will sever both his arms

from his bastard shoulders. No piece spared

among his vile fingers. I will pluck his eyes

from their sockets. Paint “PEACE” with blood

oozing from hollowed holes in his crushed

face, across his torso, down to his dirty groin!”

I wonder at my walk’s anguish over the murder

of children, old women, and decrepit men

in the hovels of Kandahar by a calculating

American Marine, Rambo-like, making a target

practice out of frightened children, burning

their lean-to homes, maybe urinating, too,

on corpses like those cut-up Taliban lined up

by YouTubed U.S. soldiers in nasty whoopee.

Is this hurt, after all, not a misplaced dread

that peace is nothing now but a dying dream?

3.

Love. Like a four-letter word, it could not

have been used nor even abused in Homs

where Syrian fathers, brothers, and armed

kin mowed down children, more children,

dismembered children and all who could not

escape the carnage at Karm el-Zeitoun to call

down a leader beleaguered by an Arab Spring

blazing like fiery poems as flamethrowers.

“Disarm the shabiba* or arm village defenders.

This is our civil war! “As if war could be civil.

As if love were a filthy four-letter word thrown

at the askance who ask: How could you love

your country when you butcher your lovers

and plead for arming your rebels to wage war?

4.

Voice. Ah, the avant-garde call to general

quarters. From a challenging cry of rebellion,

is it perhaps rapidly withering? Voice your pain.

Occupy! Voice your anger. Occupy! Vox populi

Vox Dei. Occupy! Wall Street, Bay Street, or

even streetcars name Desire. Occupy! Occupy!

From the stupor of a languid walk, one recalls

a Via Dolorosa, a lonely wounded walk up

the Hill of Skulls, a golgotha presides over

a cacophony of voices, noises: Crucify! Crucify?

Is this not, somehow, the direst of oxymorons

when the spread-eagled, nailed, pinioned man

counsels love for neighbours? You will be with

me in paradise; forgive them, they know not

what they do. Yet, did he not shout out his pain:

Father, why have you abandoned me? Why?

The people must have their Voice. It is the Voice

of God. Soon, in the British Parliament, learned

voices will argue why the Crucifix should not

be worn on stewardess’s lapels, or civil servants

yearning for the equivalent of a tolerated turban,

or even a recondite dagger, all symbols of faith.

5.

I step on these words graffitied on the sprung

trail. I mutter: Peace, Love, Voice. I did not fall.

He did, got lashed, mocked. Kicked to stand

with his burden, he insisted on loving even

enemies, even those who cried: Crucify Him!

On my quaint walk through a new spring on

Glen Erin trail, I shrugged the lingering cold off

and whispered: Here is my empty heart. Occupy it. 

 

--ALBERT B. CASUGA

 

BIO OF A. B. CASUGA

ALBERT B. CASUGA, a Philippine-born writer, lives in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada, where he continues to write poetry, fiction, and criticism after his retirement from teaching and serving as an elected member of his region's school board. He was nominated to the Mississauga Arts Council Literary Awards in 2007. A graduate of the Royal and Pontifical University of St. Thomas (now University of Santo Tomas, Manila. Literature and English, magna cum laude), he taught English and Literature (Criticism, Theory, and Creative Writing) at the Philippines' De La Salle University and San Beda College. He has authored books of poetry, short stories, literary theory and criticism. He has won awards for his works in Canada, the U.S.A., and the Philippines. His latest work, A Theory of Echoes and Other Poems was published February 2009 by the University of Santo Tomas Publishing House. His fiction and poetry were published by online literary journals Asia Writes and Coastal Poems recently. He was a Fellow at the 1972 Silliman University Writers Workshop, Philippines. As a journalist, he worked with the United Press International and wrote an art column for the defunct Philippines Herald. He maintains an online literary blog on http://ambitsgambit.blogspot.ca

 

PERMISSION TO PRINT/PUBLISH

TO: THE WORLD PEACE POETRY FESTIVAL

(Represented herein by Mr. Jaypee Belarmino, jp_belarmino@yahoo.com)

I am hereby giving permission to The World Peace Poetry Festival herein represented by Jaypee Belarmino to print the above Fence Graffiti Poem, that he has requested for their purposes during the Festival to be held in Richmond, British Columbia.

The material is fully copyrighted by the undersigned and may not be published by any other organization or publisher without his express permission.

(SGD.)

Albert B. Casuga

January 28, 2013
64-3125 Fifth Line West
Mississauga, Ontario, Canada L5L 3S8

 

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