Poets Against War continues the tradition of socially engaged poetry by creating venues for poetry as a voice against war, tyranny and oppression.
Yasmin Elaine Waring
The Last Lullaby (for Lebanon)
The Last Lullaby (for Lebanon)
Pleiades' heart breaks. All her stars have fallen out of the sky, a fiery trail of quasar tears.
Her burning hush settles on the canopy of still skins. She quiets crying tongues with soup spoons of dust and dying embers. Rockabyes babies with diaphanous songs. Their small hands open for the promise of candy as she
sweetly smothers them in their sleep
swaddles them in frankincense robes, lays them gently down on pillows of jasmine moss where they will rise by a jasper river and cross over.
In memory of the Qana Massacre on July 30, 2006
Anfal (
you flourished
while thirsting in the blue-black shadow of Babylon where the sun creeps too close and glares thrusting shifty prisms upon a young girl who does not shield her large eyes or shrinks from the heat
reds and oranges and yellows sought you out hottened your skin and you opened your arms wide overcome with childish hope that you really could catch them all with cool hands and swallow them whole swelling inside with so much beauty
there was no way to hide you
splintered blisses escaped through your fingertips still sticky from picking dates that stained deep-creased hands the only sign that you would grow old over night your sway like the cyrillic bend in the Euphrates stilled tip-toeing antelope enchanted even crusty poplar trees rooted in salty earth who fashioned you a parasol of fingered branches to crown their japheh-draped fawn and tried to trick the sun
knowing that the sun covets what it creates knowing that they will not hear you scream knowing that they will not smell you burn knowing that the rain will not come
they drop white leaves covering your light foot prints
In memory of Abeer Qassim Hamza, the 14-year-old girl who was raped and murdered along with her father Qassim Hamza, her mother Fikhriya Taha, and her 5-year-old sister Hadeel Qassim Hamza on March 12, 2006 in Youssifiyah, Iraq, allegedly by U.S. forces.
