Alliance Poem of the Month

Counterpunch attack dog and formidable counterloon, Manuel Garcia jr, has more than one string to his bow. Scratch an atomic weapons scientist and he bleeds poetry.Truly, out of the strong comes forth sweetness......

We Ignore All Immolations

A Buddhist nun immolates herself on a Saigon street
to shock callous calculating minds
into a consciousness with peace as possibility.
A Palestinian explodes himself in Israel
to insert punctuation into the long, grim sentence passed on his tribe.
Final Solutions are dealt out by those with enough guns
to force in new settlements;
internal colonies grow to merge into a smothering occupation
rimmed in the blood of the vanquished.
Little empires curry favor with greater ones,
playing the role of Sparta-for-hire.
And everywhere:
the eyes are blind, the ears are deaf, the minds are sealed.
We ignore all immolations.
We can only drive ourselves along the scent trails laid down for us
by the masters of our destiny.

10 December 2001

© Manuel Garcia, Jr (13 ½)

Who could doubt the personal bravery of someone who would willingly publish this shit such lines?