The following is a piece written a number of years ago by a dear friend which coalesces so much of what is becoming societies norm. :(
Note: There are a number of links to graphic photos of the effects of war so caution is advised.
Edit: Visual content considerations
Note: There are a number of links to graphic photos of the effects of war so caution is advised.
Crane said:WAR MUST DIE
1 Quan Duc’s Jewel Heart
Get a friend to spin Ouija board with me. Hold our hands together very soft / on white plastic spirit driver / talk to dead thru that / we invoke Quan Duc / Vietnamese monk who burned himself up in protest of War/ 1963 / Saigon / he just sat there / burning up / in space / in grace / pain is somewhere else / beside himself / in the plastic can of gasoline / in the car with hood raised / in shocked faces watching. Who burns? what dies? Who cares?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Th%C3%ADch_Qu%E1%BA%A3ng_%C4%90%E1%BB%A9c
Photographer Malcom Brown
David Halberstam / reporter from New York Times - SEE flames coming from a human body shriveling up / head blackening / SMELL burning human flesh / beings burn surprisingly quickly / Behind me I could hear sobbing / too shocked to cry / too bewildered to even think / As he burned he never moved a muscle / never uttered a sound / wailing people all around
2. poison gases burn / gas rap
mustard gas
First synthesized 1860 / V Meyer mass produced gas for war / viscous liquid blisters skin / you don’t want this in your lungs / wear your gas mask / it doesn’t work / mustard gas is poison from hell / eats you live / through your clothes / if you breath it / its all over / yellow cross liquid / chemical pneumonia / choke
napalm
the most terrible pain you can imagine / said Kim Phuc / known from Vietnam War photo / running down road naked and screaming / her arms flapping. Water boils at 100 degrees Celsius / Napalm generates temperatures of 800 to 1,200 degrees Celsius / thickened gasoline-based substance uses soap as jellying agent / incendiary weapon / girl hurt badly / people have to stop doing this / on all sides All at once.
http://www.warbirdforum.com/vphoto.htm
Kim Phuc photo by Nick Ut
agent orange
Agents of orange / their fire doesn’t sleep / defoliant / dioxin / poison / Vietnam War / Operation Ranch Hand / removes leaves of trees to prevent guerilla fighters from hiding & deprives enemy of food / named from orange stripes on barrels used to transport it / Agent Orange / discontinued in 1971 / after 6,000 spraying missions in Vietnam and Cambodia. / causing serious harm to exposed people & their children and grandchildren / and to trees.
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_NhCoRO2bPZU/R2Now1tZEuI/AAAAAAAAASc/TLT_6neZWH0/s400/WP3.jpg
Photographer Philip Jones Griffiths
white phosphorus
First used by Fenian arsonists in 19th C / incendiary agent / smoke screen & flame compound / in military jargon known as WP / Viet Nam era slang "Willy Pete” / in Iraq called “shake and bake” / General Pace - white phosphorus is just another weapon / marks targets for air strikes / creates smoke screens for moving around battlefield unseen / packed into artillery shell / exploding over battlefield / white glare illuminates enemy position / flaming chemical rain clings to anything it touches / burns for hours inside human body /
American forces used it against insurgents in Fallujah / phosphoric acid / droplets absorb water / growing larger and more dilute / scatters visible light then dissipates to wind / used in hand grenades and mortar bombs / used in an emergency / burster charge / smoke cloud forms in seconds / burning particles spray outward / burning right down to the bone /
www.tebyan.net/politics/2009/1/13/83301.html
Taken by AP photographer
Fallujah offensive. "White phosphorus kills indiscriminately."
Depleted Uranium.
Metallic uranium (U) / silver-white / dense luster / radioactive / half life 4.5 billion years / age of our EARTH / how used as weapon? Tank plating and bullets.
Iraqi children / many dead from cancers & birth defects / Gulf War Syndrome swept under carpet / Bob Nichols - They did it on purpose / used genocidal monster weapon for 15 years to weaken oil- and gas-rich countries of Central Asia / weaponized ceramic uranium oxide will account for 25 million cancers in Iraq the next several years / only 26 million Iraqis / minus 1.7 million killed by war sanctions since 1991 / bottom line purpose / kill people.
3. war crimes
President Bush refuses to bring troops home from Iraq // Scowcroft – you get in and then can’t get out / Journalist Seymour Hersh - spiraling madness in Iraq / former defense official says - President doesn't feel any pain / people suffer and die but his Church advances / Rove and Cheney keep him in gray world of religious idealism where he wants to be anyway / Bush has no idea / that we are all prisoners
forbidden massacres
February 1991 / white phosphorous used against Kurdish rebels in Erbil and Dohuk / delivered by artillery rounds and helicopter gunship / hundreds of thousands of Kurds flee into Turkey / How many dead? / When Saddam used WP / a chemical weapon said Mr Ranucci / but when Americans use it / a conventional weapon / injuries inflicted just as terrible / strange corpses found after Fallujah’s destruction / skin melted / caramelized / skin hanging from flesh / faces and other body parts melted /
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_NhCoRO2bPZU/R2Now1tZEuI/AAAAAAAAASc/TLT_6neZWH0/s400/WP3.jpg
torture culture
29 November 2005 / transcript / / Col Lawrence Wilkerson - detainee abuse issue and post-invasion planning for Iraq / I lay blame squarely at his feet./ relationship between Mr Cheney & Mr Rumsfeld produced these failures / president not holding them accountable / lay blame at his feet too / Geneva Convention / does not mean that I can go into darkened cell / detainee shackled / hands above head to wall / beat him so that he dies
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2009/05/29/article-1189193-015CB0EC0000044D-281_468x354.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1189193/Graphic-images-rape-torture-Iraq-prisoner-abuse-photos-Obama-wants-blocked-claims-U-S-general.html&usg=__dqKoggYmPql1sQbGxKBt8Lw-4eo=&h=354&w=468&sz=57&hl=en&start=26&itbs=1&tbnid=D10c4aCoi_056M:&tbnh=97&tbnw=128&prev=/images%3Fq%3DUS%2Bprison%2Bguard%2Babuses%2Biraqi%2Bprisoner%26gbv%3D2%26ndsp%3D18%26hl%3Den%26sa
slaves on leash
Sulaymaniyah, Iraq. Unlock one final door / Museum display - dark hallway SPARKLES with 182,000 mirror fragments - one for each victim of Anfal campaign / 5,000 tiny lights in ceiling for each victim of Halabja. Life-sized figure of Kurdish rebel hangs by wrists from metal hook / arms bound behind back to dislocate shoulders / electric alligator clips attached to earlobes / wires run to green generator / face frozen in agony / room paneled in wood to muffle screams.
4 curses & cures.
Radical puritans hijack Islam / mind rolling ancestral basin / Wannabi / jihad / infidels / Saudi’s guard holy places / Mecca. Might / Now / Prayers squawk over loud speakers. GOD IS GREAT / Prayer rugs and yarmulkes. Crosses and swastikas. Chain reactions. Fundamentalist noise & systems of silence
Sad gas brewing beneath MECCA / from dinosaur ancestors / Crusader army enrages holy warriors / Roadside bombing on US politics / can’t see the force for the treason / boom chicka doom chicka tomb / deadly allies / secret allies / Strategies of tension / insurgents surge / bombs in satchels / bombs in cars / bombs on silver duct tape around waists. Flanders field red poppies on black burkhas. War is mean
Botulinistic toxins / Japan / gods seeds / Anthrax / Sheffield / shellfish / sex trade / Chernobyl / Sunni’s insurge while Shite’s radicalize / shake and bake those Teflon mittens / Anthrax / Z- compounds / Shell fish toxin / sarin gases / airplanes that fly and don’t get anywhere are masks for another problem. Dominating showmen & dormant tridents stabbing at things / unfurling the US flag it was discovered that the stars had been cut out by a protester
Modern life is a breathless brothel. Use everything at once / in a trancelike state to get off. Empty sermons at Wal-Mart. People all in a line. It’s all mine. Ching ching of cash registers. Things pile up in shopping carts / Work. Buy. Consume. Die / Tear something apart. Bite somebody / NOW / Mystery shoppers need stuff from stores for holidays
All breathing the same air.
We just keep going to war. People want more / have to take it from someone. Lots of people don’t have any. Some people just keep getting more. Lots of other people keep getting nothing. War. It’s just in people. How the -flick- do you get WAR out of people?
Invoke the dead / Ancestors / Stay with them all night long. Silent sour mountains and lots of static / until / stone woman gets up to dance / feel those near and gone. It’s gotta be better over there. Still here. Some things not realized until years later.
5. Peace
How do we not need to make these mistakes anymore? 911 New York City / many people die / then US waving voodoo dolls at everyone all over the planet / WEAPONS weeping upon us / American dream has violent tendencies / Capital punishment / Crips / Tookie Williams / redemption denied / Nobel Peace prizes prodded / by soap operas / lethal injection applied
monk still burns
Quan Duc tells protégé Bhu / planning something special / Bhu faints / revives / first to reach Duc’s charred body / cremated twice but his heart won’t burn / why don’t Buddhists, Communists, Christians and Americans discover the secret of Quan Duc’s jewel heart?
Thich Nhat Hanh - the press spoke of suicide / but it is not even a protest / aimed only at opening hearts to Vietnamese suffering / monk who burns himself / believes in act of sacrifice for the sake of others / Quan Duc / bodhisattva / awakening vows / so that all beings / attain joy
buddha bus power
Vietnamese Buddhists burning in ritual time / removed from / time terror / errors / place of no place / more profound than heat of fire itself / suicide / sacrifice / a very natural thing to do / like breathing / Understand / courage of Rosa Parks / facing racism / UNDERSTAND Buddhist war deaths and bus boycott /
Source: Rosa Parks Civil Rights Arrest - http://www.google.com/imgres
Peace driven soldiers eat up our suffering / Rosa Parks / Cindy Sheehan / Martin Luther King / Dalai Lama / Karmapa / have a dream / and feel / a world where people are kind to each other / Rosa refuses to stand up on bus / Cindy’s son Casey dies in Iraq and she camps outside prez cow palace in Crawford Texas / Martin Luther King writes from Birmingham jail
TOUCH EARTH / BE NOW / PRESENT / EARTH
Thich Nhat Hanh – War didn’t just happen in Viet Nam – it happens to all of us / Peace is / calming down / breath in peace / walk in peace / do not fear / walk away from killing / walk towards joy / people everywhere / embrace / SEE world leaders / CHOOSE / happiness for all.
6 translucent music
Prayers in passing. Use at yr own risk. Tension in body / performing / imprecise teachings / that emphasize WORDS / shaking and going along. / touching a live wire and exhausted / Trees breath / shoveling food into my mouth. They run around a lake. Very strange. Cannot move towards peace. It is not a thing. Invite peace in. Be still / for a moment. Grateful. Breath / feel object obsessed mind evaporating. Think not thinking. Light shines forth
Invoke
prayers / for people living with sickness & sadness everywhere / Pray / for babies born with AIDS in Africa / baby face wizened like 90 yr old man / Pray / for food for hungry / hands folded and head bowed / stuck in jello / peace is not in nature / we have to learn it
World keeps rolling by / then we die
Peace emerges from somewhere far below the surface / monks in meditation and many people on medication / potatoes and tomatoes / we all dream at night / communing with benevolent beings in other dimensions / about our beautiful green earth and white moon / Mystery is with us from before beginning / grateful for masters who stay behind
Be kind to people. Each moment.
Great bodhisattva John Lennon.
“Imagine” – I hope one day you’ll join us and the world can live as one.”
Notes
Virus that creeps into our surface cognitive fabric. The Borg Queen. Rendering all
meaningless. We crawl into shoebox and face the white wall. Breath. Wallflowers for god. But, sometimes, just breathing isn't enuf. We long for excited trance of dance with words and organizing them into pretty picture. You spent a year of yr life invoking his presence and see where it got you?!!!
Next step. More of a pundit - know the world of things and objects & also feel the
mystery. He turned away from that in some sense. Zen sickness. His voice grew
flat behind weight of robes. He found an army to be conscripted by. Silent army marching breathing. Infecting. I'm not dissing zen here but just how its sometimes applied to us sensitive westerners / all shocked and alarmed about everything. He quieted me down. Into shoebox. But now the shoebox doesn't fit. Where is our passion? What do we really care about? What makes us cry?
Monsters melt down like wicked witch of west / when Dorothy throws water on her / in bardo / Red shoes sparkling / Wizard jerking chain behind curtain – now revealed. Mystics and magicians. Unite.
step into the light. Burn.
Burning woman
on cross
Edit: Visual content considerations
