Peace One Day

Dear Diary,

It is Friday the 21st September and it is Peace One Day day today. It only happens once a year and I had never heard of it until a kind soul sent the details to me in a forwarded emaiI. I went to the website and made a pledge as did many, many others. This was mine.

I will fill my blog entry with all things pertaining to peace and I shall pray for

Peace One Day.

I am keeping my promise and I am going to try to blog about peace. I have been thinking about the subject for the last few days. Not that I don’t think of it at other times of course, I am a child of the Sixties after all. Now, as I sit down to write, I am trying to think of peace but all I can think of is war. Wars past and present. The Iraq war is always in my thoughts, I campaigned hard against it.

Hatred is like a seed, feed it and it grows, we should plant the peace-seed and feed, water and nurture it daily not just once a year. Perhaps we could have ceasefires every week, every month, not just every year. Then one day altogether. It may happen one day, if we can survive as a race that is.

Peace One Day.

It worries me that our National Curriculum contains a lot of compulsory teaching about (some, selected) past WARS and past British victories but nothing about PEACE. In the past, and still today, many countries are invaded in the name of exploitation, don’t let us lie to our children about what war is all about. Politicians always end up round a table talking to their ‘enemy’ and past wars are soon forgotten. But many, many innocent lives have been sacrificed along the way to that table and wouldn’t you know, none of the dead are politicians. Wouldn’t it be better to talk first? Jaw Jaw not War War was a saying that made sense.

Peace-making and peace-keeping is the goal we should be aiming for in all walks of life and academic effort into that subject would be a good place to start.

In the meantime I will post you a few of my own poems, all were written some years ago now, but sadly are still as topical in their subject matter.





Dead children’s shoes



As they run and try to flee, Grandmother says
Don’t cry.
Don’t complain
That your sandals are hurting you
Remember the child who has no shoes

The American rocket hits
and the dead child, aged only four,
another victim of war,
She cries no more.

The world looks on through a TV screen
At a pair of tattered sandals ,
An old woman’s burnt body
Both quiet as death
Their innocence still woven in the silence
It paints for us a still-life
A piece of unsavoury art
Dead children’s shoes
Their family look to camera
Their begging in vain.

Cait O’Connor






War


War is our sickened stomachs
War is our hardened hearts
War is the Devil’s laughing eyes.
For so often are we near the edge
That when Evil may betray us
Into Satan’s den we stray
So easily unresisting and sheep-like
Taking the easy way,
The path of least resistance
Crossing the thin line that we humans tread
Into all manner of cruelty and sinfulness.

Cait O’Connor






Impending War
Written on 17th February 2003



We know how madmen lie.
And Bush has a pact with the Devil
To make war in a fight for control
With oil as the prize and the bounty.

Nothing rhymes.
And even their lies don’t add up.
Only the stench of war
And blood is in the air.

And all the while we are being misled by the misguided,
Carried along in a torrent with the blind,
The deaf and the downright war-crazy
And with those whose heads are buried
deep within the sand.

This is where my nightmare starts,
Dreams of burnt bodies and dead babies,
Body-bags, cremated soldiers,
Children running, fleeing from the war
With its explosions of legalised terrorism.
Death is all around and I am sore afraid
for prophecies are coming true.

We are preached to by the ignorant,
Lied to by the men in black
And disregarded by those who have no control.
Can all we do is hope
That the escalation will not destroy us
And Armageddon come upon us
If this evil prevails?

Pity the pawns, not only victims but fools.
Pity the victims for there can be no return.
The rubicon has been crossed.
Death and suffering before us,
Brought about by the hands of the bullies
Who are the hunters of a prey so easily taken.

My dream is like a daze of dread
Where I am compromised by sadness for this world
And meanwhile just my powerlessness prevails
And I am like the child again who wakes at night in fear.

Cait O’Connor 2003





To Ali,

and for all innocent children who are murdered or injured in war.




Not in my name Ali,

Are you armless.
With your pregnant mother dead.
Father, brothers, sisters and six cousins dead
All vapourised.

Not in my name Ali,

Are you alone with injuries so bad,
According to your doctor,
You would be better off dead.

You alone are just one.

A symbol of why we fight for peace.
Of why we wanted to stop the illegal, immoral invasion
And why a white ribbon still hangs on my door.

Someone tell me?

Would Bush and Blair give up their arms?
Would they give up their arms?
Would they give up their ARMS?

They have your blood on their hands.

Not in my name Ali,
Were arms sold to Iraq.
Not in my name
Were arms used by Bush and Blair.

Your arms were blown off
And your family blown away

Not in my name.

Cait O’Connor 2003



Ali is now a young man and he shames us all as he has decided to devote his life to campaign for peace in the world.

God bless him.


I am sorry I have broken my pledge and not written purely about peace; there is far too much in this blog about war but I promise that I too am praying for

Peace One Day.

Bye for now,
Caitx