Saturday, November 11, 2023

Special Feature: Selected Poetry for Reflections on Remembrance Day through the Lens of Gaza and Ukraine

                                                                                                        war after war news ...
                                                                                                        Remembrance Day parade
                                                                                                        long and longer

                                                                                                        Chen-ou Liu


Peace-loving people around the world this morning remembered the slaughter and losses in the battlefields of World War I, also known as the Great War that was supposed to be “the war to end all wars.”


news the war to end all wars rolling 

Helen Buckingham


"Yet the rumble of tanks and the screeching of incoming fire from Ukraine to Gaza pierced the solemnity of the occasion and the notion that humankind could somehow circumvent violence to settle its worst differences." (The Washington Post, Nov. 11: Somber bugles and bells mark Armistice Day around the globe as wars drown out peace messages)  


no-man’s land
the rattle of a troop train
returning empty

Ernest J. Berry

war zone ...
amongst the rubble
an empty birdcage

Mohammad Azim Khan


"This time last year, our thoughts were focused on Ukraine. Today, our minds are full with the terrible images emerging from Israel and Gaza. These are just two of the more than 100 armed conflicts in the world today,” said Benoit Mottrie, the head of the Last Post Association in western Belgium’s Ypres, where some of the fiercest and deadliest World War I battles were fought." (The Washington Post, Nov. 11)  


taking me out of the war the war

H. Gene Murtha 

fall leaves
burying toy soldiers
her small son

Fonda Bell Miller

poppies at dusk
in my dream, he says yes
the boy lost to war

Richa Sharma

watercolor poppies
blowing across the field ...
why
is it so hard
to learn from history

Rebecca Drouilhet


"...Then, as now, the quest for deterrence sparked a pre-war arms rivalry, marked by corruption and price gouging. Military lobbies and leagues (today’s ‘think tanks’), funded by arms companies and financiers, promoted deterrence as indispensable. Ex-politicians, military wonks, and Defence public servants crossed over to lucrative jobs with the military lobbies and arms companies, and promoted deterrence as indispensable. And deterrence failed...

That war is a black hole, that sucks in everything – rationality, proportionality, and humanity itself. That war is a black hole that sucks in everybody – the courageous and the cowardly, the virtuous and the vengeful, the innocent and the guilty. All buried.

And thus, that whoever wins the war, the war always wins." (Pearls and Irritations, Nov 11: Remembrance Day through the lens of Gaza and Ukraine)

This Remembrance Day, the great juggernaut of war is crushing thousands.


no man's land
between barbed wire fences
the kraa-kraa-kraa
of ravens scratching
at the soldiers' hearts

Chen-ou Liu

FYI: "no man's land" is the concluding tanka of my tanka prose, "Independence," nominated by the Tanka Society of America for the Pushcart Press Competition.

drifting snow
each of the war dead
has their story

Marianne Paul

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