1.

An idea  takes form
     on paper,
Becomes
     a paper plane,
Grows fangs,
Becomes a  tiger
     with wings,
Becomes real,

Is launched by terrorists
    toward proud places
To terrorize,
    de-stabilize
And  throw us to our deaths.

The stability of the mind
     retreats
As airplanes filled
     with liquid rage
Demolish civilians,
    and  kill great structures.

They detonate
     to punctuate
          their declarations.

America responds
     with new explosions.
Continents away,
     civilians die.

Seed forms of hate and rage
     keep being born and blown about.
Tracked everywhere,
    they stick best to bloody wounds.
Seed forms of hate
     sprout as deadly spores.
Ancient tribes,
     still alive today,
Might resuscitate plagues of antiquity,
     with 21st century technology.

From this mating dance
    of science and hate,
Come flames, diseased spores,
     chemical wars,
And plagues that float
     like feathers,
But stick
     like leeches.

2.

Fear and hatred,
     will these twins descend like night
And slowly chew up
     the light of day?

Or will cries and curses
     be hushed
In a rush of energy
     from uplifted wings,
The wings of the great being,
The Spirit of Peace?

Will old problems,
     laboriously fleshed out,
Grow flushed,
Heave final signs of relief,
And be resolved?

Will the Spirit of Peace
Leave behind some feathers
To touch and brush
     the ancient spores of modern war
Back into the earth?

Or will the Spirit of Peace
     become a spectre,
Bloodless,
     without power?
 
 

3.

We choose
     to win or lose.

Better to lose this game
     of win and lose,
Let it float
     and be forgot,
And become a worn out
     thought form,
Rotten and forgotten.

Let us throw our hatred back
    to the last century,
Like an old bone
    from our pre-history.

Let us see hatred
     as a mind game gone bad,
A mime game that distorts us
    into our fears and frailties,

Let us realize a future,
Where hatred is but
    a chirade
Whose meaning
    is long forgot,
Because we act from compassion
    set firmly in our nature
And in our  history.

Let compassion be
    part of the way we move,
The way we think.
Let us focus on our higher
     destiny
Guardian species
     of the planet.

     November, 2001

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by Paul L. Dolinsky
Copyright 2001, Paul L. Dolinsky
All Rights Reserved
pdolan@fairpoint.net
buddhistpoems.com