The Hunger for Peace



The acrid odor of fear

permeates the fragile fabric of silence

that shrouds this forsaken fortress,

masquerading as native soil.

The refugees of conflict,

resigned to homeland horrors become

sheep aware of imminent slaughter,

defeat and resignation personified.

Politics in all its distorted permutations,

like a lethal scythe,

with indiscriminate precision

shears everything in its myopic path.

Collateral damage

becomes a sanitized subtext,

for whatever it takes;

operation success; patient dies.

Evil comes in many colors;

rationalized violence,

intellectualizations posing as

purported policies and beliefs.

Flawed and slanted principles driven by

self serving and profoundly immoral goals,

have no mercy,

for the peaceful and meek.

There is no winning in war,

there is no peace at gunpoint.

there are no human rights

in vacuums of indifference.

The rampant weeds of terror,

throttle the will of fertile crops

that would nourish

the hunger for peace.

Copyright © Henri Ferguson 2008

All rights reserved.

We are led to believe that terror is perpetrated by all those that would oppose the new order of democracy being offered to those nations that, from our perspective, need liberation. Sometimes these nations are indeed oppressed and need saving, and as morally responsible and ethically correct global citizens we must step up to the plate. Then there are situations where vested and strategic interests override the human moral code and nations become enmeshed in a process of proliferating hate and deeply seated wars that will victimize entire generations. Repeatedly history reveals the hidden horrors and the façade of clinical warfare, nobody wins, everybody loses and what is left is the hunger for peace.