Peace, like Giant Saguaro Cactus,
Took fifty years before flowering hope
Just night and green morning
Over quickly
Then flowers came out again
Again out came flowers then
Quickly over morning green and night
Just hope flowering before years fifty
Took cactus Saguaro Giant
Like peace.
By June Perkins
Stories Break
A loving couple separated
and no compassion forthcoming.
What will happen to their future?
His flowers never reach her.
Is detention all there is?
Indigenous children tortured
gassed and tied
not given hope or rehabilitation,
The past seems full of lies.
So much ‘invisible’
by choice or design?
until the stories break;
and the stories break
my heart
the stories break
my day
the stories make me
want to say:
time to be a lamp lighter
lamp lighter of justice
lamp lighter of love
lamp lighter of unity.
(c) June Perkins
Peace, like Giant Saguaro Cactus,
Took fifty years before flowering hope
Just night and green morning
Over quickly
Then flowers came out again
Again out came flowers then
Quickly over morning green and night
Just hope flowering before years fifty
Took cactus Saguaro Giant
Like peace.
(c) June Perkins
1.
The
Child on
The ocean shore
Lost to his father
Gone from a future life.
The
Father at
The funeral march
Wrapped in his grief
Unable to say, ‘Please Don’t
Show
The photograph
Of my son
Who I tried to
Save from war and ocean.’
The
World that
Circulated the image
Again and again when
They wanted to say ‘stop.’
And
The image
Doing endless rounds
Did it help them?
Did it bring him back?
2.
Unconsenting
Lost one
Winging his way
Away from the war
To the sky of dreams.
There
Are no
Words that will
Bring him home again
He’s left wars far behind.
Counting
The clicks
One by one
Today no time for
Poetry that turns people inwards.
Open
The wings
In the skylights
Above this day turning
Poetry ever outwards to peace.
There
are no
Words that will
Say everything you need
Only small attempts at flight.
3.
Can
Beauty and
Politics walk hand
In hand like friends
To coax the audience to wake?
Can
Politics and
Beauty wash away
layers of makeup logic
That defy time and truth?
Can
My eyes
Climb walls to
Fly with the ibis
In the urban skyline?
Can
The skyline
Beckon me to
Climb in to poems
Seeing, dreaming, waking, crying, activating?
Activating
My poetry
To tear down
Walls by mapped lines
Activating, crying, waking, dreaming, seeing.
(c) June Perkins
disappearing into the woods?
Thinking about what happened in Nagasaki all those years ago.
And then sometimes there are surprises like
a new chainsaw sculpture – this time an Emu with eggs.
What kind of tree is your
poet’s tree?
Is it boab or oak
paperbark or willow?
Does it dance with Mandela
mediate with Mahatma?
Is it a haven for
Maya Angelou’s caged birds?
Does your tree sing
of how to
make a walking stick
through pain
with words to make the feet
lighter?
Does it encase your feet in
shoe bark
to travel on the heated ground
of despair
through the cold of ignorance’s
ice
help you to slide to the leaves of
peace?
How many in your poet’s family
tree went to war and
created odes to soldier’s
who bloodied lay
at the base of this tree
– lost?
Will the nightingale
sing from the branches
of your poet’s tree
guide you
into the heart of things
-take you out beyond this side
of a worm hole
into the galaxy where peace
birds fly?
What kind of tree is your
poet’s tree?
(c) June Perkins
I’ve been working on many writing projects, but somehow my heart just wants to write a lot of peace poetry and songs – the world is in such dire straits and we are all connected and need to reach out and build a peaceful world. This seems the most urgent thing to write, dream and work for.
Guitar Boy by June Perkins
The world is singin’ its blues
askin’ for a bit of time to heal
askin’ why it’s so hard to feel
that nothin’ we do is gonna make
peace be real
askin’ for a DJ who understands
the need for peace
who can give us some
musical release
to bleed out the fears
dress them in a mother’s tears
The world is ringin’ out its questions
why, oh why’s a piece of land
or your religion
something to kill or die for
and why are people so quick
to tie their fate to
those noose of hate?
askin’ for a DJ who can change the down beat
into an upbeat
bring some kind of optimism into play
dress that sorrow
in a technicolour tomorrow
The world is singin’ its blues
askin’ for a bit of time to heal
askin’ why it’s so hard to feel
View original post 16 more words
Tree planting at the Gap – By June Perkins
Feeling a little heart-broken with all the despair in so many parts of the world. Time to write lots more #poetry4peace
Another bomb
another bomb fell on Gaza
and more people died
more people were feeling anxious
about flying
breakfast television said it was because
of the news and events in Ukraine
mothers and children marched
their happiness through the streets
free from Russian occupation
an Israeli soldier
was kidnapped
another bomb fell on Gaza
and more mothers cried
breakfast television said
children under 7 should not
be exposed to too much gruesome news
in the middle of the night
boat people were flown to Nauru
their lawyers were surprised
I read some poems from a prisoner of Faith
Mavash Sabet
my heart wept for her
missing the great outdoors
and smiled at her strength
and the beauty of her poetic…
View original post 62 more words
Not sure if this a poem or a meditation.
In the late afternoons baskets of light weave themselves into the branches.
They catch the sun and make it into petals and stars dancing through circles.
I love to watch for these baskets of light. Click them into my camera and hold them in an image.
If only children could climb into them away from the world’s fights.
They could beam their future, their dreams, their innocent light into the hearts of all them that are too attached to land and ideals that separate and antagonise.
Oh for the baskets of light that give the human spirit might. If only they could capture hate and ignorance and burn them away.
The sky cannot be owned. The sun cannot be captured. The light shines on all, through the baskets of light.
(c) June Perkins, words and image.
A poem for peace
the morning news unsettles
and reminds
for many there is no luxury
to look for daily balance
only the beginning of an end
lives blasted out of the sky
children bombed on the beach
apocalyptic movies due
at the cinema soon
and on the way to when healing arrives
the places where there is the
beginning of a beginning
every moment
is now handle with care
the places where tear drops
bomb the hope just out of reach
long for the time
visions of one world
might be in the real world soon
the temporary bandages we put on things
attempted treaties delicately achieved
are never enough
when will they make way for the time
when unity might
beam its sunlight
through leaves of green
to blind the apocalypse of now?
(c) June Perkins
Ripple Poetry 