- Israel is building a wall; to wall others out and themselves
in. Israel is building a wall, of encampments so to speak, of walled people
separated from their neighbors-farmlands and the world. Israel is building
a wall, some say, 800 miles long and 25 feet high.
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- An ugly gray wall of poured concrete, complete with sniper
towers to shoot those who would be free. Will Israeli citizens feel safe
walled in with others out? Will Palestinians feel the echoes of another
time when the world said, "Never Again?" Will they recall the
walls of camps, of a skeletal people imprisoned and gassed? A people called
unclean, inferior and vermin. Will they recall those dragged from their
homes, made to wear labels of 'other'; the handicapped, the chronically-ill,
the elderly, the homosexual, the multitudes of Jews all tried and convicted
and sentenced to death by men gone mad from another realm? Will they recall
a massive wall built across a country separating East from West. Walls
with towers, snipers ready to kill the voice of freedom's quest.
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- And after years of savage killing, the gassing of the
innocents, a night of shattered windows and shattered lives the soldiers
from a far off land came and rescued those not yet dead. A President in
another time gave the order, "Tear down that wall" to a country
divided.
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- How is it then, through all this madness, all this death
of men escaping in the night, of orphaned children and tattooed numbers,
we've gone full circle from whence we came? While men play amongst the
stars photographing distant desolate planets, and launch their roving satellites
here on earth they build their walls. How is it that the oppressed of one
era become the oppressors in the next? Are men so blinded to the errors
of madmen?
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- Ghetto walls of boarded blight. Walls of missiles, bombs
and tanks, walls of military might. Walls of armored black clad men beating
down the voice of men. Walls of gas, stun guns, and guns silencing the
people's pleas. Walls of barbed wire, steel and mesh, walling in those
dividing up the earth's resources amongst themselves and favored friends.
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- Walls of gated guarded wealth, are isolated floes of
ice men drifting in earth's cauldron seas; of famine, mountains ripped
asunder, as men of might seek and plunder. Tropic forests, northern seas,
desert oil, and farmlands rich, they trade them all in concrete canyons.
Gated, private, do not enter, keep out, no trespassing, no vacancy; returns
them home to count their loot and stroke their gilded luxuries. Alarm bells
sound a needed warning, perchance the robbed ones seek their jobs, pensions,
lands and children's futures.
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- Prison walls entrap the poor, clad in gray or khaki uniform
off to war to guard and capture rich men's spoils. Private prison industry
enslaves the nation's minorities, poorly educated and illiterates, to enrich
the ice men even more. Ice men frozen without conscience; send young men/women,
farmer, teacher, father, husband, wife and mother, to kill the poor of
other lands, and wall it all in flags and ribbons, calling it freedom and
democracy instead of malignant greed and depraved hypocrisy.
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- Who is the prisoner and who is free when a man is ordered
to kill a stranger? Who is prisoner and who is free when men are caged
without a voice for their color, creed or land of birth? Who is free when
prisoner and guard are both the victims of faceless power run amuck? Who
is free when hired minions search and scan, finger print and demand the
papers, of those who fought in distant wars for something called democracy?
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- Curfews screeching in the night, sounds a wailing wall
of warning to clear the streets and do not loiter. Echoing streets, porches
emptied, park benches vacant of love's night kiss. No sounds of children's
hide and seek, neighbor's chatter or errant pet. Walls of silence now complete
as shades are drawn, doors all locked, alarm bells set until the early
dawn of fear; when a color code of red, orange, yellow, blue or green determines
my anxiety. Plastic sheeting and duct tape ready, should wall me off from
unseen poisons.
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- Walled in walled out suspicion grows; fear the immigrant,
dissenting voice, fear the stranger in your midst. Build a wall , perhaps
a moat, buy a guard dog, and motion lights. Post signs around your property,
move to an isolated floe that only welcomes the selected few.
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- And yet, while men may wall themselves in and others
out- nature, not constrained by men's insanity, keep the voice of freedom's
song. It whispers softly in the night, and in the early morning's dawn,
freedom's fog crawls the wall. The sunlight creeps through crack and crevice
giving warmth to those imprisoned. A song bird's nest atop the wall, sings
out daily freedom's call. The Monarch butterfly alights in prison yard
and battlefield announcing its escaped cocoon. The winds unchecked by walls
or guards, does its best to lift men free to lofty heights that they might
dance with eagles majesty.
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- No walls of men, though they reach beyond the heavens,
can imprison the clapping of the trees, the oceans roar calling incessantly
to man's spirit, that like themselves, men will not be enslaved, caged,
chained, or walled from freedom's call. They call forth the message that
men are meant for greatness in heralding true Peace. A world without wars,
walls, nor men of ice. Freedom calls-listen.
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