Avril Janks- Six voices from Sydney- A Collage poem for peace – Sydney, Australia 2016

ORGANIZER: Avril Janks

CONTACT:   avriljanks@hotmail.com

 

Six voices from Sydney — A collage poem for peace

I

A paper peace.
Aleppo homes alive with kids, and washing,

and women calling, and baking bread:

now strips of paper flapping in the empty street.

 

A picture in the Kivu dirt

Made by a soldier’s penis, and his gun:

Three women in a scatter of flesh and bone.

 

In Kabul, you’ll need to play dot to dot

to reconnect the bits of exploded car,

and the slain child to his hollow mother on the kerb.

 

In Mogadishu, families flee their camp

They see the soldiers come to crush their homes,

To turn their hopes to cardboard in the dust.

 

In Pnom Penh, victims of Pol Pot

Have only left behind a silent cry,

A photograph on an unpainted wall.

 

In Sydney’s Lindt Café: a man,

A gun, a crowd, a muddled cause.

And when the ambulance, the cops, the press have gone

Discarded chocolate wrappers linger on.

 

By Avril Janks

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II

Flanders revisited

In Flanders fields not long ago,

Dead men were gathered row on row;

Fallen in battle, terrible and fierce,

Fighting for freedom and peace;

So they believe when in good faith

They threw their weapons from their hands.

Yet hardly time moved in a space of a breath

A century passed since those men were gone;

Their graves are marked with their names.

Now the horn of discord has sounded once more

In Flanders where others have gone

In search of a life they once could not have.

The call to arms they fervently cry

“For Flanders’ sake,” the leaders chorused;

“Peace,” cry fools, their numbers unheeded,

“Peace,” echoed the dead men from whose hands

the torch had fallen to the later comers, children yet unborn.

 

By Ria Andiani, in response to John McCrae’s In Flanders Fields.

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III

Sharing a message of hope

Shared by Ali Marandi

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IV

Peace will come

Peace will come when the world becomes colour blind

and we find love through our hearts and not our minds.

Peace will come when we can smile at a stranger

as a smile has no language and peace fears no danger.

Peace will come when a man can love and marry his man

and a woman can love and marry her woman

and no one dictates or hates.

Peace will come when tolerance overrides brainwashing,

when love overrides hate and peace overrides any pain, fear and suffering

Then we can become one

and peace has won

 

By Nadine Moses

 

V

A view of peace

 

By Eleanor Trinchera

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VI

A song shared by Ali Marandi:

Mildura rapper Philly covering Bob Marley’s Three Little Birds for NAIDOC week – NAIDOC Week celebrations are held across Australia each July to celebrate the history, culture and achievements of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

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VII

Peace

Hands tied by hope not rope,

Feet jumping for happiness,

Not to reach the top of the fence.

Embraces hide smiles and joyful tears,

Not knives and snarling smirks.

Adults see through children’s eyes.

 

By Sally-Ann Janks

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