Los Angeles, Iraq: I Write Until I Come To My Senses

Another day passes, more veils thin, 

I can see the doors between our worlds crack open.

While wiping the sand from my eyes I meet a soldier, 

just home from Iraq, walking on the beach.

Parts of his body were blown off and left somewhere over there.

It is his heart, that he mourns most, it shattered -

it is lying open, lost, everywhere over there.

He describes -
what he can now feel, 

and what he now can see.

We talk -
about changes we are energetically experiencing ...

some created by previous generations,
some we presently craft and are emotionally afflicting forward
for the next several generations to bare witness to, and overcome.

He asks -

“ Why have we declared war on our children.”

He says -

“War is not like a movie, war is slow and deliberate -
when you bomb a city, you bomb the citizens.”

I wipe the salt from my eyes, smile 

and encourage him to find the lost heart of his voice –

to speak his truth to neutralize his memory, 

free his thought transference, imagination, intuition.

He says -
“War is not a game, war is not like a television show,

when you bomb a neighbourhood, you bomb the neighbours.”

The family population is not hiding safely –

only to appear outside after the fighting, smiling and waving –

while in the street the good guys, guns smoking, 

stand over the bad guys’ fallen bodies.

The families are the populations 

who are being fought with bullets and bombs.

To save their neighbourhoods 

they fight back with sticks, stones and bottles.

The bodies being stood over 

are the florists, farmers, butchers, bakers and bankers.

These bodies are the bodies of teachers not teaching 

and police not policing.

They are the bodies of street cleaners who are not cleaning 

and doctors who are not doctoring.

Piled bodies of construction workers not repairable, 

and the fire brigade who is now extinguished.

War is not a television commercial 

where between advertisements children cry out for food -

and the mothers who have not died, 

mother by searching the rubble in the streets 

for their children’s daily nutritional requirements -

and the fathers who have not died, 

father by finding in the litter of bombshells 

a few nutshells and eggshells crazed and broken.

War is a media event 

where between moments of life and death, 

people take a bathroom break.

Another week passes, 

the door between the living and the dead cracks a bit more open.

I dream of the soldier’s story, 

of street cleaners cleaning the blood off of the streets.

I dream of nurses hunting through boxes of hands, and feet 

in search of missing joints.

I dream of bags of children’s fingers, 

missing in action, lying in the dirt, planted

thick like a bush they root into the earth 

and grow into branches of limbs reaching for heaven.

The elements of human nature lie naked, 

as undressed truths exposed under the sun for all to see,

scratched on the back of a soldier’s postcard mailed home 

that reads -

“I wish you were here.”

Months pass. 

Doors open. 

I wipe the water from my eyes.

A friend describes the last moments of her mother dying –

“We only feel the absence, we have yet to feel the void.”

A stranger whispers – 

“I am looking for someone to love me more than I love myself.”

The communication between my heart and soul furthers.

I cry, to clear the deep recesses of my physical core 

and integrate my spiritual sense of the world.

I write, a love letter to our world, and address it to everyone. 

I write, until I come to my senses.

I write, until my love expands, 

and then I put the letter in a bottle, and toss it out to see. 

~~ Other People's Fingerprints ~~

Sometime after 1927, Robert Edward Valett wrote;

"The human heart feels things the eyes cannot see,

and knows what the mind cannot understand."

"Fearless Friend" (unguarded)

From the series "Child's View of the World"

by Karin Lisa Atkinson