Haiku on War and Peace

POETRY FORMAT, 5 Jul 2021

David Krieger – TRANSCEND Media Service

8:15 a.m.
August 6, 1945 —
frozen in time

Sadako Peace Day —
we gather to remember
the innocent children

Nuclear arrogance
wreaked havoc in the Pacific —
remembering

Vietnam —
we both chose not to fight there
why kill peasants?

Lieutenant Calley
slaughtered peasants at My Lai —
that’s the way war rolls

The Vietnam War
left a stain on America —
remember My Lai

Eighteen years ago
the U.S. invaded Iraq —
shock but not awe

Israelis and
Palestinians at war
yet again

It is the children
who suffer most in war –

stop the shooting

Nuclear arrogance
threatens our very future —
time to wake up

Nuclear weapons
if something can go wrong it will –
no one is perfect

Nuclear roulette —
a gun pointed at the heart
of humanity

War with sticks and stones,
spears, swords, bows and arrows, bombs —
where does progress end?

It was nothing like
Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow —
still we shivered

So many reasons
why war is wrong – peace
is for the people

Throughout history
there has been far too much war —
when will we ever learn?
____________________________________________

David Krieger, Ph.D. is Founder and President Emeritus of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, and a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment. Amongst several of his wide-spanning leadership endeavors in global peacebuilding, he is a founder and a member of the Global Council of Abolition 2000, councilor on the World Future Council, and is the chair of the Executive Committee of the International Network of Engineers and Scientists for Global Responsibility. He has a BA in Psychology and holds MA and Ph.D. degrees in Political Science from the University of Hawaii as well as a J.D. from the Santa Barbara College of Law; he served for 20 years as a judge pro tem for the Santa Barbara Municipal and Superior Courts. Dr. Krieger is the author of many books and studies of peace in the Nuclear Age. He has written or edited more than 20 books and hundreds of articles and book chapters. He is a recipient of several awards and honors, including the OMNI Center for Peace, Justice and Ecology Peace Writing Award for Poetry (2010). He has a new collection of poems entitled Wake Up.  For more visit the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation website: www.wagingpeace.org.


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