Written July 31, 2006
Never again becomes the driver.
The bulldozer levels the three-hundred-
year-old house. Never
again uproots the olive trees
tended by a great-grandfather.
Death to the Infidel is the fuel
and the rocket as well. Death
to the Infidel flies and falls
exploding in a market.
Crusade against terrorism turns
terrible as what it answers, becomes
countless guns, invites
teachers to teach hate again,
to make the children martyrs.
If the Moses, the Jesus, the Mohammed
who came to teach us love and wisdom
are watching, witnessing the bulldozers,
bullets and fists, the blazing
faces, they must
be weeping for us, feeling they’ve failed,
seeing us lost in phrases --
Never again, Death to the Infidel,
Crusade.
Jed A. Myers is a Seattle poet and musician whose writing has been published in various journals, posted on web sites, heard on radio, and performed, mostly by Jed, in an array of settings in the Pacific Northwest. He’s won several regional awards, and hosts a regular poetry gathering in his part of town. His loose network of collaborators, ArtsforHearts, puts on benefits in local spaces for a wide range of real life causes.