(Peter Austin, Charlotte Cohen, Bernard Levinson)
A Word. A Name.
A single word imprints perception and relativity
The difference between honor and horror
Between freedom and captivity
Humanity and brutality
Often deserving of the hatred and anger
Stemming from extortionate cruelty and danger
Even offering justification for the killing of an abuser
One still earns the notorious classification of ‘murderer’
Yet those who brutally and remorselessly
Kill anyone at random – including themselves
Caused by inveterate irrationality and hatred
With which they have been indoctrinated
-Or even for a gratuity or family security
Are described by what almost gives legitimacy
To fanatical iniquity: That word is ‘terrorist’
Now often ascribed with a sense of normality
Yet one single person
Living and languishing in luxury
Never getting his own hands dirty
With no indoctrinated hatred – but rather fixated
On self-love, power-hunger and acquisition of land
Can decree the destruction of a country
And order mass murder
With one word:
‘War’.
Names also leave an unchanging word image:
And just as Adolf Hitler epitomizes evil
To the diabolic list of heartless and vicious
Persecutors, oppressors, tyrants and villains
We can now add that of Vladimir Putin.
And to leaders who gained worldwide respect and fame
Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill, Nelson Mandela ….
We can also now attach another name:
Out of Ukraine devastated by Putin
Arose a man of extraordinary talent and diversity
Suddenly thrust with the horrific responsibility
Of a not-sought-f or war forced upon him
And though he did not expect it
He never neglected to meet it
A man of intelligence, conscience, spirit and heart
Of principle, resolution and tenacity –
He never gave in or gave up
Or abrogated his duty
Volodymyr Zelensky’s name will remain in history
Making commitment and courage his own story
So as a word-name reflects a representation
Of how a mental image will be retained:
‘Putin’ – who mistook the word ‘win’ for ‘sin’
a cruel pitiless despot, a tyrannical dictator
‘Zelensky’ – a hero, an inspiration
a champion, a protector, a warrior, a victor
Charlotte Cohen
Shy father
I cannot be Isaac
knowing you are stretched
on the stone
at my side –
one of us
must hold the knife.
Bernard Levinson
See the St Louis
See the St Louis, departing from Hamburg,
Jewry, her passengers – spat upon, spurned,
Fleeing the land where the witches of Bamberg,
Centuries earlier, gibbered and burned.
Hear, in Havana, the rumblings of riot:
‘No! to asylum for job-stealing Jews!’
President Bru, to subdue the disquiet,
Sends an aviso: Regret; must refuse.
North to Miami, these sea-wearied sailors
(Surely to God, in the land of the free…?)
See, though, the coastguards, with braying loud-hailers,
Herding them round, till they face out to sea.
Back, then, to Europe (for all but a quorum,
Gone, in extremity, over the side);
Hundreds will burn, like the witches before them;
Most (thanks to gas) will already have died.
Peter Austin
[The St Louis sailed from Hamburg in May 1939. The 938
passengers were refused entry by Cuba’s president, Federico
Bru, and by the USA and had to return to Europe, where most
ended up in Nazi hands. In Bamberg, in 1628, a chain-reaction
witch hunt led to the burning of several hundred victims.]
INDOCTRINATION
OF TERRORISM
The human brain
the most gullible
the most malleable
and most impressionable
and after having been distorted
by bigoted radical fanatical hatred
degenerates into the most treacherous
the most iniquitous
most dangerous
of brutal evil
imaginable
Charlotte Cohen
Lies, Damned Lies and
Ludicrous, Odious Dissimulations
————————————————
The word ‘Apartheid’ does not apply to Israel
Never did. Never will
Never could
Never would
After the inhuman abhorrence of the holocaust
It is the last country on earth
That would ever implement such laws
Or adopt such a declaration
…Such a tiny sliver of land
Surrounded by enemies
Of enormous proportion
Hell bent on its destruction
Who use the vilest of lies
And deceit and distortion
To label Israel’s self-protection
With accusations of separation
By using and alluding to a term
As apart from the truth
As ‘apartheid’ could possibly be
And while the world waits and watches
The insanity, brutality and inhumanity
Of fundamentalist political religiosity
The wicked iniquity they perpetuate
Continues to infiltrate, dictate and annihilate.
Playing around with lies and tools for propaganda
Like that which is currently being perpetrated
Promotes, promulgates and proliferates evil
And is used by those whose maleficent ambition
Impels felons and propels the gullible
Into performing malicious acts
Of the most vicious perdition
Charlotte Cohen
Routed in antiSemitism
The demented sense
Of those who don’t know wrong from right
Who scream from pulpits
How their followers should fight
With knives to kill
And bombs to blast
All the infidels who don’t ‘believe’
All Israelis, Zionists and Jews
They have been indoctrinated to hate
The brainwashed who re-enact
The demented evil of the past
By their depraved inhumanity
Once again bring death to life
Charlotte Cohen
