THE AMERICAN FLAG OF DEATH

December 29th, 2009

   painting by Claudia Chapline

In a dream, I’m standing on a ladder painting a large (American) flag. When I awoke the next day, I sketched the flag in my journal and then I made a small painting from the drawing/dream. The stars resemble exploding bombs, the stripes, missiles. A skeleton’s head emerges from the war machinery.

For me, the flag painting symbolizes the discrepancy between American ideals and manifest American policy.

March 11, 2006
Claudia Chapline
Artist, activist, Gallery owner
Stinson Beach, California
www.cchapline.com

(Editor’s Note: Around the time of the dream, beginning the third year of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis had died.)

~~~~~~~~~

THE PEACE POETRY OF CLAUDIA CHAPLINE

March Wind in February

Roaring dark branches crash against the house
weather strips whistle wind songs sunbrellas
flap white caps yellow chairs in the lagoon
pine trees wave hello crane pulleys sway overhead

aluminum thoughts plastic words fly in and out
say goodbye dreams fragment gates open
between sleep and waking I wheel out and in
outside a feral cat cries

elsewhere a flag shreds the far groaning
screams in a wind of fire I see it a flag of
death red stripes of blood dripping on the
white ribs of civilizations the stars fiery
sparks from bombs bursting in the blue black
night of lands destroyed in this wind of war

but here now in Eastcoot Creek wild salmon
still spawn between the willows
here the camp the captain time being what
not forever spilling seeds of life in silver mist.

October 10, 2001

On the anniversary of my mother¹s death
the United States is bombing Afghanistan
they are bombing Afghanistan
to rid the world of evil

To rid the world of evil
the U.S. military
is killing Afghan civilians.
food drops onto landmines.

my tears are falling
on the anniversary of
my mother¹s death.
it is Arts Day in California.

How They Strut

High mucky mucks decorate each other
with ribboned medals of valor for service
in the war of their making

women of the world
raise your voices against their wars

I see the goddess Kali dancing with them her
dance of death she wears a necklace of skulls
she holds a bloody head in her left hand a
burnt child in the other

women of the world remove your rings
that sparkle with African tears

how they strut those high mucky mucks
preserving freedom to kill for oil

women of the world join hands
in a circle of love

how they strut smiling those
greedy killers patting each other¹s backs

walk together toward a necklace of peace
women of the world

how they strut those old men with pendulous bellies
while their young civil servants sons of other fathers
fall and die in their War on Iraq

how they strut while the world cries
for the voices of women
the voices of love.

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FROM JOYCE:
President Obama,
Consult Your Wisest Advisor

December 15th, 2009

“The generals are asking for another 20, maybe 30,000 troops, and when I saw that request the other day saying what we have (in Afghanistan) is not enough I remembered a dream I had a year or so ago, right before Obama came into office,” journalist and commentator Bill Moyers told Bill Maher on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher August 28.

“I was back in the cabinet room of the (Johnson) White House sitting behind the president, who was talking to his military advisors, and they were spread out around the table. And, this was in the dream, seriously. He asked the military advisors and his national security advisors how many troops should I send: 40,000? And, a voice in the back of the room said, ‘Not enough.’ 80,000? A voice from over there said, ‘Not enough.’ 120,000? A voice from over there said, ‘Not enough.’

“The military and the hawks in the administration will always say ‘not enough,’” explained Moyers, who served in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, including two years as Johnson’s press secretary.

Analysts, generals, and pundits have likened the now eight year U.S. conflagration in Afghanistan to the decade plus U.S. involvement in  Vietnam. Ostensibly to stop the spread of communism in Southeast Asia, President Dwight Eisenhower sent “advisors” into Vietnam in the late 1950’s. President John F. Kennedy twice tripled their numbers in the early 1960’s.  Lyndon Johnson, drawing from a huge pool of young American draftees, turned the advisors into combat troops. U.S. troop strength was a half million at its peak in 1968.  After more than a dozen years, billions of dollars, and the death of more than five million Vietnamese, Laotians, and Cambodians and 60,000 Americans, the U.S. pulled out of the quagmire of its own making in Southeast Asia in 1975.
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FROM JOYCE:
A Public Health Option

October 2nd, 2009

Watching a recent Sunday talk show on health reform legislation, I had a sickening feeling (and intuitive pain in my neck) that once again the people will lose to the corporations. Already reaping financial bonanza, even from Medicare, the health insurance companies, exempt from anti-trust laws, and big Pharma will cement their power, making legislative reform and Medicare/health care for all an even more distant reality. The tide of corporate power rises.

Meaningful health insurance and health care reform slip away as deaths from undiagnosed and untreated illnesses increase and bankruptcies from exorbitant medical bills rise. With more bluster and bravado than belief, I e-mailed a friend, a long-time health care activist, “Distressed, but not discouraged.” As I hit “send, ” what we the people can do to crawl out from our victimized state crystallized.

We can call upon our dreams, our Inner Healer. As PDJ readers know, I’ve experienced this paradigm first-hand.

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