Guestpoet: A Thrown Stone is a Drone

Huffington Post photo

The following was presented by Mark Johnson, outgoing executive director of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, at a protest at the Hancock Air Force Drone Training and Operational Base at Syracuse in April. I post it here with his blessing:

The stone is a drone

The sling launcher taking aim

David demonstrates to Goliath

The advantage of nimbleness

The leverage of trajectory

The advantage of resistance.

But David’s triumph is a lesson,

Not a victory; his new power

Will corrupt and abuse,

Uriah sent to battle, lust’s ruse,

His psalms will be Lamentations.

The arrow is a drone

Pulled first to launch with a bow

Of bent ash and strung gut,

Then cocked into multiples of force

The cross bow and its bolt

Metal piercing jackets

Armor no more

The silent slicing of death

Slips into the innocent as smoothly

As into the shielded soldier’s

One unprotected gore.

Every thing won with war

Must be repurchased with labor

That turns swords into plow shares

That harnesses gun powder and gasoline

To the horses of production

Of health and hearth at home.

The bullet is a drone

Everything won by war is lost.

The rocket is a drone

The only thing won by war is enmity.

This truth is a drone

Everything won by war

Must be repurchased by humility.

All the psalms of all the kings

The prophecies of vengeance

Warn us again and again

There is no hiding from truth.

The fruits of the battle will be blood

But the end of the struggle will be justice

And when it comes it will not be death

It will be life and will be sung

As love finding its way

At last to the heart

Fists opened and

Raised in welcome.

The simple truth is this

We have to want the change we see

And we have to work at it every day

When the sun rises we must start running.

We are exactly where we need to be

Doing exactly what we need to do.

This is important and this is right

To be here to say no to drones

No to war. There is no way to peace

Peace is the way and that is love.

Dismantle the instruments of war

Destroy the bombs and their deliveries

Walk with the enemy, the stranger, another mile

Until he, until she, is a stranger no more,

Until we understand that we are one

At sea in the sun boat, aboard spaceship earth

Willing to give everything we have

To secure its beauty, live into its worth.

We will not be reapers of vengeance

Or we will know the wrath of that evil;

We will not be predators of innocents

Or we will be rendered without limbs or hope.

Hear our voices, feel our feet

Fill the air, shake the street,

No to drones, no to war

We are where we belong

This is our song.

Mark C. Johnson
April 28, 2013

Mark's blog can be found at this link.

Here's one of Doug Hendren's recent anti-war songs.