Notes From Prison

The Just War dream

is to fight fire with fire.

"If your right hand offends you,

cut it off!” 

What of the right hand of war?

Can we cut it off?

Certainly war offends us.

Cut off the hand of war!

With what sword

will we cut it off?

Protest is a mere stick.

Protest is no rod of Aaron.

Self-martyrdom is mere suicide.

And hard work only pays

the interest in the end

on the adversary’s 

death camp claims.

It can never pay the principle.

Hard work builds utopia on murals.

Cut off the hand of war!

With what sword?

"Do not think I have come

to bring peace.

I have not come to bring peace,

but a sword,"

said the quiet Messiah, 

the long hidden lad from Nazareth.

"When they shall say

peace and safety,

then utter destruction

shall come upon them,"

said his most broken student,

the one who was born out of time.

As for me,

It is not with a voice

of mere pacifism

that I speak against war,

as though I thought sin,

the source of war

in every human heart,

could be cut off by

some idealism,

or by some appeal to reason.

I speak against war

only as an obedient servant of one

who bears a sword

which has cut the universe in two,

slicing the soul from the spirit

in every living thing,

filling that cut,

with the medicine of his own tears

and healing that wound,

with the sutures of His judgment,

regenerating the dead with the blood

of his love for Israel.

   ~ ~ ~

ABOUT ME

Max Carl Kirk

Mellow Wolf Publications - - - If you have any questions about reproducing any Mellow Wolf publications feel free to contact me.

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