20th Century
Farms are burned down to the ground
and cattle slaughter just there in the fields,
while a super power forces women and children
into concentration camps to kill them there.
Railway tracks run crisscross over the country
and galloping horses and oxen pulling wagons
are replaced by roaring cars, lorries
and motorbikes
and people follow technology
as if it’s the new god.
When the stock exchange folds
people jump from the windows of buildings,
while they are out of their wits,
as if they have got wings.
Germans march past
and thousands in crowds
are giving a sigh heil salute
and in a peculiar way stay ignorant
about millions of Jews that are robbed
and killed,
as if they did not exist.
Bombers let bombs dropp like rain
on Britain and rockets
hit London almost unstoppable
and in the icy Russian winter
the Germans are reminded that they are humans
and from Stalingrad they are driven back
until the Russians claim some of Berlin
and half of Germany
as their domain
and almost every women there gets raped
and America drops the bomb on Hiroshima
and another time on Nagasaki
and their enemies are molten, burned and radiated
and after this war jets cross the skies,
rockets go to the moon
where man stands like a god.
l’Envoi
It’s the age were young boys
are shot into peaces in Vietnam, in Namibia
and Angola are sent to war,
where people loose respect for God
and try to solve everything with science,
where man becomes godly in his own eyes
and I wonder what the almighty God
thinks about this
while man is turn the earth to ruins
and are filling the cup
of the wrath of God?
poem by Gert Strydom
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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God of our fathers
With their eyes set on the distance
our fathers
trekked into their promised land
as children of the God
of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
After the murders on Piet Retief and his men
our fathers made a holy covenant
with the almighty God
to rescue them in their laager at Blood River
against a very big army
of about twenty thousand Zulus.
With their victory
they did not go forth
to wipe out every single Zulu,
rather with the Bible in the hand
they wanted to teach
other people about God.
When the Xhosas slaughtered
almost all their livestock,
were burning their own harvests
believing the medium Nonqawuse
that ancestral spirits
will rise to wipe out the white man
and thousands of them
were dying from starvation
our fathers reached out their hands
and in neighbourly love gave food to those people,
doing what they could
to try and save them.
When droughts, illness of the livestock,
locusts were ravaging, even when the British Empire
came to take the mineral treasures,
were burning down farms and towns,
were murdering women and children
in concentration camps
our fathers went on their knees,
placing their destiny in the hands
of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob
knowing that his shadow was falling over them,
that He keeps account
was folding His Godly hand over them
l’Envoi
and now that thousands of farmers
are being killed on their farms
are being tortured, murdered and robbed
Afrikaners with qualifications
and experience, even artisans
are unemployed on the street,
people in cities
are hijacked, robbed and raped
I am praying to the God
of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
to keep His hand over us,
to draws His laager
around the lives and property
of everyone that comes to Him,
to free us from this oppression.
poem by Gert Strydom
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Blockhouses had been erected right over the country
Blockhouses had been erected right over the country,
farms had been entered and burnt to the ground,
Livestock and animals had been slaughtered
and women and children were rounded up
and interned into death camps.
Young boys
were set against white walls
and firing squads
was set against them
and a super power
clenched its fist around this country
and stood gigantic
against every Boer farmer.
l’Envoi
That time will be forever black
in history
with the misdeeds of the British
that is well known
and the ruination of a nation, arousing from it
where women and children perished as targets
at the commands of Horatio Herbert Kitchener.
[Note: My own great grandmother died in a British concentration camp and my great grandfather was sent by the British to St. Helena as a prisoner of war and as a result of this, my grandfather(Gert Strydom) grew up in a orphanage.]
poem by Gert Strydom
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People are afraid
People are afraid
of the year 2012 that are coming
and expect something to happen
that is going to tear the world apart,
but maybe man himself
is his greatest enemy.
At times I wonder about guns
killing in Afghanistan and Iraq
and bombs dropping from bombers
there on people
while a super power
like before
stand free from her deeds
and of nuclear bombs
exploding on Hiroshima and Nagasaki
not a lot is said about
and people look only
at the inhumanities
of Hitler and Stalin
and almost nothing
is said about Harry S. Truman.
poem by Gert Strydom
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And the island said
I am so strong that I
will conquer the whole wide world,
I will build a railway
right through Africa,
all the way from Cape Town to Cairo
and if women and children are killed,
in the thousands, if I have to destroy
the property, the very life and farms
of those that I want to conquer,
it does not matter,
as the goal of a glorious empire
justifies the means
but when time moved on
and bombs rained down
on her cities,
when V1 and V2 rockets
was turning her to dust,
she prayed against the unjust
she went on her knees,
and demanded justice
as if she had always been pure and just.
poem by Gert Strydom
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Hitler deliberates with himself
At first I was a corporal
but now I am the commander
of the highest general
where I move my armoured forces
my squadrons of warplanes
like lightning,
throwing the whole of Europe and even Russia
into great confusion.
Millions of people worship me,
follow my commands to exact precision
while the whole world lies in my hands
and just a speck of island stands in my way.
My commands go out:
“let rockets fall there day and night
without end, raining down like stars,
let them bend before me as a god! ”
I am the one, who cry along with German mothers,
who feels the wounds, the pain and suffering of my soldiers
the one that knows that a great future is waiting
and here I sit day and night looking at the world.
Even half-humans I make to bend to me,
in twenty two places like
Dachau, Buchenwald, Auschwitz where ovens are glowing,
for living space I hear crowds cheering
and some beyond my domain think that I am evil,
that blood is flowing in vain,
but they do not know how it is
to bring about change,
to exterminate those who had oppressed,
to stand like a god while your power is circling out.
You that look at me as if I am a monster,
maybe somewhere in your heart lies the same darkness.
Sieg Heil!
poem by Gert Strydom
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From Vietnam To America
In Houston, men killed their own children,
In Saigon, boys killed and robbed
Got life in prisons.
Right here, wives left their husbands...
And mourned their children's deaths,
Over there, girls sold their bodies
Every nights on streets.
From Vietnam,
Do my people have to pay that much,
For the stupid Communists and "United,"
To America,
Do my people have to pay that much,
From the sake of freedom and dollars,
From Vietnam to America,
Do my people have to go that far?
poem by Thanh Nguyen
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How small does our world appear
How small does our world appear
when jets traces lines through the sky
and email immediately goes through
and everything can be fit in
a tin or two and quick fix
is like a magic word.
Yet some things
takes greater understanding
and values, believes
and knowledge to solve.
Culture, way of life,
hopes and fears
are different
to different people
and every society
needs to solve its problems
in its own way.
I have seen the naivety
of a quick fix superpower
causing more damage
than there was before
when it tried
to change the world
to its way of life
and believes.
Bombers, fighter jets,
battle tanks and bombs
raining down
and the absurd
use of force,
killed the guilty
and the innocent fell
while that Super power
chased the shadows.
The whole world knew
how lies was turned
into truth
and the gun was supreme
and still the struggle
goes on
and the world pays the price
and I wonder when
the killing will stop
and people will respect
one another
and will have
an own place in the sun.
poem by Gert Strydom
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Suppose Germany had developed two bombs before we had any bombs. And suppose Germany had dropped one bomb, say, on Rochester and the other on Buffalo, and then having run out of bombs she would have lost the war. Can anyone doubt that we would then have defined the dropping of atomic bombs on cities as a war crime, and that we would have sentenced the Germans who were guilty of this crime to death at Nuremberg and hanged them? But, again, don't misunderstand me. The only conclusion we can draw is that governments acting in a crisis are guided by questions of expediency, and moral considerations are given very little weight, and that America is no different from any other nation in this respect.
quote by Leo Szilard
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
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Rockets Fall On Sderot Chanukah 5768
ROCKETS FALL ON SDEROT CHANUKAH 5768
This is no day for a poem
Rage and rain and mud
Darkness covers the earth
Our haters multiply their weapons
Rockets and bombs fall upon us
We hide
Waiting for the right moment
To strike.
Will it ever end
The hatred
The cruelty
The endless effort to destroy us?
Rockets at random terrorize
The children and the poor
Nights are not nights
And days are not days
When death and destruction
Can come at any time.
We are an old people
Long longing for peace
And our enemies multiply
And their weapons also
And hate is their breakfast and their dinner
And destruction is their main food.
And we alone as always alone
We the alone people
Waiting to make one more small strike
Against their leaders,
In a war against hatred and haters
which makes no promise
now or ever
Of ever truly ending.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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Sandstorm in Iraq
The wind is covering everything,
covering with red-brown dust,
burying the present, the past
with a future in which peace
cannot last
and man holds destiny by the throat,
tries to change the present, the future
at a very great cost
and the lost of life is everywhere
with innocent women and children
here and there being shot, killed
by dropping bombs
and US-troops and their allies roll in
with tanks and armoured cars,
fly past in gunships, bombers and fighter jets
in skies red with blood
trying to teach democracy
by the barrel of a gun
and of all of this
the wind doesn’t know
and it continues to blow.
poem by Gert Strydom
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Power to the Women of the World
Power to the women of the world
Women with W for winners
Women with O for Order
Women with M for Movement and mothers of hope
Women with E for energy, everywhere, every time
Women with N for Necessity
Women of the world
Our struggle needs your attention
Our struggle needs your support
Your children in on earth have no future
Your children in in the wolrd will die, if you sit
Your children in in the world are dying
Your husbands are culturally polluted and they are dying
Your pots are blown by light air
Your fire have burned months ago
Your future is no more
But this is your time
Your time to rise Women of the world
Power to the women of the country
Power to women
Power
poem by Alex Lushaba
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My friend you talk about my people and me
My friend you talk
about my people and me
being equal
to Hitler and the Germans
of the Second World War,
but do not know
that I and most of us Afrikaners
treated black people
like human beings,
never lifted a hand
against one,
that I knew from being
a toddler that they were
Christians as well
when my mother
gave the money that was left
from my father’s funeral fund
for a church to be constructed
in their own community.
How I saw the effect
of the Church Street bomb
killing innocent civilians
on the street
men, women and children
from any race.
How I was forced
to go to the army
and to war
and patriotic did my duty there
to stop communists killing,
raping and robbing the future
like they did in East Germany,
Hungary in sixty-eight
and with the Portuguese
still living in Mozambique
and in Angola
when that countries
got their independence.
How in Soweto with the army
I had to stop black people
killing black people,
burning their fellow man alive
while their women were
cheering them on
and I saw man more being animals
than human beings
without having any mercy
for each other
having lost all conscience
for their cruel deeds.
You do not know
that I will not quarter
for a country
full of pirates
and not the Orlando
soccer playing type
but people who rob,
kill, maim and rape
that there’s no other escape
for Afrikaner people like me
and nowhere else to go
that I love this land
maybe more than
my forefathers did
who sacrificed
their lives for it
that my great grandfather Japie Strydom
lost his farm in the Cape colony
when as a Cape rebel
he joined the war
against the British,
was almost executed
when the war ended
was imprisoned on St. Helena,
that his wife
died in a British concentration camp
where she was fed finely grinded glass
in the flour given to her
that I want to get rid
of oppression against me
and my fellow Afrikaners
and want to have a life
like any one else.
poem by Gert Strydom
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Not with a machinegun, but with a pen (in answer to Breyten Breytenbach)
Not with a machinegun, but with a pen
I write this prayer
since Your might is greater than any weapon:
What am I able to tell You, Jesus Christ,
almighty Creator, God and upper Lord,
I who are only an Afrikaner in my forties,
since You know every thing, even before it happens
and there’s nothing that I can teach You.
How my country was taken away
by people who pray to ancestral spirits
(who probably are demons) ,
that a man with more than one wife
sit in the highest chair,
that I still pay taxes
when and where I have a job
and that it is difficult times
and work is very scarce
for a white man.
Would I have to tell about a government
that sings give me my machinegun
and a bullet for a Boer
and kill the farmer,
kill the white
as You know every thing.
That my people were disarmed
by the government
and by barbarians
are hacked into pieces
with panga-blades and axes
like you were sacrificed
and even in death
they are humiliated
by pulling their pants down
like You had to hang naked on the cross,
that women are raped
as if every white woman
is a sex slave
belonging to the hordes
that they still throw knucklebones
and think that it brings them invincibility
and freedom from blame.
l’Envoi
All that I am really asking
is that all of these deeds
and the things that they do, say and sing
go into the cup of Your wrath
and please help
my people and me
to serve You better
that the wide world
(like with our ancestors)
can see Your might and salvation.
[References: nie met die pen nie maar met die masjiengeweer by Breyten Breytenbach. Murder on Eugene Terreblance. Murder and violence on white people.]
poem by Gert Strydom
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You would see people going back to homes that had been burned, putting thatch over their structures again. They still couldn't leave the area without the danger of men being killed or women being raped, but it was a start.
quote by Nicholas D. Kristof
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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A statesman: then and now
He stands on the podium
with his hat
in his hand
pressed against his chest
on the border with Angola
in his country
(as he still rules
over South West Africa)
and his bare head shines
under the bright Africa sun
where he himself was born
and Ratel armoured cars,
tanks, rocket launchers
and artillery drive past in convoys
back from Angola
to get a salute from him.
He stands like a giant
alone against dark Africa
will nuclear devices
waiting ready in bombs
and missiles
for ballistic purposes
are being manufactured.
Later lump after lump
of sand
falls down in his grave
while a lost journalist
runs for photos around it
and he doesn’t any more know
what is happening
in his own country
and about thunderbolts
that falls from everywhere
on his people
and rumble ominous
above his grave,
not even about water flowing
above him in a rain stream
and every sunrise
that without equal
unfolds above him
and worms gnawing
patiently on his body
since every thing
fades for him to nothing.
poem by Gert Strydom
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Too Many Desperate People Far From Calm
Too many enemies,
Defended against!
Too many enemies,
Picked from picket fences.
Too many people,
Offended by the minute.
Who think the laws amended...
Give others right to bend!
Too many people up in arms dropping bombs.
Too many people dropping bomb after bomb...
KABOOM-BOOM!
Too many people up in arms dropping bombs.
Too many people dropping bomb after bomb,
BOOM!
Too many enemies,
Picked from picket fences.
And weakening defenses!
Too many people up in arms dropping bombs.
KABOOM-BOOM!
Too many people dropping bomb after bomb...
BOOM-BOOM.
Too many gloomy people seeking to BOOM!
Too many people up in arms,
Alarmed!
Too many desperate people,
Far from calm.
Too many people feeling they are in harm.
poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar
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Usama Bin Laden
Hated by a great part of humanity
and blessed by maybe more
and his desperate deeds
that pulled people out of live,
a super country couldn’t stop.
Miserable to his soul
that a super power used him and his people
as pawns in a power struggle
and later left them like rubbish on a dump,
he made that power
pay a sacrifice for her deeds.
True to his religion
and steadfast to what he believe,
nobody and nothing
could stop him in his decisions
and ultimate mission.
What looked to others
like insanity,
he achieved
and struck unexpected
out of a wide blue sky.
Thousands of bombs
rain down from the air
and nobody can stop
the anger of a perplexed super power,
where her soldiers
with overpowering force and weaponry
kill their enemy and the innocent
and sow havoc in Arabic countries.
Even Saddam Hussein
had to pay a price,
but huge wealth and almost
unstoppable intelligence sources
Cannot find Usama,
while the raging dragon
destroys blindly.
If you look at his character
as a person
and take Bin Laden out of the war,
he has integrity and grace
and he stays dedicated
to his god and people
and are willing to sacrifice everything
to get a sort of justice.
For some Adolf Hitler was great
and Stalin a hero
and still it can change nothing
to the impact,
of their and Bin Ladin’s deeds
as mass killers
that nobody can make undone.
Like many before him,
he’s one man’s terrorist
and another’s freedom fighter
and the things that his followers do
puts blood on his hands
and their deeds shout
to the highest heavens.
I wonder what the warnings
that he gives to his enemy
really mean and if again,
death bells
will toll in that Western land?
Maybe New York, Los Angeles,
San Francisco, Boston
or Washington
will burn like candles
in the sky
and it will let Nagasaki and Hiroshima
look like a childs game.
It’s just sorry
that the innocent pay the highest price,
while politicians, the bosses of the CIA
and people that control
the lives of others,
stays untouched
and others gets the punishment for it
and Usama still remains free.
poem by Gert Strydom
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Men Must Respect
Men must respect other men
Women must respect other women
Men and women must respect our children
And protect them so all can go to heaven.
I cannot fully fathom the unusualness of men
Mother Nature will remain eternally natural
Mothers will give birth to men and women
And the sky will forever be conventional.
Men must respect girls and boys
They are human too, not little toys
Women must respect boys and girls
Our tootses don’t belong to a world of swirls and twirls.
If we respect each other, our world will be natural
Loving, wonderful and exceptional
Love and respect are like fraternal twins
In such godly oasis, everyone wins.
Men must respect and care for each other
Women must follow a similar procedure
Life is beautiful, thanks to Mother Nature
Who always follows the Scriptures.
Our children need our help and divine lectures
Let’s love them and protect their future
Let’s chase the devils out of the manger
Let’s be brothers and sisters and love each other.
Men must respect other men
Men and women must respect our children.
poem by Hebert Logerie
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Now that time flies past
Now that time flies past
this will be seen
as Afrikaner history
and people will say
that it is past
but we know
he was jailed
like a criminal,
was later Prime Minister
and then President
(and it’s not Nelson Mandela
that I am talking about)
this man was a true Afrikaner
and seen by some
as a patriot
Maybe planted bombs
to blow up railway lines
and held a gun in his hand,
seen at a time
by white people
as a terrorist
and was jailed for it
but wasn’t a killer
like the terrorists of today
and later
he could take
the Big Black Book
in his hand
and on it make a solemn oath
before the Lord
and try to keep his promise,
until the big crocodile
snapped him in two
and walked into his shoes
and the total onslaught came
and eland armoured cars, later ratels,
artillery and rocket launching lorries
stood in Angola
to hit the communists
into pieces.
poem by Gert Strydom
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Shonin
These eyes have seen the fire from the sky
I felt the heat a thousand clicks away
At first no screams, just people turned to shadows
A sunburst touched to earth one fatal day.
These eyes have seen my City turned to ashes
I have heard her women sobbing in despair
I stood alone amidst my city dying
No God above to whom I’d make a prayer..
And now I stand before a Buddhist temple
A different city and a river view.
This city seems most beautiful and vibrant
Hiroshima what has become of you?
The historic statue of Shinran Shonin, founder of the Judo Shinshu school of Buddhism, now stands in front of the New York Buddhist Church on Riverside Drive in New York City.. This statue of Shinran Shonin survived the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, in which 150,000 people died, and 90 percent of the buildings in the city collapsed or burned.
poem by John F. McCullagh
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