Blue sky. With rows of grey, with columns of smoking black. It is December, even here in the tropics. Even here, capitalism has brought tinsel and cake and an incongruous gaiety when just a few thousand kilometres away, everything is rubble and the bombs refuse to pause. You would think by now, stronger hands than ours would pluck them out of the air and revert them into the safety of not-being. The miracle, around Bethlehem, where this year’s Christmas is cancelled.
Blue water. Even in the Red sea. Even in the Mediterranean, where just this week another boat succumbed to the waves, on its way to a different promised land. Sixty-one dead. Over two thousand, this year alone. The debacle, when equality is sacrificed, when humanity is cancelled.
Blue earth. Like a luminous pearl afloat in her dark bed. Bloodied by profit, abandoned by greed, betrayed by power. Global military accounts for 5.5% of total emissions. Willful killing leading to more willful killing. The spectacle, where death blooms and life, as we know it, is cancelled.
once more
once more
when the stars are bright
and all is calm
and all is quiet
***
THOUGHT PURGE 
Beautifully put, all of it. I love this image: “Blue earth. Like a luminous pearl afloat in her dark bed.” For me, certainly Christmas is cancelled.
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Thank you, Sunra… quite unbelievable, what is being allowed to happen. 😦
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Beautifully touching piece; to me it speaks of myself, and many others, coming to terms that in a world of beauty and choice, there will always be those who choose evil, darkness and malevolence, and sometimes our only consolation is that we are not among them.
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Thank you. It’s true, there will be those who choose evil, and my greatest respect for all those out there actively protesting and calling out that evil.
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Powerful, Rajani, your words have the urgency and economy of something that had to be said.
JIM
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Thank you, Jim. It is all I can do, sadly.
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What’s happening in the middle east is appalling. Your poem captures the helplessness so many of us are feeling at this time.
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Thank you, Suzanne. Frustration, outrage, anger, mostly grief..but all one can do is write a poem 😦
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Prayers and poems for peace are always powerful.
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Very blue. It is hard to go through the motions of our western Christmas, given what is happening on the other side of the world. You write so powerfully, Rajani.
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Thank you, Sherry. An unbelievable horror and yet it gets worse, everyday. 😦
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The quiet blue depths of night in the mythic year 0AD when Christ was born saw half the world enslaved to Roman triumph — black bells then as now. Yet we think of it as silvered, a merry solstice bell Christianity would silence after it became Rome. Darkness and light. Gentleness and brutality. “all is quiet” is a narcosis, but mothers have always shielded their children’s eyes from the coming bloodfeast. We’ll give the kids that, but eventually we all have to see. Thanks for joining in, Rajani –
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Thanks Brendan, yes humanity has a brutal history and each time we swear it will be the last. Sigh.
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Such beauty of language, expressing such dire truths – you continually amaze me how you can do this.
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Thank you, Rosemary. Grief and helplessness finding a vent through poetry. Surely, a better world is possible. Is necessary.
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