Christmas Prayer

by Art Laffin

Birth of Jesus: Child, Mary, Joseph: Ade Bethune, 1945

Emmanuel

God With Us

no matter what!

Jesus, the Child is Born!

A Light to the nations

overcoming the darkness

inaugurating God's reign

of justice and peace.

Jesus, the Christ

Word made Flesh

Love Incarnate

Healer and Suffering Servant

Crucified and Risen

our only hope

Savior of the world!

_______

Art Laffin <artlaffin@hotmail.com>

Dorothy Day CW House

503 Rock Creek Church Road, NW

Washington, D.C. 20010

Phone: 202.882.9649 or 202.829.7625

http://dccatholicworker.wordpress.com/

Christmas Prayer

by Art Laffin

Birth of Jesus: Child, Mary, Joseph: Ade Bethune, 1945

Emmanuel

God With Us

no matter what!

Jesus, the Child is Born!

A Light to the nations

overcoming the darkness

inaugurating God's reign

of justice and peace.

Jesus, the Christ

Word made Flesh

Love Incarnate

Healer and Suffering Servant

Crucified and Risen

our only hope

Savior of the world!

_______

Art Laffin <artlaffin@hotmail.com>

Dorothy Day CW House

503 Rock Creek Church Road, NW

Washington, D.C. 20010

Phone: 202.882.9649 or 202.829.7625

http://dccatholicworker.wordpress.com/

Carols for the Feastin' Season!

Here are three Co-op Carols to sing this Feastin' Season that were submitted by Bob Waldrop.  (All the melodies, by the way, are in public domain and not copyright protected.)

'TIS THE SEASON FOR THE FEASTIN'

Sing to the tune Deck the Halls

(1) 'Tis the season for the feastin',

Oklahoma Foods are good to eat!

Taste nutrition can't be beaten,

Oklahoma Foods are good to eat!
Nurturing the land and people,
Farm and city joining hands.
Tis the season for the feastin',
Oklahoma Foods are good to eat!

(2) Care for people and creation,
Oklahoma Foods are good to eat!
Hope throughout the bio-region,
Oklahoma Foods are good to eat!
From our farms onto our tables,
we will bless the way we eat!
Care for people and creation,
Oklahoma Foods are good to eat!

(3) Healing nature with earth's beauty,
Oklahoma Foods are good to eat!
Wisdom, joy fulfilling duty,
Oklahoma Foods are good to eat!
Eating with the changing seasons,
Chasing the CAFOs from our land!
Healing nature with earth's beauty,
Oklahoma Foods are good to eat!

(4) Social justice, sustainability,
Oklahoma Foods are good to eat!
Economic viability,
Oklahoma Foods are good to eat!
These our values, govern always,
They will take us forward far!
Three in number the core values,
Oklahoma Foods are good to eat!

THE AUTUMN CAROL

Tune: O Tannenbaum (O Christmas Tree)

(1) O Autumn season, golden bright!

We hail the harvest welcome sight!

The air is crisp, the moon shines long,

It's time to raise our voice in song

The squash and pumpkins, taters sweet,

Peppers, greens, and nuts we greet.

O autumn season, golden bright!

We hail the harvest welcome sight!

(2) The heat of summer is now past,

We wait the time of winter's blast.

The children are in school today,

The farmers work to reap the hay.

Peach preserves and apple butter,

Set our hearts to be aflutter.

O autumn season, golden bright!

We hail the harvest welcome sight!

(3) There is no kinder time of year,

Than Autumn bright without a fear,

The peaceful times upon the land,

Bring hope and health, a time so grand.

So raise a glass of Autumn cheer,

A cider strong, a mug of beer.

O autumn season, golden bright!

We hail the harvest welcome sight!

THE GET READY FOR WINTER SONG

Tune: "Santa Claus is Coming to Town"

OH! We better not wait, it's time to make plans,

Compost, mulch, put away the fans,

Winter time is coming to town!

Squash and turnips and carrot plants,

Season extension for the cabbage transplants,

Winter time is coming to town!

Let's insulate the attic!

Insulate the floors!

Insulate the walls so deep,

and don't forget the doors!

So! Make your list, and check it twice,

Solarize, weatherize, don't roll the dice,

Winter time is coming to town!

Bob Waldrop is a member of Romero Catholic Worker

http://www.justpeace.org/okccwindex.htm

Cyrenaica

by R. Joseph Capet

This poem was written in response to the NATO campaign in Libya

A child begs for peace after a NATO air strike in Libya.

With feathers preened in fair array high above a foreign land

on raptors' beaks the rapists fly beneath St. Matthew's rising sun.

Their payloads plunge into the sand with like discrimination.

No, wings do not an angel make when fashioned by mere mortal hands,

nor does Jove's lightning know itself when hurled by the hand of man.

To dig wells of blood for water's sake does not make humanitarians.

Petrels, riders on the storm, are these humanitarians

who trample down the farmer's crops and plant munitions on his land,

sow their seeds, take their seats in the name of the brotherhood of man,

to watch them sprout and shrapnel fly to Phaethon's fast careening sun.

The peoples of the nations cry—the reins are slipped from youthful hands!

The flying chariot scorches sand; so much for discrimination.

For equality's sake his albatross eye practices discrimination.

Above the tawdriness of faces flies the humanitarian.

The cockpit hears no stranger's cry to trouble steady trigger hands;

it sees no fleeing footprints' scars upon the mutilated land.

Glinting steel fancies itself an image of th'unconquered sun

and shines beneficence upon the naked, sunburnt sons of man.

But equality has drawn the lines which separate now man from man

by sovereign borders well-defined and marked out with discrimination.

Great or small the nations all have equal share in the rising sun

under which their plaintive cry ascends to humanitarians,

“We are masters in our house. Ours are the cities and the land

which we tilled without your help. Ours the labours of our hands!”

Yet now a parliament of doves has taken it into its hands

to make and unmake at its whim the legal status of a man.

Its faith is written in the earth, in buried bodies in bomb-dug land:

“We can make a better world if we just kill with discrimination.”

Citizenship has been annulled by wise humanitarians—

for security's sake no country stands sovereign under its own sun.

Tragicomic, we call ourselves doves in flight against the sun

and then, with curdling screech-owl's cry, take council's vote by show of hands

that the only men who own their lives are the humanitarians.

There are now upon the earth two kinds of pitiable man:

one with no name to call himself, and the master of discrimination—

he whose flag-wrapped raptors fly above a passive, flagless land.

In a violated land, sun blotted by discrimination,

gravediggers throw up calloused hands to ask, “Who guards the rights of man

            from the humanitarians?”

______

R. Joseph Capet is a poet, playwright, and essayist from the West Coast whose work, in both English and Esperanto, has appeared in a variety of magazines on both sides of the Pacific, including decomP, Taj Mahal Review, and 'ITCH'.   When not teaching high school history, he currently serve as a poetry editor for P.Q. Leer.

He can be reached at: racecapet@gmail.com

Open Letter to the NYPD, 18 September 2011

by R. Joseph Capet

Dressed in their blue tzitzit,

policemen stand in the corral,

looking very much as I imagine

the priests of Aaron must have looked

arrayed around their golden calf.

Moses, I'm sure, looked crazy, too—

hair long and beard longer,

muttering something incoherent...

“Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house

nor anything that is thy neighbor's.”

He, too, probably sounded high.

He'd breathed a lot of smoke atop the mountain.

It is a shame

the priests of Aaron

(many of them were good men),

who had walked so long in the way of the LORD,

did not know when to get out of it.

______

R. Joseph Capet is a poet, playwright, and essayist from the West Coast whose work, in both English and Esperanto, has appeared in a variety of magazines on both sides of the Pacific, including decomP, Taj Mahal Review, and 'ITCH'.   When not teaching high school history, he currently serve as a poetry editor for P.Q. Leer.

He can be reached at: racecapet@gmail.com

Wall Street Villanelle

by Mona Shaw

This villanelle is an homage to personalism, empathy, and compassion and their essentiality to faith, works of mercy, and resisting injustice.

The kingdom came and found them all asleep

And blind to anguish flowing in the street.

The kingdom left because they would not weep.

Each dawn they'd drain their heart and bid on meat.

And auction off the door for Paraclete.

The kingdom came and found them all asleep.

                                

When Rachel brought dead children to their feet

They closed-out half her grief as indiscreet.

The kingdom left because they would not weep.

She torched their fields and lost her life for heat

And while they whimpered over burning wheat,

The kingdom came and found them all asleep.

Had they not given what they didn't need?

Does legacy mean more than those who bleed.

The kingdom left because they would not weep.

The market shed dispute with sin's increase

And back-stabbed heaven trading death for peace

The kingdom came and found them all asleep.

   The kingdom left because they would not weep

Winter Wheat

by Mona Shaw

On that softened swell of summer day

when sun and soil engage

to marry the gold to the marigolds

and your fancy to your fate.

You breathe in all its beckoned blues,

and your eyes are filled with days,

and days to harvest glory

from a green and grace-stemmed stage.

I want to change the world.

Did an up-breeze sweet-talk a down-stream whim,

or the grass write it on your feet?

Did a thread of Then wind its way to When

and sing triumph to your grief?

When your hands are pink and plumped with young,

does it always seem

you have strength and time enough

to homestead any dream?

I will change the world.

A welcome wing of rain falls short

of time and what goes wrong.

An acre of heartaches founders

for every row that's won.

You battle on through losing

while your heart and back stay strong.

But, who knew planting would be so hard,

and faith would take so long?

I still might change the world.

Like a Trailways bus on a twilight binge,

chances pull away.

Your seeds lie fallow, but your failures sprout.

They ask questions the “right” way.

Did you bring enough water?  Did you insult the sun? 

Whose child did you fail to save?

Death divulges the dreams you won't make

come true on this or any day.

I can't change the world.

Then someone younger who still believes harvest comes

hauls a basket into the wind.

You rise to help because now you know

there is no quo pro quid.

"We won't change the world," you whisper,

then she lifts the basket lid.

The hearts inside bear your fingerprints.

"But look," she says, "You did."