I want to thank
the Peace Fest people for inviting me here tonight. I'm always happy
to perform poetry anywhere- it's a worthwhile thing to do and it is
hard to find something completely worthwhile these days.
I don't like to be disassociated from my environment, however, and since
this is a Peace Fest benefit, I am going to say some words about peace.
Now I wrote these things down on paper, and prepared statements have
a way of seeming didactic and harsh. I want to say that I am not attacking
any people here, any group here, or anybody who is not here.
Peace is a pleasant enough word, but in trying to figure out what it
means, I usually end up confused and disappointed.
I think back to the period of January and February of last year, which
was definitely war, and I remember that it felt alot like peace to me.
In fact, except for what was on T.V., it was exactly like peace.
Peace, as it is currently practiced, is the time when rich men are allowed
to roam free about the Earth without running into the armies of other
rich men. War, on the other hand, looks like poor and middle-class men,
under the direction of rich men, running into the armies of other rich
men. Neither of these situations appeal to me.
Today, rich men dictate the terms of both war and peace, and I am not
sure if I want peace under those terms. I will take it, of course, if
it means less people being murdered. But by uttering this word, peace,
and by saying that we want it, which is an easy enough thing to say--
it's hard to find a reasonable, sane person to argue against peace as
the norm, as the rule. But if we say we want peace, we should be careful
to argue for a fundamental change in the way it is carried out. Otherwise,
we will act as mere mouthpieces, -- Mouthpieces, by using the words
that morally bankrupt people have defined. So we should be careful.
They define this period right now as peace-- we are not at war-- but
they are spreading a culturally militaristic hegemony around the world
under the banner of peace. I will not, and I am sure that all democratic-minded
people will not, walk underneath that banner.
© 1992 Daniel X. O'Neil
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