BRING PEACE HOME

Awhile back this expression, Bring Peace Home, came to me and I made it into a bumper sticker. I also used the phrase as title to a poetry reading I did in 2008 at our AirDance ArtSpace. It is a simple phrase and yet, has many meanings from clear to obtuse...Bring Peace Home, No YOU bring peace home...Bring peace home to meet the fam?

For me, what it really gets at is the fact that the very most you can personally do for World Peace is to work on the peace that is in your home, your very own mind, your own garden, your own block of the world. You can't reach out and strive to bring peace to the whole world, without first building and nourishing a strong foundation of peace in your own backyard and home.

Making peace in your own world truly is the hardest part...Here's a poem I wrote about just that:

THE PERFECT FATHER

Making peace that's the hardest part
the most difficult phase
the last part of the struggle

When I can admit to my deep down woundedness
I am touched I am opened
I am ready then
for that rescue copter to come
to touch down
to lift me from the field
to take me to that healing place
where cool hands touch
skin cut rough with bloody glass
and the torn shards of a life lived
in a lonely sort of way,
always afraid of the next hand slapped
those cutting words ... bad
bad bad boy

When I can really touch the blood
feel the gaping holes
I am ready then to leave behind
all these crosses
all the machine-gunned memories
I am ready then to walk the blue green beaches of spring
where waves break fresh crests arching back
and palms rattle their songs in the breeze
where pelicans fly silent lines
and the sky is safe
no planes
no tanks no guns no perpetrators

When I can admit to my deep down woundedness
I will have touched the spark that no doctor can prescribe
I will know then that the state of my giftedness
lies in rising up out of the well
I will know then that the truth of it all
rests in the gentle hands of the perfect father
who now knocks at my door
and yours

When you open the door
He is standing there
the most perfect father you have ever seen

He is in fact THE PERFECT FATHER
He will say to you
I'M HUNGRY MAN
and you will say
ME TOO, LET'S EAT
and the Perfect Father will enter your home
taking off his suede hat first
then knocking the dirt from his boots
and you and the Perfect Father
will journey toward the kitchen
and there laid out before you both
will be the finest meal you have ever seen
a meal made in heaven
and music will be playing
something like THE AGE OF AQUARIUS
or MANTOVANI

And soon your dog will bring slippers for you and
your cat will follow with slippers for the Perfect Father
He is looking at you now from across the table
He says again I'M HUNGRY
and you say again ME TOO
and together you sit down
saying SHALL I CARVE?

© 2010
Jeff Hartzer
from Jeff's book, FLAMINGOS