Poetry for Our Times
Drumbeats of War
A sound poem on the inexorable suffering and terror of abandoning peace
It’s rarely those who launch a war who die in it. Peace… peace is a gentle voice in the screaming cacophony… Peace hardly stands a chance against the drums of war, the harbingers of death and destruction.
Trigger warning: Images of trauma
It’s the children who suffer most. Even if peace comes, the trauma will be inscribed in their descendants, speaking from their DNA, to be passed on from generation to generation. How many generations will it take for those drumbeats to be silenced in the DNA of our children?
I hope those drumbeats may be silenced, and that peace will reign.
The four base images for the above animation were generated with PlaygroundAI. I used four variations of the same phrase, “desperate [ethnicity] toddler near explosion.” For each image iteration, I inserted an ethnicity: Jewish, Palestinian, Ukrainian, and Sudanese. The AI application rendered the heartbreaking images with ease.
I find it abhorrently tragic that AI has enough image information to draw from that it can so realistically render any ethnicity for an image of horror.
Drumbeats of War
The orotund drumbeats of war pounding, pounding sonorously beating, beating, drumming drumming a stentorian drone drowning out our heartbeat
Fools pound the drums calling our children to war while old men’s tears fall begging warmongers to hear the gentle voice of peace
Drumming, drumming, beating fools with puffed-up self-import will send our children to war against other nations’ children drowning out voices of peace
© 05 January 2015, by D. Denise Dianaty, American poet and artist. Previously published on WritersCafe.org
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Shoutout to my WE PAW Bloggers publication contributors here on Medium: Andrea Hewitt, Carrie Ann Golden, Bob Metivier, My Alter Ego and Me, Deon Christie, David Perlmutter, Suzanne Hagelin, Harry Hogg, Kelly Santana Banks, Brian Lageose, Mason Bushell, Michael Embry, PJ Mann — Author, Pjmaclayne, Samantha Bryant, Patrick Metzger, Subhasinghe SPS, PhilAndMaude, Jason Provencio, Janerisdon, Robert Trakofler, Shoreditchpoet, Nikolaos Skordilis, Stuart Aken, Dr.Titus Varghese, Tomas Ó Cárthaigh, Fildy Bejaoui, Oksana Kukurudza’s Sunflowers Rarely Break
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