Cast Away

Cast Away

Forced labor

Transit

Way stations

Extermination

Exhaustion

Starvation

Exposure

Certain Death

In an uncertain world

A people cast away

Washed away, wished away

Gone.

Gone, because others didn’’t see

Blinded by a reality

To dark to witness

In a blackness

Darker than night

In a reign returned

Forgotten again no more.

Amereaup

Ho chi minh

Dien Bien Phu

New Republic

Old dreams

Geneva

Another Shelley tale

On a stormy summer night

Mary that is

In the rain

Has the story repeated?

Rhetorical question

Another Saigon

Or was it Kabul?

Sinoeuroance

Amereaup

Let Freedom Ring

First formed freedoms

Found on shores
Not theirs

Stolen freedom - abducted from the land
Besieged from a foreign people
Then native
Still native

Foreign now native
Unrestrained - liberated - aggregated
Agitated that they want freedom too.


"pled guilty", felony, arrested, district attorney, former superintendent

Freedom Lost

Human rights watch

As time ticks away
Broken promises on the backs of children
Forced labor
Misnomer at best
For what know they
Of freedom found
Of freedom found
And what know we
Of life, liberty and the freedom
Guaranteed by our forefathers
But so easily taken away.
                           
                     -- Elizabeth Chapin-Pinotti

Guilty, convicted, D.A., Riebe, Amador County

Give

Affliction, agony, anguish
Deceit, deception, despair
Grief, heartache, torture
Wretchedness sans repair

Suffer not the consequences
Of the world you make
Martyr not your Brutus
Sprawled on wooden stake

Omnipotent, dynamic, forceful
Precursor, piety, greed
Of all the gold in Africa
Of all the lives in need

Call off the Druks
Cast guns aside
Uncross the path
Where worlds collide

Hold hope to heart
Give feed to birth
Give chance to life
Give all their worth.
               -- Elizabeth Chapin-Pinotti

weapons for the strong

nonviolence is a weapon for the strong 

gathering on high – gathering on low
forced from and to away from conflict
mired by strife yet victorious
Stoic in responsive passion of
breaths not taken and life unlived
though living prevails through discord.

feed not on the grains of humanity’s blood
seek not for ends of means for aggression gain
dispassionate and humble spirit rise loud
to oblivious voices of reckless leaders
distant to the call of the oppressed masses
clustering…cloistering for the weapon of the strong

                                -- Elizabeth Chapin-Pinotti