April 30, 2013

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    Wallabouts  

     

    The truth is that walls are not nice 

    To put it succinctly - Walls kill

    Look at what happened in Berlin

    How many lives were lost on the Red side of Checkpoint Charlie

    Before Reagan bankrupted them and it was torn down?

     

    Movies were made about that wall

    Lots of good actors starred in them

    Michael Caine and Ian Holm in spy thrillers

    John Hurt tried to fly over it with his family in a home-made balloon

    And poor Claire Bloom and Richard Burton were massacred at its base

    And "Johnboy" Thomas dug a tunnel under it to save his girl and her family

    And Werner Meyer and his wife and kids made it across

    Suspended in a bucket-crane that he controlled                                                             

    But that wasn't a movie - It really happened!

     

    In Israel they're building a wall to seperate the Palestinians and Jews

    It's supposed to keep out suicide bombers

    But it's not high enough to stop the rockets that fly over it and kill people

     

    In California, Arizona and Texas they're building a wall to keep out "illegals"

    But who is going to pick the tomatoes and lettuce and fruit?

    The growers say they'll have to plow everything under if they don't get some help

    A few of us might starve eventually - some of those "undesireables" probably will

    That's sort of long-term killing... isn't it?

     

    In 1941- the Nazis crammed over four hundred thousand Jews into Warsaw's Ghetto

    And forced them to build a 10-foot-high brick wall topped by barbed wire

    Effectively walling themselves in… By the end of 1942

    Eighty-three thousand men, women and children perished behind that wall

     

    In China centuries ago - they built a wall four thousand miles long

    It was supposed to keep out the barbarian Huns

    It didn't work even though it cost hundreds of thousands of lives to build it

    That's killing... isn't it?

     

    In Beirut they built a wall to protect our Marines but over two hundred of them died anyway

     

    In Baghdad and Kabul they've built walls around the Green Zones

    To keep out most Iraquis and Afghanis

    Even though it's part of their cities

    But they had to protect the Starbucks and McDonalds and the beauty salons

    Mortar-shells can still arch over them though

    And people get killed

     

    Since time began - walls have been built to protect people and property

    But they don't

     

    No doubt about it…

    Walls kill

             

     

     

                 

Comments (4)

  • We need a wall along our north border to keep the frostbacks out.

    I visited my dad's cousin in Leipzig in 1983. It was a different world as soon as you crossed the border. Magdeburg was like a scene from hell. I hadn't seen anything so ugly even in the poorest Latin American country.

  • Walls work both ways - to keep in and to keep out. They are a detriment either way. Sadly it is not just the physical walls causing problems but the walls some people erect in their minds.

  • I echo Val's sentiments. Walls are painful in more ways than one, physical and emotional.

  • Thanks so much for your latest comments on my poetry.
    As usual, I enjoyed your poem’s attention to detail and history. To paraphrase John Lennon, “Imagine” no walls between us. But I’m afraid walls characterize our world’s mentality. It would seem even our heavens have walls. Peter, this subject put me in mind of a flash fiction piece, called FENCES that this poem inspired me to post. If you are so inclined, I’d appreciate your thoughts on it.

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