42 Nonharming... A Journey Poem by Saiom Shriver

How do the words of the Peaceful Master become the tirades of
warmonger pastors?
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Animals love vegetarians. Plants love fruitarians.
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Neath obsolescent mower it used to be that Crickets make a final peep.
Fireflies' lanterns snuffed beneath the skies. Bumblebees' pollination
stops Caterpillars do not become butterflies
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Was she a promiscuous tree that the initials of so
many lovers are cruelly carved into her bark
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Weeding whispered the Great Spirit...is plant racism
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Oh a cockroach is better luck than a cricket upon the hearth.. for
she magnetizes to your home those who love every heart
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Many are the harshly shod footprints which have trod
smashing little ones between the booted and the sod
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Because of her the world will sooner bring.. a world of no more
suffering.. where none are swallowing
a chicken's or a swallow's wing
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Flounder: did the verb come from the noun..
as humans watched flopping suffocating agonized
fishes? Or did the fish name come from the verb?
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The fire in the mob's hate torches does not always color within the lines.
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It is not recorded in the words of Tennyson
that Ben Franklin got sick when he ate venison
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Above.. the starstrewn sky
Below.. a landmine littered earth lies
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A gentle cow reading Leviticus found that cloven hoofed animals
are forbidden for food. She took an ax to each of her four.
*

Trillions of animals' agonized cries
through a millenia of years echoing in our ears
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Babe issued a press release.. 'they tell fibs
.. I have no ribs to spare.. no spare ribs'
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At a defense contractor luncheon, the eagle ice sculpture drips water
from his melting beak. Frozen form
becomes all form. The waters of peace are flexible.
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We have nothing to offer you say the cows of their gravy
but our blood sweat and tears.
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Peregrine falcons have sent pigeons
prematurely into realms stygian
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Kneeling to God, all weapons' Wielder, he becomes a
weapons yielder.
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The boats which to their slaughter ship sheep are never shipshape.
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In India the bloody footprint of Alexander's throne lasted as long as
a twig cleaves the sea into which it is thrown.
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Spaniards are ending the waving of red flags toward crucified
bulls, as everywhere the white flags of mutual surrender to
God flap, and the wind rustles the pink flags of thyme...
all flags of earth peaceful in time
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Up peep and pop the poppy pods.
Does their scotching and scorching please Papa God?
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To sweep Buddhist monks use feather brooms
for the bee-abandoned fallen blooms
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Little chick fertilized within the eggshell basket
.. Of Thee God he asked it... that none turn the lettle shell
into a marble casket
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May no illegitimate
leader's illegal wars hasten any 'til death us do part'
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Neither the blackberry bush's barbs nor the thorns
protecting the rose act aggressively. Nettles guard nests.
Prickers protect the prickly pear.

*
Do plants have feelings? said one and the other replied:
Wallflowers must have broken hearts.
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The God indwelled beetle sanctifies the holy rose.
*
they cleave off innocent pigs' cloven hooves
... yet the scarlet blood does not crimson
the purple fields of clover
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Factory farmed hens: unloved they are born.. nameless they
live... innominate they die
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Robins need not squabble over a stick for their 2 nests..
for there are dead sticks everywhere.
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Lambs go more quietly to their murder than pigs. Pigs fight
hard against the knife wielders.
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He stopped fishing for reasons of mercy
and saved himself from radiation, worms, lead and mercury.
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She defends not only underdogs but undercats, undercows,
and underpigs, underchickens and underfishes.
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A meditative Sufi ring is less likely to suffocate fishes or cause their suffering.
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Butchers unthinkingly smash the hour glasses of mammals' lives.
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The trash truck comes around, its treeslapping height
leaving a mobile of severed spring leaves in its wake.
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NASA secreted hundreds of mice into
the hold of the shuttle. Each spacemouse was
a scapemouse.blown apart by NASA Bonapartes
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Seldom are birdwatchers seen... in factory farms
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One need fear not the might of the tiny wellmeaning mite,
the queen of termites.. if one builds with stone or stucco might.
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How many daisies does a daisy cutter bomb cut?
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They did the little boy turkey named Art... choke and then served his dead body with artichokes.
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The diner says 'no bare feet' while inside
people dine on severed pigs' feet
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Up peep and pop the poppy pods
Does scotching them please Papa God? Used for ill by growers and spooks..
Killed by narcs. Who love poppies for themselves?

The animals' stigmata.. has been cooked in the gravy

45

(As writer was penning 'blackberry bush's barbs' she
was reminded by the word proximity of Barbara Bush.. her
mother and animal love and the way writer watched her quietly
listen for an hour to her husband at a fundraiser given by
wealthy Mexican Americans in Orange County which writer attended
as a member of the press.)

(No Bare Feet is to Andrew Jacobs, former representative from Indianapolis, who said that in Congress he so often said 'many eat the meat but few go to the slaughterhouse' in reference to Vietnam that he became a vegetarian)