Samuel

How much do you love peace?
Do you love peace enough
To make love
For peace?
Do you
Love peace
Enough
To go home tonight
and cuddle up tight to your lover
and whisper
in their ear
“Let’s make love. For peace.”

Maybe you don’t have a lover
In which case,
You may love peace enough
To make love to yourself.
For peace. – That portion of your brain
Devoted to the creation of lascivious fantasy
Will build the perfect anthropomorphic embodiment
Of peace
In your preferred gender.
And peace will come on to you
By asking;

How much do you love peace?
Do you love peace enough
To sacrifice your freedom to it?
Like generations of peaceful heroes
Who have stood up, or sat down
And refused to budge
For peace.
Do you love peace as much as
Thoreau, Ghandi, King, Parks, Chavez, Peltier, Mandela
Whose acts of conscience
Offended the powerful
Do you love peace enough to go to jail?
Do you love peace enough to risk your life?

Do you love peace enough
To take a solumn vow to absolutely
Never, ever again
For any reason
Drive a vehicle that
Runs on gasoline
Because gas comes from oil
And war comes from oil
And oil comes from beneath the earth
And the earth is choked and stifled
By the smoke from cars
When it’s easy as hell to ride a bicycle.

Do you love peace enough
To give your money
not just your extra money,
your mad vacation money
but money you would have used for food
or rent (or gasoline)
to people who are working for peace?
Do you love peace enough
To give your time
Not just your extra time, your free time,
But time you could have used for something else
To work for peace yourself?

Do you love peace enough
To risk your reputation
By standing up on busses, or in shopping malls
Or at board meetings, or in church
And speak your mind for peace
Not only to the already converted,
Like we have here tonight
Because preaching to the choir (while useful)
Will only ever get peace so far.

Do you love peace enough
To tell people who don’t agree with you
How much you love peace? Do you love
Peace enough to open your heart
To people who don’t love peace,
To discuss peace politely
Even though inside you are full
Of righteous rage;
Do you love peace enough
To listen to other points of view,
And genuinely consider them,
And to have civilized discourse
About peace?

Do you love peace enough
To quit your job?
To stop pouring 40 hours a week
Into the war machine.
Because even if you’re just selling insurance
Or fixing electronics
Or building bridges
Your industry relies on an
Economy that depends on
Petroleum for its energy
And gasoline is a byproduct of war.
The Petroleum Gods
Demand human sacrifice
On their arid battlefields
Before they allow us
To drill.

Do you love peace enough
To stop working for War?

Do you love peace enough
To go home
And make love
For peace?

Do you love peace enough
To open the windows
So the whole neighborhood can hear
And as you,
And Peace
locked in coital, carnal embrace
cry out,
YES PEACE
YES PEACE
YES PEACE

Because the negativity of
NO WAR
is necessary
But has to be accompanied
By an alternative form of energy
And love’s as good as any I can think of.
So, let’s make love
For peace.