Aspirations of Thought Word and Deed

By Michael Hall

This book was written as a collection of free-verse poetry with the theme being observations from an individuals point of view, reactions to current events, and then aspiration to a higher edification . I have come to a personal conclusion that the greatest objective one can achieve here is to transform love into service. To dissipate ones desires. To discover and embrace an exemplary purpose and this fidelity becomes the caliper of faith, which is the measure of ones worth. Any of us must live according to a belief or risk living a life unfulfilled, undefined, to live selfishly. I aspire.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: May 28, 2009
• ISBN: 9781465317674

Michael Hall

Michael Hall grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and lives with his family in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is the creator of numerous acclaimed picture books for children, including Frankencrayon, Red: A Crayon’s Story, My Heart Is Like a Zoo, Perfect Square, and It’s an Orange Aardvark! 

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Copyright © 2009 by Michael Hall.

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Contents

The abyss

Golden, tin, and plastic soldiers

By any other name

Red-shirted freshman

I remember

American queen

For the children, as we steal their candy

Guns in America

Gone with the wind

To kill or not to kill

Ah, that disease of nationalism

The other point of view

Thought word and deed

From the dusty dreams of my youth

Who I am is a choice and a will

Duty

O G_D

How to stop war

9

I will not kill people, can you?

Locusts

I am a no one

Valley of the hermit

Crimes of war

Broken heart

The American monstrosity

Goals

A madman’s dream

Deception

America and the mirror

Lets count the cost of war

A revolution by gentle duty

America is the greatest

What is of concern

The semantics of terror

Equality

Whose land is this?

Deafening silence

Deeds

Christmas time in 8 time

The face of G_D

One day

White flowers

Tidings

A matter of deception by coercion

Nothing left but shades of gray

When less is really more

The millipede and pride

But they’re only Iraqi’s

With a baby

Is war your friend or foe?

Despite and despair, distraction and deceit

Creators and makers

Twist of fate

Genocide in the Gaza Ghetto

I was not there

One person one vote one state

Definitive solution for Palestine

Not to resist

Ivory tower ricochet

Wrens at the top of the hill

Fly that pile high

Tools and such

When we

If all people are equal

You should know better

To give it back

Schools and lessons

Obey, love and serve

Recite

What is it you own?

Fighting for your freedom

I want my taxes to go for:

To be unfettered

Faith(it will)

I don’t need no stinkin’ laws

Flying shoes

Let’s have a truce, ok?

The right to self-defense

Occupation

Hugs and love and peace

O Exalted Father

The betrayal of our silence

Nakba

The kingdom of heaven

War

Double-speak gum

What sayeth you own?

Calloused soles upon a razors edge

How can I

A man of…

Without Borders I

Without borders II

Us/Them

European locusts

Deadbeat nation

Poetic justice

The criminals are faceless for they are timeless

When victory is simply toil

Wormwood

The prime entity

Da Books

My heart

Howling in the wilderness

This book is respectfully dedicated to peacemakers, everywhere

Other Books by michael hall

Observations at the End of Days

Peace is… Inevitable

Wake Up the White Rose

Without Borders

(O)

golden rule

(L)ahimsa                                altruism(V)

(E)

Introduction

If I am to matter please then let my task be to nullify the war that rages within me and without. I deem to feed and succor the positive and good in me as I strive to starve the negative and ill since I seek to change the egocentric to the altruistic. In thought word and deed I struggle to rise above the iniquity that I find within me as ego-desire, while I watch as my peers suffer through this same predicament and opportunity. Within the parameters of the pragmatics of human society I walk in the eye of the paradox. I understand that what I do invariably comes down to a day-to-day choice by not just reactions to my life’s moments, but by the crafting of the goals and purpose I aspire too, the price I pay to get there, by steadfast perseverance and the sometimes necessary sullied compromises to the veracity of ‘reality’.

Every time I eat and drink I try to remember to thank G_D for this bounty. I have lived 50 years and have been given far more than I deserve or could ever repay. I have been exposed to great ideals, thoughts and I have learned of giants who’ve strove by the moral passion of their convictions to expose the tyranny of their times, the truth of self-sacrifice, to the fidelity of a purpose, and the end result, to make this a better place for all of us by helping those who suffer under the yolk of injustice, violence and oppression. These concepts have inspired and affected the way I feel, think, and believe and by who I am and what I wish to do. Yet I am under no illusion of what I can be or what I may accomplish. I am no superman, angel, messiah or Buddha. I am just an average nobody, who can’t do everything, but I can do something and I choose to do something with unconditional conviction. It is not easy, yet it seems to me that, to just seek of out self-gratification does not bring satisfaction, and instead it as any addiction, it pleases only temporarily. To find true satisfaction one must find a cause or purpose and be true to the service of it. And this service must force one to forsake ones desires, all that one thinks is loved with the consequences and the eventual price that all such service requires for those who have heeded their call have never played it straight and safe by keeping quiet and going along with the flow nice and easy. For they cared for others beyond just their own.

By our recent history in the twentieth century, which has turned our path into areas few, could have foreseen. Two great wars have afflicted the twentieth century and these wars have seeped into our time with the cold war. From this money making enterprise has now evolved into another, this war of terror by terror on the reaction to terror, which is always the pretext for war; terror and the application of terror. And it is always the same, just with different players, different lands but the premise is the same. Those who stand behind the lines holding stock in the arms industry enjoy very healthy profits while the poor and middle class get duped into fighting for flag filling the coffers of those back home. Now we are in the middle of a war of terror, a war of empires and their gluttonous reach and history repeats again and again its tragic, foolish mistakes. War is a racket, always has been and always will until we wake up and get rid of it.

A great holocaust was done just before my time and the world was silent in its betrayal as millions of these people were slaughtered. As a penance for their guilt by their silence and complicity, a price was paid by those who had nothing to do with it, but by another innocent people who then had their land, homes stolen from them. So these western powers come to this land again to meddle where they have not a right. As they promise and fail to keep them and then run with their skirts in the air from their mandate. A nation was born from the ethnic cleansing of another. And naturally we’ve had violence there ever since. As those who’ve had a great wrong done to them, and then watched the whole word stand idly by, the now occupiers and interlopers justify what they do to others. Yet I was tremendously affected by what happened and continues there. The truth has been manipulated and twisted so badly that the victim is now labeled the victimizer and those who defend themselves against armed soldiers on their occupied lands are called terrorists. As they throw rocks against tanks and missiles they are called upon to renounce violence by a nation that uses illegal and immoral violence against them. And your president calls this madness; Justified self-defense. As I plan to travel to Palestine to face wanton violence with a smile and kindness, to shield those who suffer under a brutal and unjustified occupation, and to put keys and their owners back in the houses where they belong. My last task in life to enact and complete is to sell all that I think I own, give it to the poor, unshod my shoes and walk the word. To work for the occupied and terrorized as i strive for peace using complete non-violence and try not get shot at.

If equality is truly the goal and enactment of our interrelations between us then is it not logical to conclude that equality means looking neither above not below any? And if we understand Pentecost then is it not logical to postulate that if all of us are in the image of G_D, then to slight any is to slight all and to slight God itself? The image of G_d then is not just you nor I but the bee, the tree the sky and stone? Who am I then to deny or judge? To resist not evil is not to feed it. To face violence with non-violence, to stand up to raving rage with quiet gentleness and to change the darkness of hate into the light of love. To become nothing then is the true aspiration in the form of detachment.

For of this world I am not, yet I live within. Ownership is not my domain but the beauty and gift of this place is yours and mine as we partake and enjoy, as well as tending as time permits. My time is here is but a fleeting shadow upon a grain of sand. Reverence for life, unselfishness and the task to serve seems to me the lesson that is hidden here for us each to discover. After that is mere conjecture and speculation. And yet the ‘ways of the real world’ demands that one sees the injustice, the horror, the crimes and the wrong and not be silent about them. For as it is today that your neighbor suffers, it will be your turn to suffer correspondently tomorrow if you don’t break the betrayal of your silence. And if you pretend indifference, or cold distain as you look for self-gratification happiness you will not find it but instead only through commitment to a worthy purpose. That purpose will lift you up out of the darkness as you becomes a true adult who grasps the responsibly and accountably of a life in the midst of such flagrant irony of oxymoron insanity. Forsake all that you think you possess instead to serve a purpose, which is your real calling. As one simply releases objects of false ownership, refocuses from the self to others and how you can best serve. And that day that we dread, that we crave for, that we pray for in the quiet of the night or the chaos of the day, is nigh. The aspiration is to live true and pure in thought word and deed on the path of edification. Once you have released that seed of light that is within us all, you cannot escape or put it back. And it grows, grows into a conscience that is boundless and borderless. For I gratefully and gladly sacrifice all that I have and am to this cause.

What then is a higher goal but to assist those who are oppressed, who have done no wrong to their oppressors except to live on land that they want and refuse to capitulate? In the holiest of lands that brought forth our greatest peacemakers? These are people worthy of assistance and if there is one thing taught by my parents, schools and the land where I was raised it is to help those who are subjugated and virtually imprisoned. The bully must always be confronted, even if we call him friend, but not by violence but by the worth of right over wrong, by