Like Running Trying To Live

So, Poetry Becomes A Means For Useful Dialogue Between People Who Are Not Only Unknown, But Mute To Each Other. It Produces A Dialogue Among People That Guards All Of Us Against Manipulation By Our So-called Leaders.

I Wrote Those Poems For Myself, As A Way Of Being A Soldier Here In This Country. I Didn't Know The Poems Would Travel. I Didn't Go To Lebanon Until Two Years Ago, But People Told Me That Many Arabs Had Memorized These Poems And Translated Them Into Arabic.

... If Your Heart And Your Honest Body Can Be Controlled By The State, Or Controlled By Community Taboo, Are You Not Then, And In That Case, No More Than A Slave Ruled By Outside Force? What Tyranny Could Exceed A Tyranny That Dictates To The Human Heart, And That Attempts To Dictate The Public Career Of An Honest Human Body?

When We Heard About The Hippies, The Barely More Than Boys And Girls Who Decided To Try Something Different ... We Laughed At Them. We Condemned Them, Our Children, For Seeking A Different Future. We Hated Them For Their Flowers, For Their Love, And For Their Unmistakable Rejection Of Every Hideous, Mistaken Compromise That We Had Made Throughout Our Hollow, Money-bitten, Frightened, Adult Lives

My Father Was Very Intense, Passionate And Over-the-top. He Was My Hero And My Tyrant.