FRONT & BACK COVERS of the original zine publication, end of 2002

Front cover with art and poem by Marilyn Dammann (USA) on a Vietnam veteran friend

This first issue came together in a network effort against the war preparations on Iraq of the first Bush administration and was the result of a close collaboration between Tais Lintz in Canada, Christiane Grenzebach in Germany, Douglas Carrara in Brazil, Sumeet Grover in India and Guido Vermeulen in Belgium.

While Christiane and Douglas published the poems on websites and poetry boards, I decided to produce and diffuse a xeroxed magazine, which was the first issue of Friour Network Magazine. It saw the light in September-October 2002.

This blog is an extended and different version of the original zine with much more graphical art that reached me later.

It was Sumeet who introduced me to the T:AP network for which I'm grateful because it allowed me to bridge the mail art network with other art & peace networks. It was also in this first issue that I introduced the concept of a shared magazine. Everyone could produce an issue if they were interested, if it had an art and peace angle, if it was the result of networking and if it was free. The people who embraced immediately the concept were all T:AP members: Marisa Antonaya in Thailand, Monica de Nyeko in Uganda, Mohammad Iqbal Behleem in Pakistan.

For more info on T:AP, please visit: www.tapnet.info

Back cover of the original zine based on a peace performance by Clemente Padin in Uruguay.

For all comments: scroll to the end of the zine blog. (GV)

A PLEA FOR PEACE:

A PROTEST AGAINST WAR



INTRODUCTION

This is a plea for peace, a protest against war on Iraq, against other "on-going wars", against the destruction of peace.

This is a group poem, made up of voices from poets of several countries around the world, asking for an end to this war: the world’s plea for peace. We cannot let this war happen; we cannot let this mass murder of our innocent soldiers of several countries and innocent civilians of Iraq, and of the world, suffer with the greed and insanity of some leaders.

MOTTO:

"Once war was declared
I took my courage by both hands
and strangled it!"

Jacques Prévert,
French poet, 1900-1977,
fragment from the book FATRAS

Henning Mittendorf, GERMANY

WORLD PEACE POEM


P lea to all nations:
E xpress your feelings against war without fear,
A ct now, don't follow blind the masses,
C ling together to make a difference,
E nd the new war before it starts.

F ighting will lead us nowhere,
O ur world deserves peace.
R equital is no solution.

T error is without doubt horrible,
H oly war, too.
E xtermination of Iraq won't change anything.

W e are all children of this planet,
O ur common goal should be a better world for us all.
R aise your voices,
L oud and clear,
D emand peace for this world!





© Christiane Grenzebach, Germany, 2002

Pied Pipers by Zois, USA

Imagine Sunrise
being buried in my stomach,
that's how down I feel
when I think of war.

Oranges don't grow in deserts
anymore but are forever lost
in the cursing of one another
when the one who is not bothered
by the terror of his dreams
scarecrows me & you,
bullies our light so much
it retreats to the smallest corner,
creating the comeback of cockroach paradise.

I've always known this sentence:
the road to hell is only fat & baby black,
crying from New York to Baghdad.
Yes, hurting souls seems easier than removing tears
but that does not stop me of hearing the cold splendor of the lies.

Brother in arms,
allow me also a single shot,
to shoot one star
& make one wish
about one death:
& that's the death of war!


© Guido Vermeulen, BELGIUM
17 September 2002

Hungry for peace by Guido Vermeulen, BELGIUM

FRIENDS & VICTIMS OF WARS


Once we skip-hopped and shared a life of simple fun.
In school we sang most ardently our anthems.

We blithely played and exchanged our marbles.
Today we exchange sharp and fatal bullets.

We were proud of our ancient monuments lauding our past.
Today we destroy these treasured landmarks with fierce abandon.

Our parents boasted about our mental and physical progress.
Today they are silent at our passion of willful destruction.

Our fathers shared tools, seeds and everything.
Now all alone they burry their fallen offspring.

Our mothers were friends, and talked and laughed together.
Today every mother has to grieve alone for her children.


© by Lini Richarda Grol, CANADA / THE NETHERLANDS

( a Hebrew Folk Song)

s a l a a m = s h a l o m

Tim Gaze, AUSTRALIA

Lancillotto Bellini, ITALY

Verdrehte Welt

Verdrehte Welt
Voll Einsatz
Gezielt
Behände
Entzünden
Hände Brände

Gestern
Heute
Morgen
verbreiten sie
elende Sorgen

Warum nicht
Freundlich
Friedlich
Geblieben
von Liebe getrieben


© by Annerose Scheidig, GERMANY
English translation by Christiane Grenzebach

Crazy World
Full of effort
calculated
nimble
light
hands fires

Yesterday
today
tomorrow
they spread
miserable sorrows

Why not
friendly
peaceful
remained
driven by love

Basra beach by Qpidoremix, USA

upon the sunny desert

there falls no rain

only tears

and blood

of pain


*.-.*.-.*.-.*

© Geert De Decker aka Sztuka Fabryka , BELGIUM

Red fountain in Argentina, as protest against the war on Iraq

some of the public fountains in Argentina were dyed with red paint

The Source



Peace like a river

Eludes concern for the poor

Cascades from the Lord

Shatter costly perfume jars

Humility pours honour



© Margaret Newton, CANADA

Taen, USA

Stop murderer’s hand,
refuse the power sowing death,
there,
where innocent eyes
search the sun
to begin to live.

Open yourself, nailed heart,
let the light filter
from love fissures,
bringing future
to undefended arms,
no graves, no crosses.

My body trembles,
it rejects innocent blood,
while it receives
with joy
transfusions of peace
and life


© Anna Boschi, ITALY

Henning Mittendorf, GERMANY

I wonder that the son of the man
who torched the oil fields
can bring himself to do it all over again
can think it's a grand gesture
can conscience the death of more
women and children
in the aftermath of what is only
boys turned into men and
again
playing with tanks and guns
again
snuffing the life out of joy
again
taking things too far
when there are other
better
options
other
better
ways
other better
scenarios
other
better
ways
to see one's name
appear in
History
Books


© Carla Cryptic, USA

Tony Kennedy, ENGLAND

silence silence silence silence silence silence
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silence silence silence silence silence silence
no violence
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silence silen ce silence silence silence silence
silence silence silence silence silence silence
silence silence silence silence silence silence

© Keiichi Nakamura, JAPAN

18 September 2002

Martha Aitchinson, ENGLAND

BRAZILIAN BLUES

My Dear God,
Can You give me some inspiration?
Please, my God.
The men that just love money, money, money
want only destruction.
I am a Brazilian man,
And I think
A lot of people in the World
Want to live within Love.
Do You think that too?
So, my Lord,
Give me some voice
Voice to shout to the World:
No war! No war! No war!
And later,
I would like to try,
To breathe,
To relax,
To dream and to see:
All the people in the World
Living a great life in peace.


© Ricardo Alfaya, BRAZIL
19 September 2002

Cultivons les lèvres de la terre

Guido Vermeulen, BELGIUM

My God!

Step on the head of the serpent
so the egg will be destroyed

In its womb,
generating the monster of war,
Which fills the world with infernal vapors
And our lives with an intense pain

Make humanity hold hands
seeing each other as brothers

My Lord, make famine disappear
Because You made the land f
or our nutrition growth
for all,
rational and irrational

© Maria Hilda, BRAZIL

Peace brick by Olivia Niemeyer, BRAZIL

Those who sent the soldiers to war,
don’t they taste blood in their mouths?
The mouth which speaks in favor of war.

Don’t they taste the bitterness of blood in their mouths?
Those who told them to pull the trigger,
don’t they smell the mud of the bodies on the ground?

Those who defend war
don’t scream.
Don’t scream in pain,
don’t have love for life.


© Douglas Carrara, BRAZIL

Cesar Reglero, SPAIN

There's something in the air
that smells like countless dead.
There's something in his voice
that sounds like countless bombs.
There's something in this world
that's buying off our souls.
There's something in our skins
that's about to burn in full.


© by Josep Sabater, CANADA

The War Lovers, UNKNOWN

Poema cadena

cadena poema

mapoe denaca

nadeca emapo

Ir a q. Q ir a

Aqir Qari

BUSSSSSSSSSH

¡sadam, sadam!

Brrrrrmmmmm

Brrrrrmmmmm

BANG, BANG, BANG

GANG, GANG, GANG

KLAN, KLAN , KLAN

Alá, Dios, Yavhé

Vheyasoidala

oil oil oil oil oil oil oil oil

OOOOOOiiiiiiilllllllllll

Darkoil

Brentoil

Alá, Dios, Yavhé

KLAN KLAN KLAN

BANG BANG BANG

END END END

STOP STOP STOP.

© by Hilario Alvarez, SPAIN

Henning Mittendorf, GERMANY

"The nature of the world-reality’s self-organization shows its principle to be a creative poor in violence process of balancing out and creating, of creative-equalizing integration of power and resources, i.e. of an "organic peace order" with its "social imperative" aiming at peace, with its peace culture, as fundamental legality, conformity with the natural laws of self-organization.

Peace doesn’t mean a world wherein the for the world’s "life" necessarily existing tensions and energies are extinguished. But it describes a world wherein those are stripped of their destructive aspects and made productive within a common liberal order of balancing out.

Within conflict situations always there has to be found a new land. That is a "hidden common creative sphere of balancing out" as condition for at the same time any succeeding structural docking, coexistence, any viable living together, and as prerequisite as well as improvement of the prevailing own system always anew. This is the more, the humane, by that the whole extends the sum of the parts, the world law of the hidden contrasts’ harmony elaborated by Heraklit, opening on more complex evolution’s levels new creative possibilities, new structures, new processes and products.

As man is living, he is free, and for his free living there must be peace. Freedom is the unfolding of man’s possibilities in peace and responsibility beyond all primary bonds, their repetition on a higher level, like family and fatherland, as well as beyond all suppressions and estrangements. For self-determination, freedom, only in lasting peace times can decide responsibly in a changing environment what is "just and unjust" and how contrasting interests have to become balanced out eliminating causes of violence with it in principle preserving life and the reality of all, yes possibly expanding it.

The self-organization of the world enables the man to find out on the basis of pragmatic if-then-descriptions the destructive powers of relations, to influence them by life-effective ones, to take from them their destructive effects thus improving the state of the world order. The new paradigm shift permits the man to confront the vision of the world as a destabilizing and self-destructing disorder of war with the one of the reality as a self-stabilizing and growing peace order. The question occurs of the brutalization or the civilization of the man in the near future, in the end the one of the personal human freedom and its bond, namely the one for the responsible self-restriction of the human creativity, i.e. for the immediate change, improvement, of his self-understanding.

Peace for the whole world, peace for Iraq!"


© Henning Mittendorf, GERMANY
27 September 2002

Peace Balcons forwarded by Linda Pelati, ITALY

"flags, flags, flags
nothing but flags
simple colors
compared to the
rainbow I watched
today from the square
around the corner
where I live
by the way
have you ever seen
the surface of a
puddle of oil?
right, colors of rainbow
same colors
different worlds
all veiled by
flags, flags, flags
nothing but flags
in simple tricolor
to reduce it all
into black and white rubble."


© 'Sugar' Irmer , GERMANY, 2002

Guernica, version 2003 by End War. Net

Compassion I

Dedicated to Abu Amar, Nelson Mandela and Tony Benn



We are all travellers on Space Ship Earth

Contributing to life through our birth.

There is no inferior race.

We all deserve a living space.

All of us comprise Life's creation

Of class, colour, creed, sex and nation.

All souls in their own fashion

Were created with caring compassion.

We are equal, eternal souls in human form,

Also those not conforming for our norm.

"Love your fellow man and follow my way",

Is what we hear the masters say.

To preach this path and practice the opposite

Sends signals of a spiritual hypocrite.

All souls in their own fashion

Are on Earth to develop compassion.

Compassion does not treat others apart.

Compassion means to act from the heart,

Never purposefully produce pain,

Feeling oneness with all life again.

The true test of spirituality

Is how we treat others in reality.

All souls in their own fashion

Can daily practice loving compassion.

Love is much higher than theory.

Only heart-felt love can set us free.

This basic truth we must understand.

Love is how to treat our fellow man.

Anything less is meant to deceive.

Conning us that we may believe.

All souls in their own fashion

Can grow by loving

Life with compassion.

It's all right when our hearts are burning.

It's all part of a lifetime's learning.

This simple truth survived through the ages.

Was proclaimed by all the sages:

"The only signs that our souls have grown

Are the deeds through which our love is shown"

.All souls in their own fashion

Through kind conduct can convey compassion.

Heaven is our father, Earth our mother.

Hence, we all relate to each other,

While the benevolent boon of breath

Sustains us all from womb to death.

With a loving, humble attitude

Our hearts will fill with gratitude.

All souls in their own fashion

Can redeem themselves through compassion.

Why are the Israelis happily elevated

Through human rights being violated?

Why do they feel the need to degrade

Others by nation, station, sect, sex or shade?

When we open our eyes we see, of course,

They are totally bereft of a conscience and remorse.

All souls in their own fashion

Can open up their hearts to compassion.

Thousands killed and maimed in Sharon’s name,

His brutes untamed, their victims blamed!!!

God knows how many lives they took

While barring the World from having a look?

Wouldn’t it be just and joyfully freeing,

If all they we’re seeing, were a human being?

His brutes too in their own fashion

Must embrace humane-kind via compassion.


© Erik the Viking, UK

Malangone, ITALY

The Security Guard

A tall, sandy, young man
he loped over to us, friendly
like a golden retriever, came
to greet us at the slick USA chain hotel.
He knew we'd come for the hearing.
- I'm security to keep the peace,
not just for the judge, but you too.
worked ten years
a policeman
on the streets of Vancouver.
I saw things I don't want
to remember.
I hate violence
I hope this hearing will be peaceful-
he turned to leave
-time to go in and get set up -
then
- Don't tell them I said it
but, give them Hell
I get the creeps just thinking
about those nukes out there.
We left the sun and walked into our shadows
to assemble
in the gloom of judgement
a dusty, sunless room
the "hearing officer"
a judge
with a mind empty of metaphor
crammed with legal minutiae
his words were sharp silica,
erosion against our passion,
for him even our logic was
too remote,
our love of light, of life,
irrelevant
to the legislation.
assaulted by his
letters of the law,
we spoke and left.
we breathed again in the sun outside
said goodbye to
our peaceful guard
indifferent to our haste,
he talked

once
I knew a Japanese woman
in Vancouver,
she had really
unusual tattoos,
one day
I asked her about them -
his words blew past me
as I tried to get away
going home.

then -
she told me -
these are
not tattoos
but
the pattern
of the
kimono
I was
wearing
the day
they
dropped
the bomb
on
Hiroshima.


************************



© Theresa Wolfwood, CANADA

Vittore Baroni, ITALY

Listen...

to the pulse of life
in every human heart...
it cannot encompass
the insanity
of war destruction anymore...
Where is our intelligence
if we can not communicate
and respect
the Right to Live? ...
What is technology good for
if it promotes death
instead of Life?
Could we in the year 2002
create and celebrate
ourselves
in harmony with
our mother
Earth...?
Can we bestow
in our children
the gift of Peace?
the gift of a
safe world?...
A sense that
Life is sacred
and it will be
honored and respected?
Could we all
listen to the pulse
of Life
to the pulse
of Love
that affirms our existence
in the rhythm
of our hearts? ...

(c) Maria Elena Lopez Vinader, ARGENTINA
29 September 2002

Taen, USA

Mountain north


in the once mighty land
in the once famed land
land of once great men of soil
fortress of my people's souls
once, one, on
that mighty land
now blood flows
this once mountain
mountain of north
I see only a hill
in the mighty mountain of the north
I see now only a ball of soil
remembering mount of the north
my heart wails
my home dear home
sweat home
burnt home
shredded home now
rebel home
bullet home
blood home
axed head home
war home!

peace when will you visit mount north again?

© by Monica Arac de Nyeko, UGANDA

Loteria Cards by Emilio Carrasco, MEXICO

Foreswear the Promise of the Future, America

In a land where votes were stolen and the media manipulated like a joke
I thank those who have joined together to bring promise to the spoken word.
When I was young I was taught that I could raise my bosom and that the flag would foreswear my allegiance
To goals and vision that would embrace the global community and man each in his individual way, democracy!

Now I know that I must seek again to re-imagine a dawn from friends and even foe
Based on no hesitation that the promise has been broken
Emboldening the word through documentation much like writing the constitution or the declaration of independence
I will join with you each and every one like a brother and sister, mother and father, parent and child, mentor and disciple to find a new beginning and seek hope joined with the family of man
That the future will not be stolen more and that truth will hold value, that hearts will lift to fortify and ensure freedom and that moral law and the legal framework will bind integrity in a battle against Satan, both in terror and revenge and that every man and woman will sound the bell of future generations

With your crown asunder can you refurbish your laurels based on a spiritual inheritance?
from civil rights won through sheer force of will,
a vote protected in the distant past
A bloodless revolution with hallowed halls of infinity a noble victor in the humble leadership of martyrs at the side of King
At once young, with virtue like a remembered honor in the lion's den of Damocles
Can we overcome knowing the fear of death?
Will we know peace again and a code of law that forged through forbearance will decide a victory?
Let's join together and continue to fight until we see it done,
each in his or her own way but side by side until a spiritual civilization is cultivated and accord brings harmony through treaties with vision blessed through diversity embracing global leadership.
Shaking off the shackles of fraud built by corrupt men stealing what is not theirs and seeking to blindside our resources as if we do not see them or know what they have done.

We will outsmart the devil through kindness and determination
to protect our children and the future,
this I foreswear with you by my side,
new friends and old,
each in their own step and at their own pace in a rhythm blessing the sanctity of life.

© by Tina Ebey, USA

Taen, USA

NEVER


Un jour funeste, je me suis rendu au cimetière de Never.

Les rues étaient infiniment désertes, l’hiver avait effacé les dernières traces d’un automne trop chaleureux.


Suite aux mesures affichées, la ville de Never était presque évacuée.

Le ciel était couvert de taches grisâtres, voilant les souvenirs ensevelis dans les cœurs endoloris.

Une photo mortuaire brillait comme une enseigne sur le marbre miroitant de l’éternel repos.

Mon cerveau était alerté par des éclairs persistants.

« L’enfer, c’est les autres ? » …

Le plus précieux du petit paradis du for intérieur est inaccessible à ces autres.
Loin des désastres humains, s’incarnant dans la chaleur printanière d’une vallée en fleur, où le béton et l’acier n’ont pas laissé des traces …
Loin des évaporations asphyxiantes de la Ville-Moloch …

NEVER, NEVER, NEVER !!!

NEVER

On a fatal day I went to the graveyard of Never.
Streets were eternal deserted; winter had erased the last traces of the warmth of fall.

As result of the posted measures the city of Never was almost completely evacuated.
The sky covered in grey spots veiled the memories buried in painful hearts.
A Remembrance photo was shining bright like a sign on the marble reflecting eternal peace.
My brain became alerted by persisting lightning.

"Hell is the others?" …
These others cannot trespass the most precious of the small paradise of my inner conscience.
Far away from all human disasters, incarnated in the ardour of spring of a flowered valley,
there where concrete and steel could not leave their mark…
Far away from the suffocating evaporations of the Golem City...




NEVER, NEVER, NEVER!!!


© by Liza Leyla, BELGIUM
Translation from French to English: Guido

Malangone, ITALY

my father traveled Europe

from front to front

I travel the world

from friend to friend

>may my sons travel the universe

and visit their sons


© by Peter Kuestermann, GERMANY

Taen, USA

EPILOGUE


Good and evil
walk on opposite sides
It’s the choice we make
Which affects our lives

Peace and war
walk on opposite sides
It’s the choice we make
Which affects the world




© Tais Lintz, CANADA, 2002

Clemente Padin, URUGUAY