Love Poem: Syria Reconstructed
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Written by: Gerald Dillenbeck

Syria Reconstructed

It is in our fragile, nearly broken, exposure
that we are most available for love
and remedial gratitude,
rather than the louder applause
of our full-blown ballistic glory.

While exercising restrained patience breeds tolerance,
giving pregnant reign to co-empathy compels timeless flow
of organic eternity.

Empathy grows fragile compassionate pause,
easily broken by impatient overexposure
to loud adulation,
or even more necessary restrained,
sufficiently polite,
applause.

I have never been to Syria
but I remember it used to be a great place
for healthy wealth.
High quality of co-regenerative life.
Deep, robustly multicultural
and cooperative commercial root systems.

All their neighbors either preferred to just be left alone,
Plan A,
or to become a creolic part of Syria,
Plan B
if peacefully possible,
rather than other empire building prospects
and militarized capital-pirating offers,
like from Rome, for example.

Syrian culture was more intentionally creolic,
absorbing,
deep-resonant layered,
looking for WinWin resolutions,
while Rome was more competitively
"all roads and revenues shall lead to home,
which is Rome",
more WinLose devolution,
when you are on the not-so-neighborly end
of the military capital-sucking stick,
sometimes the last ecopolitical straw.

I was thinking about this
as I listened to the restrained applause
for the recent WhiteHouse "beautiful bomb" response
to Assad's prior release of chemical bombs.
WhiteHouse military-industrial incorporated intent
apparently was aimed at weapons
inconveniently provided by Russia,
more than the Syrian weapon-holders themselves.

At the same time,
the all-wise ecopolitical policy gurus
remind us this is a LoseLose necessary investment response
but not sufficient for a longterm plan
with capacity for positive regenerativity.

I mean,
what would that look like?
I shoot your guns
until they are gone.
Then what would we do with all our military toys?

Perhaps we could begin deploying them upon each other
here in the U.S.,
after all the humans,
and other favored critters,
are removed from firing range.
But this seems like an expensive and taxing habit
and one that domestic neighbors of military installations
would probably find detrimental to real estate values
and quality of life,
like being able to sleep at night
without worrying the Army is planning to demolish
the Navy's nuclear submarine parked in the river
just behind my backyard.

No, the pundits are right,
we also need a WinWin plan.

If I were a Syrian counter-revolutionary,
or the mother of a young Syrian terrorist,
I think I would invest in planting edibles,
especially trees,
to reverse desertification,
played-out soil,
currently reduced to more of a ballistic mine field,
improving purity and flow of water supply
for the long climate therapeutic haul,
and keeping Syrian air clear of toxic nastiness
like bullets and bombs,
sundry ballistics.

These are very hard on trees
and other organic reproductive rights.

Now I can already hear you thinking,
"He sounds like more of a feminist carpenter
who only has a tree planting hammer,
so all problems look like nails
rather than international cooperative opportunities
to play WinWin policy designer.

But, in defense of the carpenter
with a limited one tool arsenal,
this carpenter could be somebody's mother
who also has a shovel
and a thing for WinWin long term regenerative interior landscapes
and exterior climate ecotherapies.

Moms remember
that WinWin Mother's Milk
is more cooperatively primal
than competitive ballistic WinLose;
EitherMilitary/OrWhat? OrganicReMediation?

We have both tools,
hunting with WinLose guns
and gathering then planting WinWin embryonic seeds
of healthy ecosystemic wealth.

So, if our Trump card
has to be fight guns with guns
on one politely applauding hand,
necessary, but not regeneratively sufficient,
unless we really do choose to act more like ancient Patriarchal Rome
than ancient Matriarchal Syria,
then why not also share our shovels and seeds,
our Bodhisattva CoMessianic Matriarchal PeaceBuilders,
and our restrained Patriarchal WarMakers?

It is in our fragile, nearly broken, matriarchal exposure
that we are most available for love
and remedial WinWin gratitude,
rather than the louder patriarchal applause of history
for our full-blownout ballistic glory.