Poems Promoting Peace

As Artists, the visionaries of our communities, we must create works of art that promote peace and help people learn the skills required to achieve and maintain peace.

Peace is not the absence of conflict but the presence of creative alternatives for responding to conflict -- alternatives to passive or aggressive responses, alternatives to violence.

So I propose we create art that helps our larger community acquire the tools, skills and strategies to find alternatives, to achieve peaceful resolution to conflict.

Individually, we always have at least three opportunities to stop our own aggression--at the thought stage, at the words stage and at the action stage. I would like to see some pieces that relate to each of these opportunities.

Let's help each other Learn.

Here. I'll go first.

Personally, I have a criteria against which I measure everything I say
and it is this:


Before I speak,
let me ask myself first:

Is this True?
Is this Kind?
Is this Necessary?

If not, let it be left unsaid.

And if it is True,
And if it is Necessary,
let me find a way to say it
Kindly.