Performed for EMERGENCY USA, I wrote this poem the week I performed it. I was asked to create something by Anna Gilmore who is on Emergency USA’s board for a charity benefit. It was odd. I am not sure how she knew I could do this. Acutally I had performed for VERBALLY LOUD and my subject of choice was often human concerns and interest from CANCER to STUDENT OPRESSION in IRAN. I met Anna at World Fest where she had a booth to explain to attendees what her ortanization does. If you GET a chance, I highly recomment attending WORLD FEST in the LAKE BALBOA area of LOS ANGELES. It is held near EARTH DAY and if you are a member of any of the VEGAN groups on MEET up you can often get a discounted ticket. They usually also have a discount if you prove you road the METRO for the day. The event is near the ORANGE LINE.

I was not the only performer. I had performed in Santa Monica at a poetry reading and met Kevin Patrick there who was a spoken word artist of a more urban flavor. I met with Anna and Kevin and read him my work and he fashioned a piece to match mine. I read part of my work, he did what he wrote, and there was also a film about EMERGENCY USA played in between. THis I believe is the LONGEST piece of poetry I have ever written. At the same time it is more of a poetic dialogue of the history of the Land Mind in the use of WAR and why EMERGENCY was CREATED. It is also a call for the world to stop the destructive ways advanced military countries approach conflict and war.

Green Parrots- by Laura Ann Tull

Greetings from Kurdistan; Afghanistan; Iraq;
Angola; Bosnia; Somalia; Eritrea; Cambodia.
Over and over
Names, skin color, countries change,
But all read the same.

A green parrot
Bright, shiny
A winged metal cylinder
Four inches long
Flutters to land
In little tiny young hands
A land mind, personal delivery
A war on terrorism
Enduring Freedom!
But buried by the water spring
And a loved one’s grave
Lays a little bird in wait to take
Someone’s hand, arm, foot or life away.
I need to make some pay
I need food

A Valmara 69, an antipersonnel mine,
The green parrots metal cylinder
Will give us a dollar
Four to detonate – one mine
Leaves two dead, two injured
Is it worth the price?
This little tiny destructive device?

Little boys find new toys
Bright, shiny, and nice
They take them home and store them away
But sooner or later they take it out to play
With a magnet, a rock or a nail
In the Middle East so far away
Little men grow up and learn
How real men behave
I’ve lost a finger, a limb, the use of my arm
Don’t give it too much importance
For our lives at least go on
For some they lose an arm or a leg
In a place so poor, they cannot be cared for or fed.

Who does this you say?
Blows little lives away
The Soviets make butterfly mines
The Italians made the Valmara 69

Emergency – Gino Strata- 1997
And one million postcards
Arrived at the door
Of Italy’s President and that country decided
To give birth to green parrots no more.
Each card showed not a pretty little bird
But a child mutilated, and damaged and broken beyond repair
Children who paid too high a price
For little indiscriminate toys that don’t destroy the enemy,
But little innocent hopes and dreams.

The Pentagon and the USA make smart bombs, so they claim
To paint the enemy countryside with small graves
They eliminated the dumb ones by 1999,
Except for the ones planted for Korean’s to find.
Those still sit and wait for tiny little hands or feet to steal their fate.
They say it is a small world, so how many in the USA might find
That they somehow know a little child a million miles away
Who lost an arm, a foot, or a leg today?
So why do we who do not live near our enemy
Make these toys for the young to find
And destroy civilians who have nothing to harm us or to hide.
What if these green parrots never flew away?
If they never leave home,
They will not take little lives.
If we want to make others free
Give them back their land
Restore their dignity and human security.
We can eliminate war the disease,
If we remove all the courageous little soldiers
That never misses and never sleeps.
A country can’t plant new seeds,
If digging a hole will create brutality.
To make stronger better boys and girls
Children need to be safe
To play and to dream.

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