to friends and members on this site
I wish a joyful starry night
great company, good food, champagne,
no resolutions that are vain,
to welcome yet another year
and celebrate that we're still here

* * * * * * *  ;-)  :-)  ;-) * * * * * *

the myths of birth and rebirth
are as old as humankind

scratched onto cave walls,
tablets of stone or clay,
scrolls of papyrus or  parchment,
for hundreds of years on paper,
and nowadays typed onto backlit screens
   that are recycled faster
   than old hieroglyphs were understood

in our time
when refugees are tens of millions
on our globe

let us remember that these myths
have celebrated for millenia
    not battles, war, or death
but the survival of the human race    
the joy we feel when new life has arrived
   often against all odds
the hope that emanates from godesses
    or mother saints of yore
    who symbolize fertility,
    have brought forth saviors and new tribes

these are what has propelled us to our current state

and we do well to not forget that our fate
does not depend on people slain
but on how we can save the joy of life
and celebrate all humankind again

in hard times especially
those of us who can afford it
should be generous

unless we want to have
tanks in our streets again soon

death floats through the cities
casts its shadow across the deserts
sneaks into villages and huts

sometimes quietly
sometimes with a deafening blast
leaving corpses and rubble in its wake

no time a safe time
no zone without its horrors
no end of suffering for humankind

religion once more a deadly weapon
harnessed to serve power and greed
all saviors sacrificed in vain

one of the Orient’s oldest
and most beautiful important cities
inhabited for thousands of years
by generations after generations
of craftsmen, merchants, artists, dynasties,
famous architects of all styles and religions,
the western end of the old silk road
home to over 2 million citizens
until not long ago

a few weeks of modern warfare
were enough to destroy
what hundreds of generations had built
for their living as well as their sense of beauty

     rockets exploded churches, temples, and mosques
     artillery pulverized ancient palaces and new houses

     barrel bombs and poison gas
     killed the people

on tv we now see acres of urban wasteland
miles of rubble with no life
except for occasional tanks and soldiers
proclaiming victory over these ruins
in the name of a dictator whose regime
has become a puppet in global power games
no matter what the cost in lives or things

     to destroy is easy
     building things up is hard work

     with friends like these
     who needs enemies

it makes you wonder
that Christianity’s important celebration
    welcoming the wondrous birth of the savior
    by a ****** mother
seems to have become mostly a holiday for children

they happily believe in Santa and his reindeers
    or in the Christ child & its servant
    depending on the region and its customs
expecting the delivery of gifts with shiny eyes
accepting the miracle of sleighs & animals
flying across the sky without questioning

adults nod knowingly & smile

yet there are many
    children at heart
who still believe that some benevolent high power
will shower them with presents from above
if only they  retain their sense of awe and wonder
keep their miraculous beliefs of yonder

images of the savior’s birth abound
in Christian lands

many rooms in many museums
have been filled with paintings of the scene
over many centuries

he
and his ****** mother
and his consenting father
in a manger
shepherds and sweet animals around

33 years later

what does it mean
    that he shouldered the guilt of mankind
    and died for us on the cross

what guilt

why did he have to die

born innocent by a ******
    visited by the holy spirit

the archetypal story
    of human suffering
begins with his birth

and has not ended since