To the Presidents of Russia and the United States: Carpe Diem

Editor's Note: Tom Krebsbach wrote the following poem in January 2014, and sent it to both President Obama and President Putin.  Passionate about abolishing nuclear weapons, he risked arrest in January 2014 trying to deliver another of his poems to the base commander of the Trident nuclear submarine base in Silverdale, Washington during a vigil and nonviolent direct action by Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action.  Tom was arrested, cited for trespassing, and will have to appear in Federal Court.

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To the Presidents of Russia and the United States: Carpe Diem

“I refuse to accept the cynical notion that nation after nation must spiral down a militaristic stairway into the hell of nuclear annihilation” - Martin Luther King, Jr.

What is the destiny of man and earth?
What glories, what cataclysms with time unfold?
Will mankind’s future celebrate his worth?
Will stories of accord, despair be told?

The path is perilous; danger is nigh;
The seeds of destruction now germinate.
Nuclear weapons stand ready and high
To render this earth a disastrous fate.

Draped gloriously vain in mushroom cloud,
The serpent spits his poisonous venom;
Delivering extinction far and loud,
As he unleashes true Armageddon.

Must earthly paradise be lost once more?
Where stride towering leaders bold and wise?
Who dare destroy the serpent to his core,
Bestowing to earth lasting peaceful skies?

Those who end the evil nuclear threat
Will win forever mankind’s thankful praise,
And through their service of allaying fret,
Stand admired through all of history’s gaze.

Oh, dear Princes of nations great and true
Summon heads of powers to table round,
And forever more the vile threat undo,
Through a global agreement most profound.

Vanquish now the serpent; his threat ablate;
Abolish weapons which goad our dismay.
Tarry not in foolishness; tempt not fate;
With urgency we call out: Seize the day!

by Tom Krebsbach, January 2014

Behold Your Nuclear God

DearFriends,

Tom Krebsbach wrote the following poem on Monday, August 12, 2013, following his participation in Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action's weekend of remembrance and action (at the Bangor Trident nuclear submarine base) around the anniversaries of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  

Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor represents the largest operational concentration of nuclear weapons in the US arsenal, and possibly anywhere in the world.  The nuclear missiles and warheads on a single Trident submarine are capable of destroying an entire continent - incinerating millions of human beings and leaving the land uninhabitable for generations.

A new book by Eric Schlosser, "Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety", poses questions about just how much "command" or "control" we have over these awesome and horrific tools of terror that are quite capable of ending life as we know it on this small planet.  Tom's poem turns the idea of command and control of nuclear weapons on its head, making clear the Faustian bargain humans have struck in our delusional power quest.

So much for "command and control" of nuclear weapons... in reality, they have controlled us since their creation in the minds of the scientists who developed them. Can we summon the strength and courage to turn away from them and embrace life?

With Tom's permission I am sharing his poem publicly for the first time.

In Peace,

Leonard 

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Behold Your Nuclear God

Oh, foolish Homo sapiens, earth’s mistaken child,

In your puerile quest for indomitable power,

You have acted the obeisant midwife in my momentous birth,

Carefully hewing my cradle in the cauldron of ruthless war and strife,

Unleashing my fearsome powers to ravage and decimate earth. 

Bow down now before me and celebrate my awesome power,

For I am omnipotent and in charge.

I grow giddy with destruction fever as my time draws near,

When I shall consume all earthly existence in a fearsome ball of fire,

And render once and for all earthly life extinct. 

In fits of farcical delusion, you maintain that you are king,

Quite capable of restraining the primal powers I derive from sun and stars.

Continue on, foolish knaves, in your supreme complacency and unbridled arrogance!

Your very lust for unlimited power and defensive safety guarantee my ascendancy,

As I wait the fateful moment when I shall extend control over all of heaven and earth.

When that moment arrives in the devil’s hearse, there will be no turning back,

As all of life on earth tumbles into the fiery pits of hell. 

At this moment I will bite off man’s head like a voracious beast,

And sear the flesh of man and animal to a crisp and charred texture.

My apocalyptic frenzy of fire will cause Lucifer to bow down in envy before me. 

The structures and edifices of man will perish in a cloud of dust and twisted steel;

The seas will roil with the hot poison of radioactivity;

Children of man will vaporize into a cloud of radioactive dust;

And I will ascend my throne as man’s sole surviving heir,

The conception of his twisted mind, a product of his deviant progress. 

Gone for eternity, Beethoven’s music.  

My music is the moan of hot wind over charred and desolate plains.

Reduced to irrelevant ash, Rembrandt’s paintings. 

I paint a bleak and haunted landscape of blackened tree remains, 

Single black silhouettes against a gray and ominous sky.

Even now my human minions prepare the day of my ascendancy,

Stockpiling and upgrading my nuclear fuel to ludicrous extremes,

Assuring my day of coronation is near at hand,

When the short existence of man and life on earth will become irrelevant in the cosmic chaos, 

And I will rule on earth for evermore. 

Homo sapiens, bow down now before your only god.