A New Year In The Holy Land.....

Will nothing ever change?

Please read this beautiful poem written by Daniel Patrick Welch in 2007. Ask yourself, how can we stand idly by and watch the destruction of the Palestinian people by the army of Isreal?


O Bethlehem - A Christmas Carol for the 21st Century

by Daniel Patrick Welch

O Bethlehem O Bethlehem
The stars look down on thee
As Nazareth reaps grief and death
From mountain, plain and sea
O Bethlehem a world bedecked
In season's peace and joy
Will still sit by as children die
And walls your heart destroy

O Bethlehem O Bethlehem
The prophets surely frown
A land in pain, a land in chains
As Abraham looks down
O Bethlehem your children sleep
In fear of tanks and guns
Do Moses, Christ, Mohammed weep
As we betray their sons?

O Bethlehem we seek that day
When Christmas bells ring true
When liberty and dignity
Belong at last to you
Can Bethlehem forgive a world
So callous and profane
And bring to pass a world at last
Where peace and justice reign?

© 2007 Daniel Patrick Welch. Reprint permission granted with credit and link to http://danielpwelch.com

A Christmas Poem From a Friend.....

Bah! Humbug

By Mark Legge

Ebenezer Schrooge.

The Avaricious Archtype

Subconscious Prophet to countless souls Devoid of Charity.

Overwhelmed with their pregnant pangs of self indulgency.

Can I ask? What does Christmas mean to you?

Is it not a time for reflection?

Not only of those images that touch and stir the soul,

but contemplation of that which resides within.

Is it not a time to give something of ourselves to those less fortunate?

A time for the spreading of Goodwill, Peace and Harmony.

This Christmas,

as you teeter on the threshold of further festive forage

will you falter?

Will you take a solitary moment to suppress those soaring surges of glee and

spare a thought.

Spare a thought for the sick, the frail and the ailing,

will you lend yourself to each of these that shall not survive this day.

Spare a thought for the cowering defenseless child

who's feeble outstreached quivering hands will fail to stem the savage blows.

Spare a thought for the feral child, forsaken by fate, eking an existence midst the putrefying

piles of human decay.

Will you spare a thought? Will you?

Will you gaze into the imploring eyes of those swolen infants,

too weak to suckle the soothing substance that has long since run dry.

For their desperation dwindles

as does crave for merest grain.

Spare a thought for the lonely, the isolated, the brokenhearted,

for they yearn the faintest semblance of all those yesterdays.

The subdued

the subjected

the ravaged

ridiculed.

The maimed

the molested

the tortured

tormented

the self inflicting

the plagued

or for those who've simply lost their way

or just can not take any more.

This Christmas

Will you give something of yourself to those that are in need?

Or will yours be

"Bah! Humbug"

Mark Legge is a poet from Lichfield, England. More of Mark's poems can be found on http://www.gotpoetry.com/. (under his poet name "leggolas")

Merry Christmas to all, and may we have Peace on Earth. Mary Ann