From Poets Against The War
Terrorists
By Thomas Hubbard
Terrorism
Foreigners send agents, surveillance
to photograph your land
spy on your peoples
strategize against your national defenses
map the resources under your earth
determine profits to be taken
from you and your children
foment unrest in your streets
destroy your culture.
Foreigners send their corporations
to take your natural resources
they manipulate your government
they set up puppet leaders who
impose odious rules on you
give away your national property
they install shipping and pipelines
to carry off your wealth
leaving you with crumbs.
Foreigners send their missionaries
to convert your children
in the guise of "helping" you
they violate your religion
in the streets of your town
they build their churches
on the land of your fathers
they teach their ways to your children
in schools built on your land.
Foreigners send death across your skies
not just one or two explosions, no,
countless explosions, bombs
smart, dumb, clustered
dropping from airplanes
delivered by missiles
killing, maiming, destroying,
flattening whole cities
spreading ruin over your countryside.
Foreigners send helicopters, tanks
to spread death in your streets
they tear down every place of shelter
they defile your places of worship
bring ruin to your institutions
pollute the water you drink
spoil the air you breathe
dump their sewage where they please
then ridicule your suffering.
Foreigners send their armies
to murder your neighbors
they abuse your families
they kick down your doors
they enter your house and
drag grown men outside
they threaten with assault rifles
they curse your women and children
they spread your belongings in the street.
When you fight back, when
you resist with whatever
side-arms, home-made booby traps
any antiquated weapons you can carry
when you hate them,
when you show them a minute fraction
of the suffering they spread
then they imprison you
for questioning and torture.
They call you a terrorist
because you defend yourself
against impossible odds,
rifles against tanks, and
occasionally, when their attention lapses
you give them what they have given you
and they cry out that you are
unfair, you are monsters,
you are inhuman, you are terrorists.
They did the same to my people.
They do the same to any people
who are not like them,
who will not be enslaved,
who will not be dispossessed,
who will not suffer corporate filth
to over-run, suck dry and ruin
the land, the country.
They call it "spreading freedom."
They call it "Democracy."
In private, they call it "huge profits," and
laugh as they count the money.
In My Courtroom, No One Will Be Comatose
By Bonnie Roberts
Go ahead and push your buggies at Wal-Mart
and Home Depot and stare.
They make me want things, too.
I found myself even wanting power tools today,
as though my brain had been washed
by the smell of sawdust in the air.
And at Wal-Mart, I longed for talcum powder.
Something I’m quite allergic to.
But here’s a voice to bring us back home:
Your nephew
Your niece
Your son
Your daughter
Your sister
Your brother
Your best friend
Your mother
Your father
Your grandmother
Your grandfather
Your aunt
Your uncle
had a leg blown off
both arms blown off
half the face blown away
the scalp torn away
the whole body blown up (there are no remains)
vomited blood into the ground.
And this is what it is
to be an ordinary citizen
of Iraq.
And now it’s not so far away.
Drive your SUV into your favorite parking lot
with that something on the windshield
and hate me all you want
for spoiling your bucket of corporate pop-corn in the Deli
for which someone has paid a price you never would ask
your own little boy or girl to pay,
not any nameless neighborhood boy or girl either
whom you would swoop up in your arms
to save from danger.
It’s not a licorice stick, gummy bear, extra big drink movie.
It’s real, and no refreshment allowed.
No dozing in my courtroom.
Limbs and pieces of flesh are flying in your direction,
and they simply belong to human beings
who’ve never shopped at Wal-Mart.
Dear George
By Brian Boldt
In this poem
no families are set on
fire in Fallujah
in this poem
no one is
dragged off screaming
naked into the night
in this poem
all those tens of thousands
of blasted civilians
and soldiers still live
in this poem
the earth does not
shudder and convulse
at the very sight of you
in this poem
an angry Jesus has driven
you out of the White House
in this poem
your words abort
and clot on the podium
in this poem
you and your mad cabinet
have been dragged
to a war crimes tribunal
this poem is a gift
this poem is yours.
Haunting Questions
By Poet Isabella
Where
were you
that fateful Friday night,
when
stealth bombs
and cruise missiles
thundered
against Iraq,
shattering our
disdain of
pre-emption
and the unilateral
strike?
Where
was The Church
that fateful Friday night
when
our trust in
man’s humanity to man
was betrayed
and cast
aside as
inconsequential?
Where
was the Congress
that fateful Friday night
when
democracy,
the clarion call
of the city on a hill,
slipped momentarily
into the
abyss?
Where
was The Media
that fateful Friday night
when
the Truth
of the majority
was vanquished by
the hollow
perspectives
of a few?
Where
were we,
where
were we all
that fateful Friday night,
when
the hope
of a moral universe
slept?
In answer to the Poems question, myself and some 200 to 300 Veterans were in Washington DC. VFP and VVAW members of WWII-Korean War-Vietnam War-Other Conflicts joining forces as VAIW’s (Veterans Against Iraq War) for 'Operation Dire Distress', a weekend of Teach In on Saturday {Covered All Day by C-Span} and Wreath Laying at War Monuments on Sunday with March to the VA to Lay A Wreath, by some 1500 Veterans/Families of/and Non-Military Citizens, planned in the leadup to this Illegal Invasion. Little did we know the Cabal would pick that Weekend to Destroy an Innocent Peoples and their Country, and send Us and a Growing Opposition on this Long Journey for Peace, Justice, Tolerance, Once Again! We Intelligent{?} Humans 'Never Learn'!!
Falling from Our Sky
The once sleeping face
of mother and child's
Last embrace.
Falling from our sky.
How many tears does a bomb hold inside?
--Diana Morris Holguin
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