Wasted lines for a wasted planet

Patriotic Duty

Don’t ask, we won’t tell
Killing is our job
We won’t tell, if you don’t ask.

Despot leaders make the call,
“Make Wal-mart safe for hunters.”
We carry the guns for bargain hunters.

Shop, Shop, Shop

Kill, Kill, Kill

Everybody does their job,
It’s specialization,
Fair trade economics.

Too old to shop?

Pray, Pray, Pray
For those we don’t know, who must
Die, Die, Die

So we can
Shop, Shop, Shop

Empire as if no one matters,
But everyone has their job.

Shop, shop, shop
Kill, Kill, Kill
Pray, Pray, Pray
Die, Die, Die

Don’t ask, we won’t tell,
Lying is not our job

(It’s a simple world
Praying, shopping, killing, lying, dying
Everybody does their part).

War payment avoidance

I felt a twag of guilt as I wrote off my expenses of being a poet. Then I thought of the money wasted on war. Poets Against the War are on the protest side, our losses are for the benefit of all those sane folks who are afraid to refuse to pay. When I thought of the mothers grieving their dead children, I knew I was right, this way the war mongers have to pay more than an equal share.

Losses filed on Schedule C

“Sell your soul for bread,
Is that what the president said?”
Did he mean poetry, prose, or
Doughboy parody,
No one really ever pays for?
Tell the IRS, “Go away.”

My losses are deposits
In society’s sanity closets
Where mothers cry
Turn their hearts inside out
Repeat the thoughts, why, why?
My words: their only shout.




9 Lines to Remembrance

Paid with suspended reality
Stolen from children dancing aimlessly to the beat of history
The confused soldiers
Fling themselves into battle
Testing guardian angels with the faith of lovers
Believing all the while
Cheating death an opportunity
To share immortality temporarily
With names upon a stone

The inerrant word of fraud

Obedience

Under the thudding regiment drum
Vibrations defying gravity
Stir dark souls to breathe.
Hacking and spitting dust
Thorns break the soil,
Puncture the feet . . .
Hate extracting its ransom
Step by step: hup, two, three, four,
Bleeding out billions of debt for war.