NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND
Don’t worry boys and girls
your good friends will be back
to send you off to Iran
if you were too young for Iraq
Tag Archives: Iraq
SHRINKING GOD
SHRINKING GOD
I am of course a little shy
to recommend that God
spend more quality time
on that big couch in the sky
But it appears he is showing of late
a tendency towards co-dependency
Telling everyone what they want to hear
and trying to keep every fanatic as a fan
as long as he can
Saying one thing one day to George
and the opposite the next to Saddam
disfunctionates the best of families
and has the world in a terrible jam
I’m not sure where he should go for advice
talking to yourself is not usually good
but sometimes the kids can help
So, if young Jung is around he might
do some work on those troubling dreams
or Siggy might be able to help with the
complexes and the coping schemes
So all I really want to say to the big guy
is there’s no shame in asking for help
and we’re all behind you, so please try
CHECKPOINT
CHECKPOINT
The Marine Sergeant said
We put up our hands for them to stop
If they kept going we just lit them up
Our patrol killed thirty or forty civilians
in one forty eight hour period
Later I learned that a hand in the air like that
is just a sign for hello in Iraq
I never want to go back
BODY COUNT
BODY COUNT
The trouble is
you can only count the bodies that count
Afghani and Iraqi soldiers and citizens
have already paid ten times 911
but it doesn’t seem to help
If it’s only American lives that count
then it’s only American deaths that count
So if one dead hero cancels one dead victim
let’s give some thanks this Thanksgiving
we’re more than half way there
NOVEMBER 11, 2004
NOVEMBER 11, 2004
It is Remembrance Day in Canada
Veterans Day in the good old USA
I am working from the house
faxes come in and faxes go out
People write me nice letters and send
beautiful pictures through the computer
I say “I love technology”
And then I remember
In Fallujah today
people in tanks as big as trains
are pushing pretty red buttons
and blowing out real people’s brains
PRESIDENTS NEED LOVE TOO
PRESIDENTS NEED LOVE TOO
If every statement
is either a please or a thank you
and it just might be true
Then maybe all George’s little Georgie
wants for Christmas is just to feel safe
And if that’s true, and it might be too
Then all I want
is for him to find a safer way to do it
ALMS IN THE LAND OF ALLAH
ALMS IN THE LAND OF ALLAH
And it will all be returned to you
multiplied ten fold
heaped up and running over
BARBARIANS 2003 AD
BARBARIANS 2003 AD
“We thought of ourselves as people of culture.
How long will it be till others see us that way again? “
Iraqi friend of poet Naomi Nye
The collected works of Hafiz
still outsell the Koran in Iran
Today in Baghdad bombs and fear
scattered lovers of Rumi and Kabir
Museum of modern man’s cradle
lost eighty centuries in a day
Book starved minds, educated thumbs
video game cowboys blew it all away
We thought ourselves people of culture
how long before we can look
at ourselves that way again
THANKSGIVING
THANKSGIVING
The natives did share their food with the
first settlers
But
It is well documented
though not well known
that the first official Thanksgiving
(proclaimed by the governor of the
Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1637)
was in celebration of a massacre of 700 Pequot
men, women, and children gathered together
for their own dance of thanks
Ordered out of their home they were shot as
they came forth; those who stayed inside
were burned alive
We have a long history of freedom
We have freed the Americans from America
We are now freeing the Iraquis from Iraq
There will feasting when the boys come back
PATRIOT ACT
PATRIOT ACT
There are thousands now
coming back from Iraq
one legged and deaf and blind
dragging the dead they left behind
Yet they speak so well
of those who sent them to that hell
That they are true patriots may be a fact
and this is how true patriots act
Or could article one thirty four be the reason
where one critical word and your pension is
gone plus five years in the brig for treason