Poets Against War continues the tradition of socially engaged poetry by creating venues for poetry as a voice against war, tyranny and oppression.
Stephen Wing
Atlanta, GA
Cousin Who Would Fly a Bomber for the Sake of Flying,
I would rather see you dance for nickels on the subway platform than fly that blind furrow down a blood-red radar field carrying seeds of fire
(Lights on the instrument panel say NOW which in the relativity of motion means HERE, and you close the lever that releases the bombs while below . . .)
Cousin, you have told me how you leap to a perfect stillness in yourself when you go dancing, how you feel the constellations wheel about your breathing
(Lights below in the darkness blink out at the rumor of your approach, families crowd into the shelters while the village sentries watch the stars for a shadow . . ).
Cousin, I would rather see you dance around your old army cap on the corner than fly that dark trajectory down the valley of your own shadow, reaping fire
(Bombs fly their almost predictable curve, strapped in your cockpit you fall with them, watching as the computer tracks your success you plunge to earth already miles behind the fire of your jets . . .)
Cousin, you can fly from the toes of your old sneakers if you close your eyes and fall into that perfect darkness inside where the blood and breath circulate and return
(Buildings bloom behind you and collapse, blood and breath escape their vessels, your thunder silences the mouths of the survivors and the village burns like a signal fire signifying darkness . . .)
Cousin, I would rather see you dance for drinks in some subterranean bar than fly that tunnel of sky between stars and the scattered constellations of your unknown cousins
I would rather see you dance
Up Working the Night Before the War
January 15, 1992
My love sleeps uneasily without me, a dark doorway away
The clock ticks deeper into the silence
The trucker who hauls the warheads is finishing his coffee, feeling for change. Outside his truck shudders and waits. The dew is about to fall.
She breathes on, deeper and deeper
The security guard at the weapon plant checks his reflection in the john. The stars are invisible beyond the floodlights.
God Bless our Troops Cinnamon Brooms $3.50
Faint light from the other side of the world Something's burning
Because it is prudent sometimes to lie, the President is putting on his underwear. He is dressing for his rehearsal. The makeup man arrives to paint the ritual mask.
I was asleep and forgot about the bomber continuously in the air since I was born I woke up dreaming you were with me
The President's speechwriter knows us well. He spent years selling deodorant to stockbrokers and insurance to prostitutes who smelled death's bad breath under their arms. He autographed a million pictures of movie stars.
Tomorrow we may be ashamed of this laughter Tomorrow we may mourn this holy power to touch
Yes, the cameras lie. It's their business to choose the glimpse of this day we shall all remember, fix it in a frame of light and drown the rest in darkness--
Bury the hopes of corpses in a box of darkness Burn the heaps of broken hearts in a furnace of darkness
"Roaches crawled over my chicken right in front of my guests! Never again, thanks to Combat!"
Waking up in the pharaoh's tomb at midnight, crawling out of the tar-pit, crushing buildings with every step, the United States of America goes on a killing spree. The camera crew sprints across the runway. Crowds wave flags on every overpass.
We doze all night, flying high above the ocean, boys in uniforms carrying our playing cards and prayerbooks, our sweethearts and hangovers, our rubbers and bayonets --
A hole inside you, cut with a backhoe in the shape of a friend who didn't come back. Enemies peering from the eyes of the one that did.
ADVO ASKS . . . HAVE YOU SEEN ME? Age at Disappearance Age Progression Over 50 children featured have been recovered.
Her voice is now a child's, now a wise old woman's
Her hair turns dark to light to dark to light Her eyes go grey, green, blue grey, green, blue
No, those people are not waiting there to murder me
Put it under the false bottom of your coffin, ignorance of the crime is no excuse: the cold foot of the floor against your foot, that tingle in the groin when you hear tales of mutilation, the rumormongering of war--
"PAID FOR BY THE U.S. ARMY!"
Get off my radio! As if everybody doesn't know who pays for it
Her body regulates its temperature
The blood goes on pulsing through her sleep
What you don't understand, Senator, is that our species needs two feet to stand-- a single pedestal can only hold a statue-- and what is necessary sometimes to hold the balance is the unexpected step forward
$25,000 Bad Credit OK Next Day Closing
My love sleeps uneasily without me, an everlasting darkness away
She dreams that I am right here in the next room, working
The clock ticks on deeper into the silence
Inhabited Flesh, Haunted Bones
1.
The elderly woman on the telephone has a brand-new granddaughter, I can hear the baby-laughter tickling her voice and the legions of bombers lift off one by one from the runways
The church is lit with stained-glass snapshots of the life of Christ as we rehearse for the wedding, bride and groom aglow among somber stepchildren in everyday clothes, and the bombs begin to rain down on Iraq
On grassy lawns and red brick patios across the country I love, charcoal burns in barbecues, the odor of charred meat calls families together for grace around the grill and the hospitals of Baghdad begin to fill with cries of agony and grief and innocent gushes of blood
Two hundred and eighty million people watched two buildings burn and fall in New York City, mourned three thousand lost innocents, and forgot. The fire burned on underground in their sleep, the leaping martyrs rose again on toxic clouds night after night, while black magicians gathered in the War Room: Only a massacre of innocents can avenge the massacre of innocents! they chanted. Blood sacrifice for blood sacrifice! Repayment of fire in fire, with interest! A high-altitude lottery of shrapnel and concussion: resurrection of the dead Savior to be murdered once more--
2.
These billion-dollar multinational corporations fly the flag I love like rogue battleships turned pirate, firing their death-deals like so many missiles each tipped with five hundred Hiroshimas, targeting the towns and cities that harbored them along the way.
The honor of criminals is once more at stake so the young men strap on weapons, leave their warm wives at home and take up target practice. A soldier's job is to obey.
A citizen's job is to question: the bulletscarred banners, bloodstained bunting over the review stand, the flag on the anchorman's lapel-- even the medic is part of the disease! Even the schoolteacher reciting her litany of old wars, marching her fourth-graders single file through the shabby halls--
Even the man driving the Wells Fargo truck, dark behind his bulletproof glass, must sit up late gazing into the warm flicker of television light, all those headlines bursting in rapidfire salvos through his brain, and wonder who his enemies are . . .
And the young woman who might have become a casualty in a layoff at the landmine factory if her elected leaders had signed and ratified a certain paper-- inhabited flesh, haunted bones make us blood brother and soul sister, kin to all the fallen martyrs of the landmines:
I have no quarrel with you. You're making a living. I've looked into your eyes. I've seen you laughing. My quarrel is with those who make five hundred times your living and think it's not enough. The architects of incineration. The evangelists of revenge. Fire-addicts. Blood-junkies. The ones who would lay waste to the sun if they could only get there--
Be sure to donate alms for the dead while you're here, leave a little something for the scavengers when you go, and you may yet be forgiven for casting your only vote into a lake of fire . . .
3.
"How's it going?" Irrelevant question when children suffer amputation without anesthesia in bombed-out hospitals, while farmers starve and entire nations strangle on insurmountable debt. Nevertheless, we ask it: "How's it going?"
Peace march: rich neighborhood to poor. Cold to sunny. Hardly anybody looks.
Couldn't it be that the unnamed, undefinable pain you feel any time you stop to feel is simply your share of the general background level of misery drifting out from the prisons and slaughterhouses and refugee camps? On the inside of my face I am not smiling. Nevertheless, I ask it. "How’s it going?"
A friendly cop. Silence by the tomb of Martin Luther King. A flute plays "Amazing Grace."
Each of us has been given one hand to hold the candle, one hand to shield it and when the wind blows it out anyway, some neighboring pilgrim with another candle to rekindle the flame-- "How's it going?"
Echo of the drum off concrete and glass. Peace bubbles up in my breath, my heartbeat a slow-drumming reply . . .
It may be time at last to turn and eat the Earth: boil it stone by stone, gorge ourselves on the rich dirt, crunch the twigs like delicate hors d'oeuvres. Slice the trunks into steaks and marinate in a delicate mudpuddle sauce. Toss the flowers in a dressing of seawater and treesap. Pinecones for croutons. Sand-dollar crackers. And in the end, even our rusty junk might flavor a salty broth of silence . . .
