Poets Against War continues the tradition of socially engaged poetry by creating venues for poetry as a voice against war, tyranny and oppression.
Maxwell Corydon Wheat, Jr.
Freeport, N.Y.
Listed with Poets & Writers, Wheat is recipient (2003) of the second-annual Long Island Poet award of the Walt Whitman Birthplace Association in South Huntington, New York.
Iraq
"Vengeance is mine, I will repay... if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads." Romans 12: 19-20
Males and one woman sip coffee mornings in the White House, talk of desires about Iraq. For ten years Less-than-Elected-Vice-President Cheney evolves The Plan, the Empire of the United States of America.
Empire building requires "pre-emptive strikes." When is the strategic time to promote a strike against Iraq? Not summer, not with Less-than-Elected-President Bush vacationing in Crawford, ensconced in his golf cart, quipping "crawfished" about Saddam Hussein.
"From a marketing point of view," says the White House Chief of Staff, "you don't introduce new products in August."
Oil waits in the Iraqi womb, second biggest oil field in the earth.
Think of the Oklahoma bombing. Whom did the bomber call "Collateral Damage"? Children. Think of bombing, invading Iraq. Half Iraq's population, CHILDREN.
"Brute force is going to prevail today." Lt. Col. Bryan McCoy
"The Colonel," his men call him, son of two-tour Vietnam veteran, Company Commander, Persian Gulf War, 1991, Commander, Third Battalion, Fourth Marines 2003.
He sits in front seat of armored Humvee thirty yards from the Diyala River Bridge, gateway to southeastern Baghdad, encrypted radio phone nestled by his left ear. Hannibal with General George Patton appreciation of words. "Lordy," he exclaims. "Heck of a day. Good kills."
"Their blood is up," he brags of his men. Fifteen hundred Marines crouch, empty machine guns, M-16s, splay mortar shells from Abrams tanks, armored assault vehicles. "We're killing them like it's going out of style." He points to black smoke other side of the 150-foot span, boasts his men are establishing "violent supremacy."
"We'll drill them" he asserts, learning suicide bombers are driving for the bridge. Boasts his "Boys are doing good."
Not all the Iraqui dead are resisters. Twenty bullet holes through front windshield of blue van. Bodies of two men in street clothes slumped in front seat. Body of woman in black chador crumpled on back floor. No cargo. No suitcases. No bombs. "The crueler it is, the sooner it's over," philosophizes "The Colonel."
"It's over for us when the last guy who wants to fight for Saddam has flies crawling across his eyeballs."
Quotes from "Good Kills" Peter Maas The New York Times Magazine April 20, 2003
