I am exasperation.
I starve for breath to fill my lungs,
And each word I spill out across the
Black barren night is no longer a weapon.
Real guns go off and I get trapped
Inside that unending nuclear blast
My clothes, my bones, my teeth turn black.
And I am reduced to a pile of ash.
This is our great civilization.
This is our great civilization.
Five-thousand years and
The weapons have only gotten stronger,
The stakes have only gotten higher,
And the enemy has only gotten smarter.
This is Darwinism at its best.
This is natural selection at it's prime.
There's no turning back from this war -
It's a fight for survival, you know.
Still they say Bombs are better than saran gas:
"It's too volitale a death."
So bombs and guns are, really, our best
Attempt at humanity.
The irony explodes like
A hand-grenade in my stomach
And I want to vomit;
We're fuck-ups to the worst degree.
I want to vomit
And spew out whatever is churning in me
Beyond my stomach
Beyond where you can prod with a scalpel
That's inside of you and me and him
And everyone else.
I want it out of me.
I want nothing to do with soldiers A
nd weapons and shrapnel and bullets
And fire and fighting.
That's not who I am.
I'm throwing it up.
And when God asks,
"What have you done?"
I'll tell him, "the fruit's gone bad,
My soul threw it up."
*
Chemical weapons are the
Dead poet's arsenal.
We see their obtrusive abuse
On our fundamental humaness and comment,
But our reflections,
Like the voices of those on the green,
Are ignored by those with higher inflections of tone.
The dead bodies stacking
Up to be caried back home
And the voice of a child
Cold, fearlful, and living alone
Victim of hearts carved from stone
No pulse.
No blood.
No life.
No warmth.
Cold and robotic, like the computer,
Whose button the politician pushed by extension,
That launched the missle
That hit her house
That would kill her dog
That would kill her mother
That would kill her sister
And that would slowly kill her brother
And her neighbor too.
All because someone failed alegebra
And because someone never learned how to share
And because someone never knew how to compromise
And because someone never learned how to listen
And because someone misconstrued religion
*
The soldier goes home
As dead as his comrade who never will,
And listens to the broken radio
Reporting lifeless statistics
And meanwhile he's picturing
Those faces because he's seen them
Living and dead, with happy smiles
And with desperation, blood smattered.
He's held a child while she died
And saw his own baby girl in her faceSo when the anchorman brushes
Over the statistics, his friends --
Lives turned into numbers,
He's thinking he'd just like a whiskey.
He's thinking he'd just like to be left alone.
He's thinking about what life really means.
He's thinking he's not going to go back
And knows he doesn't have to.
Suffered too much, saw too much,
Stronger souls have snapped
From the things he saw.
No, the government doesn't want him.
His mother wants to know where
The boy in him went.
He was buried, she knows,
Alongside twelve other men
On a fine morning in June -
She'd been getting her nails done.
Her son came back in a uniform.
Her nephew back in a box.
And she didn't know of the two
Who had the worst fate
As she stood cursing,
Avarice and enmity, profits and politics,
Intolerance and illiteracy, poverty and
Private agendas, hate and hypocrisy,
Sex and survival, racism and rudeness,
Crime and capitalism, hate and humanity.
*
I sit, tears in my eyes,
In front of the television, our new distorted religion -
Everything it says must be true -
Well the Bible's been wrong before too
It's all just speculation
Hypothesized consideration
The writer's weren't there at the scene
But we sit open-mouthed and stare at the screen
Dehumanizing enemies,
Perpetrating stereotypes.
"We're fighting for them"
"You think they'd be grateful"
But they also tell you
Columbus "Discovered" America
When you were in Kindergarten
Then every year after that.
Columbus discovered America!
Tell that to the Tainos
Who welcomed him ashore.
Columbus didn't discover AmericaHe made it into merchandise.Sold it all off and the people too.
Killed them by chopping of their hands.
For a Man and His God, His Father, and Himself
And his message; it was the messageThey distorted -it's always distorted.Distorted by the majority toEnslave the minority.That isn't my God's message,Nor was it ever.
We set Jesus up on an alterThen change his outfit to suitOur own greed:
Clear the land is known as"Conquering in the name of God" orLess formally "Converting the heathens"Going to war is known as"Destroying the Evil" (they're usually heathens)Forgiveness is forgotten and"Turn the other cheek" only applies whenThe genocide isn't within your borders,The poverty within your race, the starvationWithin your family.
*
Saran gas, nuclear bombs,M-16s, machine guns, hand-grenades,Land mines, Agent Orange, shrapnel,Missiles, machetes, knives, Molotov cocktails,Suicide bombers, death threats, sniper rifles,Chemical warfare, labor camps, death camps,Lethal injection, and more.
These are our great scientific advances?
*
The pen is mightier than the sword.My words are landmines; youNever know which one is going toHit you where it hurts
My words are infectious,The disease spread by terroristsOf a different brigade,Unhinging perverted plotsStomping out the charade
Hypocritical political ballotsHidden tyranny within the democracy
Can’t vote if you’re black.Can’t vote if you’re poor.Can’t vote if you “can’t read good.”Can’t vote if the lines too long
*
I am frustrationScreaming out for an answerAnd all anybody can answer back is
I don’t know.I don’t know.I don’t know.
I’m sorry, but I just don’t know.
