________________________________________
1.
It's over now so who, I wonder, is going to count
------the arms, eyes, toes and almost bodies?
------Who's going to plant flowers this year
------to grow in the craters like little
------valleys? Who
isn't too busy finding the members of his family
------(and will try to bury them as one)
------The tall defenders are going home.
Goodbye, Big Brother. We will wave goodbye
to you, smiling our thanks for your help
------as we sweat and bend,
------stooping with our little baskets, picking
up the remains of our dead.
------Disturbing not the victor who
is totaling the sum of broken,
destroyed and dead bodies, bled
of all fluids, white and cold like
clay---.---infected---.---at the sores
with necrophiliac worms, bacteria.
War is not half so bad, me buckos,
------as is the counting of the winnings.
--1973
Slaughter Your Dog-faced Sisters
Slaughter your dog-faced sisters,
-----shred viscera and slice livers.
Pool blood.
Sickening yellow lymphous over under leaves,
-----soak the soil with intestine juice.
Rid earth of them forever.
-----You are the zealous, but you're right;
-----your ways must prevail.
Butcher the human flesh
as though swine hung dangling on silver chains
in speckled abatoirs.
-----Your ways must prevail.
-----A threat to freedom cannot be
tolerated.
Rid the earth of them forever. And that leaves us
only you.
--1989
Woodstock: "I Feel Like I'm Fixin' To Die," Country Joe, 1969
CookCpt
_____________________________________
-----My ears have ached
-----with the thundering of bombs
-----& lifting, falling buildings,
-----crashing,
-----roaring;
-----the screeching of the rockets
-----at night
-----& the instant flash.
-----My brain has rocked
-----with the explosions of war
-----& the howling
-----of the torn and maimed,
-----but the loudest sound
-----to bear
-----is the silence following
the dawn.
--1977
I Saw the Lonesome Soldier
-----I saw the lonesome soldier
-----coming home from war at last,
----------to his luscious-green and
----------sleepy-eyed hometown
---------------(however humble) home
-----from war at last, to his boyhood dreams
----------and Mom & Pop. Home to
----------Alice down the street.
----------He was dressed in greenwood
-----with 10 Penny cufflinks
-----and when I saw him,
-----being lowered off the Santa Fe freight,
I thought he was a box of radio component parts.
--1969
From: Evolving: Poems 1965-2005, by Gary B. Fitzgerald, Copyright 2005.
Posted with permission from author.
No comments:
Post a Comment