Rewind reality so the gray heap
of someone’s brains rushes back into
a broken skull. Unlight the firestorm
so fragments of ash
meld back together. Attach severed arms and legs
to bodies, breathe life
back into dead children
and their parents. Repair the waste of soldiers who
are battered and die
obeying an illegal campaign.
Draw blood and bad water up from sand, purify
the water, restore
the lives of human beings caught in the human
catastrophe "shock and awe" has wrought
on the world — in our name.
Apologize.
It is a mistake to think weapons fix anything.
Justice solves human problems, not bombs.
Unbomb Iraq.
This is wrong. Americans are not monsters.
Hitler would find no fascists here. Ay!
We suffer from bad government. That’s all.
Enormous errors tangle the American will —
We think we are a free people.
We’re not.
We think we have a free press. We don’t.
Stealth corporations have usurped our constitution.
Human survival on earth depends on our being able
to control them. I startle awake, these words
on my lips —
Unbomb Iraq.
Unbomb Iraq.
Unbomb Iraq.
©Susan Bright, 2003
of someone’s brains rushes back into
a broken skull. Unlight the firestorm
so fragments of ash
meld back together. Attach severed arms and legs
to bodies, breathe life
back into dead children
and their parents. Repair the waste of soldiers who
are battered and die
obeying an illegal campaign.
Draw blood and bad water up from sand, purify
the water, restore
the lives of human beings caught in the human
catastrophe "shock and awe" has wrought
on the world — in our name.
Apologize.
It is a mistake to think weapons fix anything.
Justice solves human problems, not bombs.
Unbomb Iraq.
This is wrong. Americans are not monsters.
Hitler would find no fascists here. Ay!
We suffer from bad government. That’s all.
Enormous errors tangle the American will —
We think we are a free people.
We’re not.
We think we have a free press. We don’t.
Stealth corporations have usurped our constitution.
Human survival on earth depends on our being able
to control them. I startle awake, these words
on my lips —
Unbomb Iraq.
Unbomb Iraq.
Unbomb Iraq.
©Susan Bright, 2003
Award-winning poet Bright is publisher of Plain View Books. http://www.plainviewpress.net/. Her personal Website is http://earthfamilyalpha.blogspot.com 'Unbomb Iraq' is part of the collection The Layers of Our Seeing.
