Friday, September 13, 2013

Wars & World Leaders: What I Want From You

When you want to kill
other human beings
I want you to look
sad and not angry

When you want to send
our children a world away
to kill and fight and die
I want you to look
remorseful not presidential

When you make and make
possible guns and nukes
and bombs and such
I want you to look
chagrined – recognizing
the already failure of your
acts that it is instead of
gleeful at anticipated success

When the children – anyone’s
children – die, I want you to
confess instead of count
as if it were a basketball score

And speaking of the children –
when you decide it’s killing time
I want – no, I demand –
that you not do it on the backs
of dead children – they are 
beyond your saving and your
anger will not bring them back
and I care about them and all
the others and I do not need
pictures of bloody corpses
of the too-young to decide
whether the living children
can be saved by this course
and I resent and tremble in
my own anger that you would
use them to make you sleep
better at night for the children
still breathing you would risk
to avenge they who need no
vengeance for they are far
past caring about such things
I want you not to stand on
their corpses – that’s what 
I want

When the temptation to the 
killing fields comes, I want
you to eschew the language
of heroes and wonder if you
would go or send your own
beloved where you would
so easily dispatch mine

Who am I to want so much
from you?  I am citizen.

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