Buried in Mud

 RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: GLOBAL POLITICS

Buried in Mud (Libya)

 

To those who say

government doesn’t matter

Look to Libya

Where a monster storm combined

with government dysfunction

to bury ten thousand people

in a matter of hours

 

Years of civil war

An absence of civil society

A crumbling infrastructure

Chaos and disorder

The Libyan strongman is gone

Leaving a void in his wake

This is his lasting legacy

This is Libya’s cruel fate

Death and destruction

A dysfunctional state

 

We cry for the Libyan people

We mourn for their dead

We will lend our aid

To see their children are fed

What more we can do

We do not know

For a failed nation whose

Needs only grow

Even (Endless War)

 RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: WAR

Even (Endless War)

 

There’s a thought we learn as kids

At the heart of every war

You take one of mine

I take one of yours

 

As long as we’re even

There’s nothing to fight for

You take one of ours

We take one of yours

 

Like marbles in a circle

Or pieces on a chess board

You take one of mine

I take one of yours

 

Somewhere down the line

According to the lore

The game shifted:

You take one of mine

We’ll take two of yours

 

And so the game progressed

With better weapons and more

You take one of ours

We’ll take ten of yours

 

But something happens to the heart

When you open up that door

If you take one of mine

We’ll fight an endless war

 

And there is no way to stop it

The want of vengeance always grows

Until everyone is suffering

Where it ends nobody knows

 

Glorifying Killers

RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: GENOCIDE

 

Glorifying Killers

 

When you glorify a killer

You guarantee the killing will go on

When you turn your back on genocide

The ghosts of genocide remain

Waiting for a chance to rise from the dead

When you rewrite history with lies

History will rise to write the future

Bosnia / Darfur / Rwanda / Cambodia

Each time we are horrified

Each time we swear: Never again!

Yet we return to bear witness

Again and again

 

We return with our promises

We return with our tears

We return with our rage

We return with our fears

 

Yet we allow the glorification of killers

We allow the falsification of history

The promise of never again

Begins with the truth

No matter how painful

No matter how hard to bear

The children must learn the truth

My Lai / Sand Creek / Wounded Knee

The truth

The unvarnished truth

Twenty-Two Years

 RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: TRUE HISTORY

Twenty-two Years (IXXI)

 

Twenty-two years

We remember clearly

What happened that day

Where we were

What we were doing

How it was first relayed

A plane flew into the World Trade Center

I once lived just down the avenue

Took the elevator to the top

Top of the world, ma!

Top of the world!

There was a transparent walkway

Connecting the two towers

Like the walkway over Grand Canyon

A sight so inspired you could

Hear the heartbeat of God

 

It was a mystery at first

A horribly tragic mystery

How could anyone fly into the tower?

Then it happened again

A plane hit the second tower

That’s when we knew

This tragedy – unlike so many others –

Would alter the fabric of our world

 

Twenty-two years later

We bear witness to what happened

That dreadful imprinted day

And all the horrors that followed

The mistakes that we made

 

Twenty-two years later

We know the Saudis were responsible

Not Iraq, not Iran, not Afghanistan

But the Saudis were our allies

Our oil buddies

Someone else had to take the blame

 

Twenty-two years later

We live with the consequences of

Decisions made that day

For those who do and those who do not

We bow our heads and pray

 

(For all the heroes of that fateful day

and all the days that followed.)

Colossal Errors

 RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: TRUE HISTORY

Colossal Errors

 

It was a mistake to allow the electoral

college to survive beyond the year 2000

 

It was a mistake to waste decades pretending

manmade climate change was not real

 

It was a mistake not to prosecute LBJ

for the Gulf of Tonkin mythology

 

It was a mistake for Gerald Ford to pardon

Richard Nixon quid pro quo for his

crimes against democracy

 

It was a mistake to sacrifice American workers

to the gods of cheap labor in China, India and

other third world nations

 

It was a mistake to imprison millions of

poor Americans in the name of

the war on drugs

 

It was a mistake to attack Afghanistan and

Iraq for the crimes of a Saudi terrorist sect

 

It was a mistake not to outlaw designer

districting and disenfranchisement

long, long ago

 

It was a mistake to rip the heart out

of Voting Rights and Civil Rights

 

Our proud nation has neglected so many

essential institutions of democracy for

so very long it would take a miracle to

save it now without unspeakable hardship