RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: CORONAVIRUS SERIES
The
Last Man
A young soldier asked congress
A question that ached
Echoed in the chambers
Of a war we would forsake
Who will be the last man
To die for a mistake?
Fifty years later we don our masks
As we await our turn to finally ask
Who will be the last to die
For this president’s lie?
We should know by now
What we should have known then
Wars are started by greedy men
Who wish to control the planet
Every stone every garden every
Mountain of granite
From a line in the sand
To the Gulf of Ton-kin
Erased from the history of
A war we could not win
LBJ is forgiven now
But the question will remain
Like a mourning mother’s cry
Like an indelible stain
How many soldiers died
For a president’s lie?
That brings us back to today
And the question is why
Why did so many die
For a presidential lie?
