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Sons of sons carry grievances in backpacks
like spilled blood in rice paddies and campuses,
discarded signs fresh as the day they were made--
we never learn, it seems we never will.
Young men will rally to meet young girls--
a habit as old as worker’s party lists
but now whoever has the time makes coffee
and please don’t smoke even if you got ’em.
The misdirection: career armies honed and ready.
but the soldier who stocks the vending machine*
on the aircraft carrier misses her baby back home,
misses hugs, misses seeing the sun and green grass.
We didn’t vote for them we say, and it’s true
because most of us didn’t vote for anyone at all--
if it hadn’t been for those old farts in Florida!
Ever the victims, we will find someone to blame
That’s something we can do together besides mourn,
lest we forget, so many gone before on foreign soil,
a righteous cause beyond consumerism, hero-worship--
honor the soldier, curse the need for boundaries.
____________________
*inspired by an interview from This American Life on the episode “Somewhere in the Arabian Sea” broadcast March 1, 2002
©2002, Shann Palmer
Shann Palmer is a poet, musician & teacher who writes for the About Poetry Museletter as our Virginia/District of Columbia correspondent. Her poem “Last Dance” was in our Poems After the Attack collection.
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