Stealth is Everything
Drone, circling for attach.
Silhouette on desert-blazing moon,
a crooked arc,
soon makes a gaping space
in an Afghan town, bro-
ken
lives
Quivering mouth of a mother
calling for her boy
in this cave that was
his school two minutes ago.
Medics minding limbs
destined for amputation.
Crowd chants a renewed vow
of vengeance, fists in air.
(Dear Mr. President,
Get our troops
the hell out of there.)
© 2013 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil
Image from Wikimedia Commons, open license, by Gideon Tsang.
For The Sunday Whirl, where words can be found HERE. Also at my two poetic homes (yes, it’s true, I’m bi-site-ual), Poets United and Imaginary Garden With Real Toads and saving for dverse Open Mic night!
Not much more to say about this, except that IEDs are designed to kill Americans – and if North Korea had oil underground, we’d already have waged another war on them under George W. Bush (may his reign rest in pieces).
Peace. I really mean it. Amy
Peace and War and Pieces of Human Beings on the Ground
Hiroshima met Fat Man
or rather, Fat Man
sat on Hiroshima,
then swallowed it whole,
including civilians.
Japanese neighborhoods
did not understand the
death knell of “the flash.”
they only saw seared bodies
bobbing on river’s surface.
Ancient remedies could not
damage the damage done to
frail Japanese bodies,
some tattooed with the
pattern of a dress or shirt.
Scientists in America had
mixed opinions; some were
happy with their new-found status
as innovators, adventurers
in the heretofore unknown.
Most others signed a petition,
pleading with the government
to not inflict their dragonbaby
on innocents. They wished
they hadn’t been so clever.
Japan was losing the war;
America claimed the bombing
of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
saved the lives of 100,000 troops –
men who knew the score.
Every life is precious, has
potential to create. There is
no such thing as a just war,
and no war ever creates peace.
It simply withdraws armaments.
Until the next time.
© Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil
For dverse, where host Mary asked for poems about peace. This may be the odd approach, but I stand by it as a pacifist.
Saw the movie “Black Rain.” Very tough and so moving, it makes a case for the end of nuclear weapons, which America still stockpiles. The movie is must for students of WWII… or for anyone who believes that the US had to drop hydrogen bombs at Nagasaki and Hiroshima. The indelible effects of our awful weapons destroyed entire cities and put countless civilians through hell.
We wept when the Towers went down. But imagine all of NYC leveled, from the Battery to the Bronx. Or even your own town. Leveled by foreigners who had a new toy and wanted to show their supremacy.
I, too, wept when the Towers collapsed – because I knew that war was imminent, despite Bush’s assurances of diplomacy first. And the cost of the current war to Iraqi and Afghani civilians is higher than our own troops. War is an evil act. Why not try peace? Let the war machine bitch all they want. They could be building housing for the homeless instead. Peace, Amy
Sharp Little Pencil 