This is Your War, But Our Peace

Or why I have become an Obama Girl

.1.

You, thee with ragged eye, recite to mine, your victories
and turn the blood of my cousin into your memorial.
In this you take him from me, and from my generation.
You rob us, to put a flower on an old and moldering grave.
I do not begrudge your grief,
but do not steal mine from me.

You, with sagging chin, stroke it and tell me of your wisdom,
but you did not, and could not stop this war,
when I was too young to do it.
In this you condemn me to the next war,
which is coming as surely as this one did.

Do not tell me where all your young men went,
they would all be old men now.
I grieve for them, and the fallen of every war,
but do not plunder my generation of youth,
in the name of the battle of 1968.
I was not born then,
nor were the fallen that you have shoveled in
as the foundation for your war memorial.

this I know. this is your generations' war
you wanted it, and would not sacrifice,
your precious comfort.
So we have sacrificed our precious blood.

In that election past, I watched,
as your generation squabbled its old squabbles,
knowing that it would be mine that would be blown over sharp abyss
by the squalls of the years to come.

Where have all the old people gone?
Gone to marches everyone,
but not to vote nor to resist,
when will we ever learn.

I've watched the children of your elites,
steal and slurp, and then, like sheep you bleat
telling us that the way to do this and that is your way
this way, that way
No way out.
You took the torch and dropped it.
This war, how could you not have stopped it?
And what right does all this failure scattered all around
entitle you to the words
of fame, remembrance and renown?

The dead of the war to end all wars have their tree,
Why can't you let our words be?
Must everything be an advertisement?
A memorial writ for your aggrandizement?
Before we can sweep George Bush away,
we must replace the opposition that has let him have his sway.

Your day is over, done and gone,
and you must admit you got it wrong.
At each slippery moment you let him slip,
even when so often he was in your grip.

.2.

In morning's foggy chilly calm
I went to your wall for Vietnam.
The dew bled from the cold stone,
It's fifty thousand names would not leave eye alone.
But they are the names that from your limbs were cut,
The pound of flesh demanded by I know not who,
I know not why.

I truly wish they did not have to, in that way, die.
But is it so much to demand,
That we have our place in that hallowed land?

The grey air swirled with each passing car,
There was coming bustle of quiet from afar,
As other people's prince of peace,
Was praised by the wives of the lords of grease.
Some how this memory of a distant hill,
Their conscience appease,
There self-gratitude filled.


This war is not annex or mere extension,
It has its own space, it's own time dimension.

My tears flow,
But did you now,
How many around the world perished so?

How many in Cultural Revolution,
In Algeria's brutal revolution?
In Gulag's of Soviet's constitution.

How many die to day,
So that with soccer balls your children can play?
You tell me that you do not want blood with your oil,
You tell me that my thoughts deserve tin foil.

But I know that even if by the technicality of rules
Your elections have run right,
It is only fools
Who do not fear your revolution by night.

.3.

I choose change and hope because,
The world you leave behind is worse than it was,
we watch the ice sublime,
and perhaps the oceans will boil in time.

We feel the oil straw slurp and gasp,
and for all your flowers,
we are in its grasp.

We see the children who are sick and die,
and watch your McMansions spiral to the sky.
Is it too much to ask, or wonder why?
You idled by as our young men die?

Or returned not quite the same,
in body, brain, or spirit maimed?

You tell me it is not you to blame,
but that's another move in a childhood game.

You remember your few and forget the rest.

If 400 had been willing to go to jail,
then Bush's putsch might well have failed.
Instead you held your party on the mall,
cheered your place, but that was all.
We now have the wine of the fruit of that poison fall.

It is sour from the first, and age will not soften it.

.4.

I read the news today,
It had a story about that other war,
And how a self-stuffed so called pacifist
Documented in detail,
Every sign carrying protest,
Every useless rail.

But, but, but and a million times it is true,
Was that all you blighters could do?
Carry placards and vote for this or that,
While in other lands the devil grew fat.
You cannot tell me that that age of denial,
Was innocent and beyond guile,
The same people who demanded that Hitler be allowed to rise,
From Russian pogroms averted their eyes,
To tell the world about "present working socialism."

Whose blessings were the famine, massacre and political prison.
The edifice on which your pacifism is built
Is the profits of war, and avoidance of guilt.

Do not preach to me you old men,
When left to your hands, it would happen again.


.5.

This is your war, but it will be our peace.
The peace we've earned by watching our youth burn.
the peace we will pay for, paying off your debts,
the peace we will pay for in every day and every way,
from a world that is hostile to the stars and stripes.

Do not tell me turn burn the flag,
I've seen Baghdad burning,
and I know that nothing good comes of flames,
that consume a nation,
in solidity or symbol.

I listen as you screech at me, and hurl insults at my face
for not staying dutiful, like a child in her place.
Every incantation of inventive that you pile up
persuades me that you were and are
a generation locked in place,
and at no time did you start again.
I am sick of your generation,
of its tunes and times and rhythms and rhymes.

Go, and molder with the vinyl that once was the contours of
what seemed revolution.

But realize that the demon you have fed.
Is eating me,
I cannot bear his long teeth in my belly,
nor his claws that violate my sex.
His barb is pierced though my ear,
and into my head.

I know the evil which was loosed on this country,
and from this country on the world,
because it has swallowed up my decade whole.

I have heard enough of how great you be,
and am tired of the strut and prance,
of the war mongers playing greatest generation,
and of the peace marchers who cannot free
anyone of mine.

It is ended and over, that echo'd decade of your youth.
And you insist on stealing mine,
for one last turn upon the stage,
a vampiric rotted face,
rolling stones that have aged and withered
and gathered more moss in a day than me or mine
will earn our entire lives.

This is your war,
because you would not risk your comforts to stop it.

But this is our peace.
For whatever we may make of it.