Bill Zavatsky
NUCULAR
Weren't we the ones
who set off the first atomic bombs,
dozens and dozens of them, in fact.
I even remember some of the names
and places: Big Boy, Yucca Flats, Nagasaki?
So of course it's a terrific idea to blame
others (as former Secretary of Defense
William Cohen so obliquely puts it
in his 1997 conference statement).
Others. The others we've been getting at,
braining, shooting dead, making sign
treaties that we never intended to honor
since, oh, about the day of Plymouth Rock.
Who are the eco-terrorists, Mr. and Mrs.
America? I can feel the earth shaking
from Iraq to here, in my freezing New York
apartment. When the mode of the terrorism
changes, the sides of the planet quake--
somebody said that. Plato. I seem to have
so much time, but I keep thinking about
the billions of my dollars going . . . where?
Junk orbiting the planet. Young men and women
coming home in metal coffins, staggering home
on metal crutches? Is this what I'm paying for?
Too many questions in the cold New York City night
for me to ever answer. I'm not going to depend
on the Democrats, and I stopped depending on
the Republicans a long time ago. I won't vote
for Hillary Rodham Clinton because she voted
for the war--and should have known better.
Poetry ought to stand up in the freezing night air
and scream, sometimes, eschewing the niceties
of being nice and sensitive. Sometimes poetry
needs to holler. Don't you like that? Are you warm
in your warm apartment, in your beautiful oil-heated
home? What kind of rain of death are we imagining
for Iran--and how will I be a part of that?
It's cold out, it's February, people are dying
in the streets and in my own little room
I wonder if I can change anything. Right now,
though, I'm finished. I have nothing more to say.
QuickMuse recommends: