Poets Against War continues the tradition of socially engaged poetry by creating venues for poetry as a voice against war, tyranny and oppression.
Gene Grabiner
the beginning of the "NO"
Knights without armor scrounge rubble. Weld trash for chamfrons, crinets, tasses, cuirasses; are told it’s tough. That’s just war, baby. Grail Knights without a quest
on another false crusade as all crusades were false; in that old land, that cradle land. Still, not enough
have learned what comes when Valkyries choose fake heroes who so much like Joshua
salt the earth, this time with depleted uranium. Some awaken to the bad deal
the recruiter sold like a bad Ford that clunks, burns oil and shudders down the Baghdad road. How to go to college or Valhalla in that
awful special tribute of the tri-fold flag and pomp. Formalized and useless
tragedies of broken families mirror Ali. Ali who in the press forever holds out burnt-off stumps
to me; measure of our success, reflected in that other mirror of crushed walls, poisoned wells and burnt over
wadis, in those deepest dark eyes.
the beginning of the "NO"
Knights without armor scrounge rubble. Weld trash for chamfrons, crinets, tasses, cuirasses; are told it’s tough, baby. That’s just war, baby. Grail Knights without a quest on another false crusade as all crusades were false; in that old land, that cradle land. Still, not enough have learned what comes when Valkyries choose fake heroes who so much like Joshua salt the earth, this time with depleted uranium. Some awaken to the bad deal the recruiter sold like a bad Ford that clunks, burns oil and shudders down the Baghdad road. How to go to college or Valhalla in that awful special tribute of the tri-fold flag and pomp. Formalized and useless tragedies of broken families, mirror Ali. Ali who in the press forever holds out burnt-off stumps to me; measure of our success, reflected in that other mirror of crushed walls, poisoned wells, yellow rivers and burnt over wadis, in those deepest dark eyes.
On Our Hands
ON OUR HANDS
We had already dreamed September 11— our original dream of Ground Zero.
The airburst that melted the eyes of those who looked on August 6. The glowing plasma globe, the hotter than star-hot
globe that burned shadows in the Aioi Bridge, fettered ghosts in concrete: Industrial Promotion Hall as hypocenter, today’s skeleton dome.
The blinded, the tattooed, all those stamped with bar code simulacra, their brands
a syncretism of skin ribbons, cataracts. Hair clumps floating down the boiling Ota: So many toro-nagashi lanterns on holiday.
We had already dreamed September 11 that other September in Chile, when memories of Nazi triangles appeared in the red, yellow and black discs on those herded into the National Stadium: An amphitheater marked
with screams.
We dreamed the airplane-bombs when we dreamed this dream for El Salvador, a twelve year dream of bodies
spinning downstream en el Río Lempa, or by the roadside, or thousands disappeared: An American echo for all of the Americas,
kept in reserve for America’s cities.
This is the dream of strategic hamlets. This is the dream of My Lai. This is the dream of sanctions, of starved Iraqi children. We had already dreamed September 11. We dreamed their flight
from the 101st floor windows, the 102nd floor windows as the plane-bombs pancaked the towers, our own dream of crematoria: Collapsing belching ashes all over cars and sidewalks and macadam and café awnings and these incinerator ashes caught in the ridges of cops’ soles, the soles of firefighters’ steel-toed rubber boots; as they all ran to vanish
in the snarling cloud.
While the stripped girders of the towers blindly pointed, we who cleaned came after—
crunched a sternum here a cranium there.
And we breathed them, walked among them, on them: All the gray and burned patina, the smell of death so stiff it shoves wide the nostrils of all who tour the blowing graveyard,
all the graveyards.
These are links in our very own Jacob Marley chain: The chain we daily forge, daily drag, rattling
in every port and hillside, through banana groves and coffee plantations,
