20150812 (4 horsemen War)

Pestilence WAR famine death

The four horsemen of the apocalypse 

Of which Americans know nothing

Except what movies novels 

Imagination might create

Think of war since 1865

We’ve not had war on this our soil

Since the Civil War 

Sustained widespread killing 

Us as victims

We massacred plenty of native people as

We grabbed their land shoved them off to

Prison waste lands to die of despair 

9/11 was more than a moment

But less than a day

Though the horror was awesome

Lasting weeks in the minds of those who

Like my daughter, ran in the streets

From the fall of the Towers the choking

Clouds of destruction debris or watched

Remotely in schools businesses homes

The fear it might happen again 

Blotting out every thought of relief 

But it wasn’t war one massive people 

Unleashing their might on another

Go there now see the new building

The streets are safe from falling bodies

Furniture fire dripping down girders

Horrible shocking mayhem slaughter

But not war not like Srebrenica

Where you couldn’t leave your home

To fetch water or food snipers would

Pick you off leave you in the street

For your family to watch vultures rip your

Face apart not like Gaza where every 

Couple of years the heinous policy

Of Israelis bursts forth to mow the lawn

As it were shelling schools hospitals homes

Anywhere one could hide killing

Thousands while economically

Choking the survivors left with nothing

But the certainty it will happen again

Till they’ve killed us all

Taken it all as the world stands

With their backs to the crime

Pretending it’s just self defense 

Ypres Berlin the Ardennes

Stalingrad Dresden Tokyo 

Nagasaki Hiroshima

I’d rather fight them over there

Than over here we shout

So we made war on Iraq

How many still wrongly 

Think for the Towers

Hopeless youth of our country

Or those who believed the lies

Suffered from war we sat home

Didn’t even watch it on tv

Not with cable Netflix Hulu 

So many more choices

Unlike Vietnam every night

With new body counts 

Those vets are aging out 

Fading like old soldiers 

Many never were noticed 

As we went shopping

c. J.S.Manista, 2015