Two Poems
Stan Moroncini
The 1 Percenter War
The 1 per centers, politicians and pundits cry,
WAR!
Attack!
Kill them all!
They wage conquest in the name of peace.
Those who claim to speak for the people?
Aye! They all vote, one after the other.
Nothing to risk,
nothing to lose,
everything to gain.
To the forgotten neighborhoods and towns they look.
The paupers from Compton,
East L.A.
Flint,
The Bronx,
Rural Alabama and inner city Detroit.
Other people’s kids.
You go.
Enlist,
Fight,
Die.
You are the written off and indentured servants of today.
The princes from Bel-Air,
Pacific Palisades,
Fairfield,
Beverly Hills.
Suburbia and the Hamptons.
Their kids.
You stay.
Study,
Party,
Live.
You will be the captains of industry and the masters of tomorrow.
Wave the flag high! Your America is safe.
While our America is in peril.
Patriots! they shout. Answer the nation's call!
You kids from the ghettos, from the barrios and from the slums—
Are you patriotic or not?
Ode to the Iraq war Dead
You marched off one day
To this war we never wanted.
Young, laughing and believing.
Drums beating to battle
To attack, kill and maim.
The misguided leaders sent you to search for agents of mass destruction,
When instead, they brought them.
You, a nation’s best, a generation of the willing
For this coalition of the killing.
The old men watching and directing from temperature controlled
Offices thousands of miles away; send you into the hostile streets
And down alleys rigged with explosives and children running
And smiling and watching.
The searing heat reflecting off the asphalt highway of death like a
Welcoming river, seconds before the blast arrives and destroys. Your
Brazen youth ripped away when you still had so many joys to experience.
Dead on a rooftop or dead on a highway.
When you should be alive at home.
They say you died for freedom.
I say you died for oil.
The folded flag and a marble stone the reminders of your short
Time on earth, yet they fail to capture your smile or your laugh.
But I will remember you always and forever.
Those invested in this conflict, in this country of the walking
Dead, live on in abandon.
Not you.
Your fire and your light have been extinguished.
In this war you never wanted.