WARS

Sitting on a Park bench
Birds chatter, a trail of ants
Carry home their cuttings
An Iguana is cautious before
It turns and Truman stopped
Macarthur on the 38th parallel
Soon the troops were returning
Before race riots set Watts aflame
Kennedy cut a deal with Khrushchev
Soon he was dead in Dallas
We all watched the news reels
A hundred times, our President’s
Blood and brains splattering his limousine.
Soon Viet Nam welcomed the excess energy
Then surfing buddies were coming
Home in body bags; Johnson called
For more troops and Napalm
For all roads to Hanoi, Victory was in site,
He said.  Paris Peace talks gave Nixon
72 hours to leave, everybody was running
From the loss.  CIA operatives were busy
Murdering Salvador Allende and Father Romero
Keeping the Americas suppressed.
Nuclear weapons proliferate the planet
Promising a thousand deaths to each of us.
Oil soon fueled new adventures
To Iran, Afghanistan and Iraq
Zionists are never able to survive alone.
Sitting here my brothers dieing
Preserving conspicuous consumption
Up north from here.

c) Jan G. Otterstrom F.
    November 29, 2006
    Palmares, Costa Rica