Why Are We in Iraq? - Current Poems

Why Are We in Iraq?
Most Recent Poems

Week of February 2, 2012

titanic
by makeme refugee

it had never been a ship
it was a lady..
asked for a hand
and became so angry
throwing all dreams
in the heart of ocean

stars on shakespeare's shoulders
by makeme refugee

it's dancing stars
on shakespeare's shoulders
across all tired rivers
and distant oceans
at this very gracious moment
the moment of ink
whispering to you
to your shining minds
and widely-opened hearts
listen to him
the sound of love
crying from depths
o good people

Week of January 26, 2012

Rich Fat Cats
by scott from jail

Heaviness and the dark rung eyes
Bagged, fifty, sad, cornered-
Looking for contributions from rich fat cats
yet wanting to tax them for services
rendered never to them
but their employees,
their wanna-be employees,
lined up for the next tidbit from China
While we buy ourselves a new shot at president
Forgetting that it was them the rich fat cats
Who bought us Iraq...

And they even lie about the unemployment rate
An honest 20 percent
shaved to a dishonest 9.8
so as not alarm us into revolution
Swallowing the lie
Like so much else,

Our government
a caretaker of poorer people by the minute
Sold out to whom?

Week of January 19, 2012

heaven
by scott from jail

I saw a presentation today
about leadership in Afghanistan
not much was said, really,
a lot of waiting for punch lines
that never came
Incandescent slides
of dogs and owners
each looking suspiciously similar
ala, Madison Avenue
a few moments of a truck blowing up
an acknowledgment that They
are committed too.
Now I type out a poem
spelling out the noxious-ness I feel
toward the whole thing.
they had no desert at the table
and I was happy about it
because I do not need the calories.
is this a poem?
or just another day at war?
a war of what?

Week of January 12, 2012

The Return of the Civil War Soldiers
by Michael Brett

After Gabriel had blown his horn
He returned with Artie Shaw:

And the dead awoke in the puzzled soil,
Naked and staring at the horseless earth:
Bald, treeless,
Without dung, lace or carriages;

Pylons, little brick houses
With televisions jabbering
And cars parking.

Swordless and cold,
They looked for their homes
And lost beliefs like blankets;

And everything that had seemed so much
Was nothing.

Week of January 5, 2012

To My Dear Country
by Hiyam Abdul-Razzaq and Dr Hana Al-Bayyati

Only You in my heart only
I will do anything to be right
I will be a solider
In your battle.
I will be a candle
In your night.
I will be a paddle
In your boat.
I will do my best
To build a nest
To live With you,
Not with the rest
The rest're envying you,
The rest're ruining you,
The rest're torturing you.
You, only you
In my heart
You, only you
who comes anew.

Week of December 29, 2011

Jeremiah
by scott from jail

Yet another poem! He must be bored
yawned charles cooper, invisible over all this welling sum
cast about by hypotheses, on tenterhooks
not.
Iraq grovels these days like a bandito caught
in a net of vice
Smallish by comparison
to what is coming, monstrous alien hoard
Ourselves a planet in disguise
Whilst I,
type words
at 1:05 a.m.

Week of December 22, 2011

Angels
by Michael Brett

The sunlight through the church window
Reminds us we are not angels
But that a future-like an unseen coast-
Is rushing towards us, as angels might,
And will not be divided by a little boat's prow
Nor anything: no clear idea
Nor weapon we might raise against
War's well-funded asceticism,
Its disordered sainthood.

It seems within us already
There is a kind of bruise or blood tide
Rising inside us saying 'aha-
You can choose nothing.
Only we can choose for you;
Only you are nothing,
Just a kind of bystander at your own dissolution
For tomorrow you shall not die
But shall be dissolved in stages:

The mind's superstructure
Then the frame of self
All calling out together in the winds
That have no king, no leather bag
To unite them.

Every clock hand presses you to this
With the insistence of a surgeon
Showing you x-rays, an astronomer
Who plots progress on a chart,
An accountant perhaps.

Week of December 15, 2011

something blue
by scott from jail

Astrologically
all was not well
Venus marred by Saturn
making for a fate determined to

Be sad
and bringing with it
hatred of love which might jar

That fate.
and so love,
treated out as a clean house,
loved children
space and time
for caring

Blew away with cut, short hair
a simple promise of hatred to death
that love, affection, respect, enduring faithfulness
becomes
The very reason for
hate

Clouds of dusty years
swelling in the rear-view mirror of time
settling eventually
And in the distance
All seems smaller, escaped,

Not there
after all

Like little stars
conjunctions
fates paid for

Paid out...
small conjunctions
smaller than planets
smaller than anything.

A Venus. Saturn.
a war in iraq.

A war.
a war of whys.
a fate
blue in the distance
Like a car
Roving over the horizon
blues above
but not blue.

But not blue.

But not blue.

Fates paid for
like the bullets of iraq
like the coming revolutions
like a lot of things

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