Why Are We in Iraq? - Current Poems

Why Are We in Iraq?
Most Recent Poems

Week of September 25, 2008

Reimaging America
by gnimbley the gnome

Freedom is too real
too difficult to mortgage
a badly made sloppy joe
seeping out many wrong things

panic, disorder, heartache, fear

We need to remachine our future
retool our terminology
rebreak our unfettered desires
rewire our festering multitudes

Can I make myself heard?

Freedom can be suffocated
between toasted, butter buns
of abject obesity and
hysterical fad idolatry

Why is what's tasty not difficult to achieve?

We boot camp freedom
buff her up until she shines
a sparkling parking garage of
late model habeus corpses

Do we think we are alone in this?

We do not put democracy on trial
redefine instead her back to school
white blouses and pleated khaki skirts
blowing hither in the liege winds

There is always a lord among us

Salutary justice left standing exposed
cross dressing idealism shamed
synchronized lying renders scruples
to the superficial screech in the air

Why are we not better than ourselves?

Pretty girls undress in the park
wrap the warmth of vigilance about their thighs
for the bang of eroticism substitute
indie pop from the year 325

No one reads this anyway

Week of September 18, 2008

When the War is Over
by David N. Yancey

when the war is over
we will light the candles
with the same bombs
but for now I will sing
Napoleon you've done us in
atone now from your grave
it's still the same war
wearing different pants

when the war is over
we will light the candles
with the fires of burning buildings
and burning bushes
on the sacred mount
we will not burn
we will all return
it's in the Bible
I swear

when the war is over
we will light the candles
and check the pulses
of the wounded by
candlelight
cause that will be
all that is left
to see by
not even the light
of clean hands

Week of September 11, 2008

Assessing the Damage
by Diane Elayne Dees

It doesn't seem like seven years have passed
since we first saw the smoke and heard the blast.
When traumatized, a slowing down is needed,
but these chaotic months have blown by fast.

With every year, a few more rights are ceded,
and each attempt at reasoned speech impeded
by those who seek to govern by cabal.
So far, their frenzied efforts have succeeded;

with rhetoric both wicked and banal,
and plenty of unmitigated gall,
they've frightened most of us into submission.
Yet few appear to have the wherewithal,

not anchorwoman, priest nor politician,
to dare confront the neocons' position.
And should a patriot rise up to dissent,
his words are quickly labeled as sedition.

Car flags and catchy slogans won't prevent
the hatred we've invited to ferment;
it will manifest itself in rage and fire.
And then we will no longer be content

to grant our own extremists, whose desire
does not include our welfare, their empire.
This reign of greed and madness cannot last;
this pile of rubble cannot get much higher.

Week of September 4, 2008

Tiles on a Fence
by Heather Lee Rogers

Ceramic tiles
as memorials to the
missing we finally call gone
hang on a chain link fence
on 7th Ave. near St. Vincent's.
Some shaped like doves
hang by wires
strung through their eyes
like barbed wire across
a battlefront barricade
dividing the enemies
we can't see but name
terrorism poverty fear
we declare war these days
on any intangible
that is not us
peace drawn through blind eyes
the skulls of innocents
tied up in wire tangles
are laid at the feet of the
firemen, policemen and
those other heroes left
as if we could salve the
wounds of the dead
with the tears of the living
mourning their victims
of our outrage.

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