Skip to main content

IT IS NOT ENOUGH

"I am a veteran of WW II, I served my country as well as my fellow Veterans. I, along with my wife, need our SS and Medicare to survive. Cutting the budget would put our lives into a great deal of hardship. We are senior aged. At Pearl Harbor I was ready and able to put my life on the line for my country. Sir, I don't believe this administration has the moral right to repay the seniors like myself with cutting our means of survival by cutting the budget."
—George, NC


It is not enough that you served with honor.
It is not enough that you died for the cause.
It is only enough that you are most willing
to die over and over until death has no loss
`til it finds passage through the vein of self
torturing you through its very pounding

How dreaded and parched is your termination?
How outrageous and bloodied damp are theirs?

How might we know the horror of your plight
without looking deeper than the beggar’s eyes,
without examining infinitely the empty corpse,
without narrowing our glance at rib and tongue?

It is not enough that we serve a mighty tower.
It is not enough that we die at its engulfing us.

How might we know when it has come `round;
come to collect our very bones for the sacrifice?
Will it place marks upon our shoulder, forehead?

It is not enough that you served with solid honor.
How might we know without ownership of you,
that you gave up everything of you to save her,
how might we know unable then to see the person?

It is not enough that you, sir, were willing to die.
It is not enough to lay claim to that and that alone.
It is only enough that you are one most willing,
death to repeat within you and you evaporate
to die again and again and again and...



Copyright © 2006 mrp / thepoetryman
VetsForPeace -- Iraq Insurgents
BBC Bush Denial of Civil War
VFP of Maine -- BBC Iraqi Prisonbreak
Labels:

Comments

  1. mirthMarch 21, 2006 at 3:07 PM

    Beautiful and provocative, as usual, as is the accompanying artwork. I'll need to read it many more times before I begin to understand its message, but that is my own shallow thinking. I would be happy to read its interpretation by others.

    ReplyDelete
  2. D-dayMarch 22, 2006 at 1:23 AM

    Politicians care not for the sacrifices of the past.
    They care not for the sacrifices of the present or future.
    They only care that someone is willing to sacrifice in their stead.
    Or for their cause.

    ReplyDelete
  3. thepoetrymanMarch 22, 2006 at 1:41 AM

    10-4! Good to see you, D!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

........•SHRIEKING MACHINE•........                  •HEAD-LINES•                           •RIP•     ---(“Russian missiles blast Ukrainian military academy and hospital, killing more than 50, officials say”)---    There are no more lessons to learn here, no more beds to hold the human wounded, just missile’s shrieking their grotesque ode, The Death of Humankind! RIP, children of God…    ---(“Hundreds attend Mercer Island vigil, march for murdered Israeli hostages”)---    Dear mourners, this is the brutal vacuum of a genocidal, terror-filled, indiscriminate war-machine made of fear and we are all hostages to its deafening roar! RIP, children of God…    ---(“10-year-old allegedly confesses to fatally shooting 82-year-old man and his daughter”)---    I must confess, this is part of war’s shrieking, children lost with a we...
Post a Comment
read the poem

FAULT METER

FAULT METER    When you get a question wrong you will hear three loud beeps followed by an even louder ticking of a clock.    (Like tick-tick-tick-tick-tick?)    You are half right.    (Like tock-tock-tock-tock-tock?)    You got two halves of it.    (Then I give up!)    You do?    (It ain’t out of weakness, it’s my adhdad.) I understand.    (You understand what?)    That it’s not out of any weakness on your part.    (Weakness, on my part in what?)    Never mind, it’s definitely adhdad.     •    We float, we fly, we soar! We find our wings in each other. We find friends, cousins of the one seed of existence. An existence which never began, but always was, that loves us enough to provide life’s needs, our own, the same. A collection of living peacekeepers upon the surface of the most heavenly example known to them. • © 2017 Mark Richard Prime
Post a Comment
read the poem

Per Plex Ed

            PER+PLEX-ED When you haven’t heard the truth in so long, when you do, it rings a most familiar s ong. That’s the human song, the truth rolling out exactly when it should.      (If a truth is told and nobody is around to hear it, does it make a sound only to the one that spoke it?)    Yes, but our ears aren’t strong enough to hear it.     [a perplexed silence] © 2017 Mark Richard Prime
Post a Comment
read the poem