Did you see the news today
Did you hear the anchor say
Your hero soldiers, in retaliation
Obliterated some foreign nation
They nullified the “terror threat”
(Adding billions to your national debt)
“With pictures some will find disturbing...”
But many, strangely, reassuring
The limbless child, the blasted village
The shattered lives, the rape and pillage
From the comfort of your TV chair
You guiltless sit and mutely stare
You thank your god for the brave marine
Who harvests blood for the war machine
And the President, who with his lies
Will soothe your guilt and sanitise
What makes you think it's not your business
This vile atrocity, this evil sickness?
Dumbed right down and desensitised
You swallow the lie as advertised
You turn from the horror to bland distraction
Wallow in your lethargy and inaction
Drink your booze or pop your pill
Do anything that saps your will
No way can you accept the guilt
For the shattered bodies, the blood that’s spilt
For the missile that's your Christmas present
To a Yemeni or Afghani peasant
(It's always nice, at Christmas time,
To launch a rocket, to lay a mine
The tax they’re taking when you shop
Pays for all the bombs you drop)
Why do you think that you don't care?
That you can sit and, unfeeling, stare
At a baby’s body, shattered, dead
What have you let inside your head?
How can you think it's right to slaughter
Someone's brother, someone's daughter
You think it just, for 9/11
To send a million souls to heaven?
How is it that a great democracy
Can swallow such foul hypocrisy
And you, in your bloody complicity
Forget you are part of humanity?
(If you like this , please spread far and wide but let me know where, please.
Love to all,
Olive Farmer xxx
copyright 2009 Olive Farmer
All donations absolutely crucial!)
I share your concerns as written in the poem, but how would you deal with threats, such as Iran's current determination to get nuclear weaponry?
ReplyDeleteI think we have to have some military strength, but I would like to see it only used as a last resort.
Hi Texmom,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comment.
If you read a bit more of my blog, I guess you'd get the idea that I find the idea of all weapons of death anathema.
How can humanity progress to any sort of future if we live with the threat of mutual destruction ever hanging over our heads?
The USA are the only people ever to have used these nuclear weapons and , since WW2, have been the world's most aggressive nation, bringing untimely death to millions around the globe in Vietnam and many , many other places.
Military strength, for the USA and the UK, means not defence but war of aggression in pursuit of corporate empire and profit.
After WW2 Germany was disarmed owing to its war crimes.
The same war crimes hae been committed by the USA (unprovoked invasion, torture, use of weapons of mass destruction, illegal imprisonment without trial, assassination, the murder of c.4 million civilians in the various theatres of "war" (or conquest), grand theft of $billions in resources, the list goes on.)
If the USA had no military, none of this would have happened and the world would be millions of souls better off.
Love to you,
Olive Farmer xxx
Hey Olive Farmer...word. Nice poem, keep 'em coming. I put it up on my blog http://wooos.wordpress.com
ReplyDeleteOlive Farmer,
ReplyDeleteI agree with your non-violent point of view. This policy should be practiced year round. Our mental energy needs to flow towards cooperation and building a sustainable earth. In the past, great people have suggested outlawing war as part of the UN charter. We need to go back to something similar to that. Otherwise the powerful will always dominate. How can we level the playing field? Help us philosophers!
http://theruthlesstruth.com/wordpress/2009/12/21/a-christmas-song-for-the-sheeple/
ReplyDeleteGreat Poem
.
ReplyDeleteSimply Superb, Olive Farmer. I'm sharing it...with my wife, if that's alright with you.
.
Dear Olive Farmer!
ReplyDeleteThank you for your wonderful poem!
It really excellent.
I wish you and your family Merry Christmas!
Your faihtful reader from Hungary.
i put on my facebook lol. no comment on it as of yet lol.
ReplyDeleteYou're live on BlandyLand.com
ReplyDeleteKeep up the solid work!
Your poem is apt and moving, Olive Farmer. Hopefully it will strike a chord in some Americans, the thinking ones.
ReplyDeleteBut there are 300 million non-thinking ones who are indoctrinated to the gills! How to break that indoctrination is the question?
If we could take each American to the war zones and make them look at the bloody murder and destruction their troops are engaged in perhaps they might be shocked, might ask some questions.
Perhaps.
Anyway, let me wish you a happy festive season. Drink some retsina for me!