Thank You Soldier

[MichiganVote]

Thank you Soldier

Thank you for standing in for me
for handling the wind and the rain on your face
if you can find it
It doesn't help
but I'd rather it were me'
than you

I've no idea why you are still there and not here
Ten years on and our leaders continue to send you
marching, marching, marching
Your name, Your family, another US school child for freedom
Hell, they're not leaving you behind honey!
Jesus, not even George Bush would have the nerve to continue this

Yes we are down to you, the 4th and 5th graders who watched the world burn
Can you claim your school mates in the army morgue?

I remember your name when you were nine or ten
I saw you, I held you,
sitting in shock as the buildings fell down on your classroom TV
I remember coming to claim you, to take you home
I remember hoping you'd change your mind about the world being a bad place
I remember hoping I'd think so too

And the people dropping from the sky......
The fluttering tent like bodies dropping from the sky
Finding death on the floor of the New York concrete
that created this cavern of sickening economic disease

Thank you Soldier for hoping for a something better world
Its not here yet
But it should be
I'm so sorry

10 years on and there you stand
holding the same weapons that have damned us over and over
Did you see yourself here when you were nine or ten?
Did you say, Yes! I want to avenge America!
You living among the the world's brightest and most privileged
standing where your older brothers or sisters stood before you for ten long years
Don't worry they're only counting on another four years
Or so they say...

Dead. That's where the other's are. Nightly news and all that.
Or celebrated to have survived the capitalist wet dream of endless war
thankful they can buy a Toyota in America to drive to work, if they have it.

There you are
Here am I
Neither of us recognizing the other anymore
Fighting a war of retribution
that is long past

An entire generation donated by your government
to the elimination of any doubt that anything
rational
is actually being done
for WORLD peace and prosperity

I'm so sorry.

[GoneOffShore]

1. DULCE ET DECORUM EST - The old lie

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.
Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime . . .
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.

Wilfred Owen
8 October 1917 - March, 1918

[MichiganVote]

3. "To children ardent for some desperate glory"...beautiful line

[burrowowl]

7. "When will we ever learn,

when will we ever learn?" The "Answer my friend is blowing in the wind ...."

[msedano]

8. does this generation have its war poet?

"next to of course god america i
love you land of the pilgrims' and so forth oh
say can you see by the dawn's early my
country tis of centuries come and go
and are no more what of it we should worry
in every language even deafanddumb
thy sons acclaim your glorious name by gorry
by jingo by gee by gosh by gum
why talk of beauty what could be more beaut-
iful than these heroic happy dead
who rushed like lions to the roaring slaughter
they did not stop to think they died instead
then shall the voice of liberty be mute?"

He spoke. And drank rapidly a glass of water


ee cummings



you'll get a kick out of this,http://readraza.com/jnwynmo.htm"> from vietnam and john wayne:


Fighting soldiers from the sky
Fearless men who jump and die
Men who mean just what they say
The brave men of the Green Beret

Silver wings upon their chest
These are men, America's best
One hundred men we'll test today

--barry sadler

[MichiganVote]

2. Thank you whoever you are.

[DeadEyeDyck]

4. H n R

[MichiganVote]

5. Thank you dear, I just don't want people to forget reality :)

Even if it is Christmas.

[MichiganVote]

6. Much appreciated friend