By Wesley Houp
Cold wind on Main Street
for the protest rally.
We cut down the alley.
You made a cardboard sign
because you’re so artistic.
I made a couple of joints
and a pint of cheap whiskey.
We met our friends
and strode so righteously.
A man in a shitty Toyota
threw a water bottle
that landed on no one
and leaked it’s contents
in the gutter.
How were we to know
back then
the war would never end?
By February your belly
exploded our daughter.
So much definition
and happiness she
has brought,
so much headache
and doubt,
all for free in the land
of the free.
But she is a child of war,
of a generation of endless war,
her life a road stretched out
beyond sight
where people we will never
get to welcome at our door
lock horns,
die in bloody pieces
for what?
My beautiful daughter
doesn’t know how
to fight
but war is all there is
in the world.
Deny that.
I am a fool.
Michael Benton
This powerfully expresses the alternating pain and hope we have been struggling through in the 21st Century trying to oppose these wars with the full knowledge that they are not an anomaly and part of a broader imperial history. Still, we continue on, however imperfectly, for those younger generations we love.
Thank you