Mud Tank tracks Gouge muddied channels Our homes and schools Laced with mortar bombardment Such pretty lace Grandmother's white lace Wet lace Her sons and grandchildren, All outlived and buried In mud, somewhere And she Media fodder Primetime tears For one military complex or another Soldiers are smeared in the mud By the tongues of politicians Presidents, jutting and resolute Girded with popular patriotism Denounce terrorism Up to their genitals in blood But their hands are clean, And they are far away Attending the Peace Process - So who can we blame, But those less mired than ourselves - Who, but the Enemy? Yes, there are war criminals in our every field and bar A corpse beneath each muddy turned potato Animals bereft, perplexed and wandering Cows left achingly unmilked But we lean to hear the tinny transistor words Of world leaders Drowned out by bombers' drones The peacemakers cut our land in small squares Those gore-drenched ghouls Shake protocol-polite clean hands At lengthy polished tables And we, condemned to repeat history In spiraling murderous circles The well is full of the dead Where, then, do we wash our hands? In whose blood, but the Enemy? © e-poems.org 2000		War senryu Precision bomb Shrapnel Scalpel: precision cut
			© e-poems.org 1999
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