Why Are We in Iraq? - Current Poems

Why Are We in Iraq?
Most Recent Poems

Week of September 2, 2010

How's about YOU?
by scott from jail

Springtime in Iraq
Probably has no starters
In Central Illinois where I was born
Amidst the cornstalks, black, rich soil, blue, hard sky
So impervious to serious change,
So majestic, calm, benign and fearless -
I used to know the people there,
Probably different than the fanatic Muslim hoardes
They tell us about
On fox news, o'reilly really had us going!, and GW-Cheney-Wolfowitz-Feith-
You know the axis-evil crew! Who promised us destruction
And a trillion dollar deficit
And a rebuilt world safe for democracy and our IDEALS
Like mosquitos
In the desert buzzing out springtime in Iraq
Over dead corpses
Brought out like rotting flowers
Heads sawn in two with Sears Craftsmen circular hand saws
Which in Illinois are used to build two-by-fours into homes
Standing in the Sangamon Valley, my home, long ago

But that's all about me.
How's about you?

Week of August 26, 2010

My Sleeping Bag
by Michael Brett

The flash and shake of the heavy guns' barrage
Are giant silver elephants in a tutus, thumping
Their hind legs on the horizon's black stage,
Radio City.

Everyone wants my sleeping bag:
At midnight, on the artillery range.

It is cold and all the shell bursts and the parachute flares
Are white and loud as applauding hands
Over map references and targets.

Everyone wants my sleeping bag.
They are jealous of its hot ammonite coil,
Its Jurassic fossil slumber.

They surrender sleep and stand, like POWs in their blankets,
Under wet trees, waiting for dawn's liberation.

But, deep in my sleeping bag,
Deep in my slit trench-
Smelling of wet earth and leaf mould-
I am happy
As the elephants dance.

Cadets
by Michael Brett

We arrived by truck: just kids staring out of a canvas cave
At the road behind. Now-through time's stethoscope-
I can hear the TV advert jingles being sung,
The snapping of rifle bolts, like old typewriter keys,
And the sea splashing behind the targets and red flags.

In the sea mist you could see the bullets in flight, in waves,
Like an invisible comb combing an invisible cat,
Smell the hot sperm smell of cordite and-strangest of all-
Have an infinite sense of possibility, of medals by the truckload,
Girls.

Week of August 19, 2010

$400,000
by scott from jail

You'd have thought that the way she got her money
Was alright enough, $400,000, to cover bills
Hush money to the family for the right to seize
Husband, son, father
And be done with it
Quietly, no muss, no fuss

But when I saw the new bedset
Fresh from way more than Wal-Mart
A lacquer finish to beat the band
Thick and rich and even almost juicy
Turning the big-boned pine beneath
To the spitting image of mahagony
Spread up there in the bedroom like
An Italian Renaissance altar to herself
The Bereaved-ess

Well, I gots to thinking
Particularly on the sight of the new boyfriend
And all the nice landscaping out back...

War these days, and the dead of it,
And the sadness of it
Like a fancy bed
Bought with cash upfront.

Week of August 12, 2010

War in a Modern World
by Charles Lee Coates

Beep, beep!
The computer screams;
The admiral note is struck,
and martyrdom grenades
are left behind.
Explosions of light
shrapnel and flames
belch at the detested
soldier
Where are we going
and why?
What are we doing
and how?

I remember the ocean
breeze
a different voice with
the same meaning.
Her breath like a softer
kind of war
sweet but still torn.
I can still hear those
admiral notes
screaming alongside
the computer keys,
typewritten in a language
long-forgotten
a language that always asks:
Where are we going
and why?
What are we doing
and how?

Week of August 5, 2010

Blood VS Oil
by Dhia abada

While the occupation exists and
strangers are having    fun
You see wheat fields... mines,
and the morning light...
fire in the eyes.

When freedoms are confiscated
according to the law of war...
No white flowers... rise
No joy in the eyes of a child
cuddled in a warm bosom.

Across the borders and
thousands of miles
comes a bastard rocket
which never knows any... orbit.

Is there after our virgin laugh
a day that shines?
and dreams in our blood... are suicide.

Iraq... first,    sorry... the oil
and then the curtain rises.
Has starving people
and occupation become
a badge of honor and pride
or an emblem of glory and victory...

Death lives everywhere
A child here... a child there
A pencil here... a pencil there
A mine here... a mine there.

OH    Baghdad,
after this dark night has gone
a morning will flow in hope
an occupation has an end time.
Who said
oil is more precious than blood?

English translation by Dhia abada; edited by Charles S. Cooper

Week of July 22, 2010

Feeding the War Gods in this Age of Miracles
by Michael Brett

Here, where days once straggled through barbed wire yards
-Sharpened by fear and shaped by death-
The spring trees shout with blossom
And the cat sunshine rolls against memorials, graves.

Today, read aloud in lists, the dead men's names
Chime like antique clocks
In sunken ships,
In purple lost forgotten seas.

Below the winged mosaic of clouds,
The Arabic script of holiday jets
Where birdsong shines, there calls the simple horn.
Goodbye.

The blue riflemen shoulder arms and walk away,
Leaving us to live on through this time of careless miracles
Where the dead can speak to us through DVDs and screens
As carelessly as the sun reflects itself on water.
They age only as old phone books do, in their usefulness to us.

Now, back in my hotel room, I call upon them you all-
Old friends-to press your hands to your sides of the mirror
So that mine can cover yours, thus
Feeding the war gods in this age of miracles.

Week of July 15, 2010

secret top
by scott from jail

I know why we bomb
But it is a secret...
Lies sometimes are secret ... too ...
As is this small shadow, laughing red-eyed like a demon
Playing god
Saying silence
Smirking... and the rest...
I know why we bomb.
So do you. We are insane with fear.
And so to kill the fear
We kill.

Next Poem