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Appropriate

In the American Capital,
The committee passed
The appropriations bill.

In the desert city,
The embassy leased
Homes for soldiers.

In the commissary,
Shelf-stable milk drops,
Monthly, from Ramstein.

The embassy badges
Camels, and says
Do not smoke.

The embassy advises
Don’t give to beggars
During Ramadan.

The embassy diverts
West Bank water
To the US tanks.

On the rooftops,
You can see Israel, and
The Bedouin coming.

On the off chance,
The E4 gives candy,
Coins are exchanged.

On the patio, scorpions
Dash between the figs
Mad, sticky with bees.

On the floor, the baby
Can’t say her name- Lilia,
So he calls her Yaya.

And Yaya cares for him.
While someone else
Cares for her kids abroad.

And she cleans the house
The E4 could never afford,
Where no one belongs.

And not one of them,
Has time to question
What is appropriate.

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Realpolitik

Gate to Seoul

Hungary in ‘56,
Czechoslovakia in ’68!
Soon another region
Will re-live this fate.
Through the people protest for freedom,
Against the power of despotism,
And show the world the horror,
Of totalitarianism,
When violence comes- they are on their own,
No help forthcoming beyond a few words of care.
The cost of intervention deemed,
Too costly for us to bear.
Tomorrow when the tanks roll in,
The peoples’ vulnerability made clear,
The State will crush the people,
Suppressing ideas they hold dear.
In doing so the State itself,
Will seal its long-term doom,
For liberty rises from the ashes,
Like the phases of the moon.
People who yearn for freedom,
Cannot perpetually be denied.
History is filled with the grave-markers,
Of every petty tyrant who has tried.
But in the valley of the shadow,
Before each person turns to dust,
The strong do what they will,
The weak will suffer what they must.

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Indefensible

In East Nuristan
The FOB named
For the fallen
Is a bad omen
For the rising.

Men slid down
The mountain.
With the snow,
Beads dripping
Icy blood into
The glacial waters
Of the Bashgal.

The river fed
The valley below.
Men fed bullets
Into magazines,
Into weapons,
Into wounds.

As the dead
Were the fed
Into Apaches.
To Bagram,
To Germany,
To Walter Reed.

No Chinooks;
Only single
Blade space.
No banks,
Only buddy
Transfusions.
Out and In.

Surging trade,
Cash, Blood,
Adrenaline,
Democracy.
Nothing lasts.
Not the funds,
Not the shura,
And not peace.

As they tried
To defend the
Indefensible.
From a fishbowl
Between two
Dying worlds.

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Sixth of June- They Came on!

The Sixth of June- D-Day, Overlord.
Words spoken in reverent whispers between old soldiers,
The forces of Liberty
Set forth on the old continent,
To make the world safe for democracy
For the second time in a quarter century.

As the parachutes billowed in the early hours,
And the overloaded gliders slammed into the ground,
As the bombers laid out rolling thunder,
And the fighters strafed the shore,
As the thunder from destroyers, cruisers, and battleships,
Fell as barrages against the shore,
The landing craft came in,
Wave upon wave, upon wave.

From the pillboxes and prepared positions
Lead and death flowed down in fiery rivulets.
Through the dying and the dead,
The men came on.
In sputtered starts and stops with grim, determination.
They came on.
Despite the carnage and the chaos,
They came on.
First to the water’s edge then the bloody, battered beach;
Next the seawall, the cliffs, and then breakout.
They came on.
Through village, hedgerow, and town,
They came on.
Though the fight was not finished,
There was still much to come
Through Cherbourg, St. Lo, Caen, Falaise, Argentan, Paris,
They Came on.
Until the Reich was broken
By the hammer and the sickle and the bulldog and the eagle.
Still they came on.

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Of Forges and Fates

National Cathedral

War is the crucible of humanity

Where heat and pressure burn away the dross

Transforming society.

 

The experience might forge a new society

As a rare and valuable alloy

Useful in its blending of elements;

Or,

It might just as easily,

Leave a brittle weakened state,

With poor metal in its spine,

Ready to shatter under the pressure,

Fragmenting in to shards of itself.

 

The nation that welds its various components,

Into one blade upon the forge,

Under the hammer beats of history,

Through in the fire of tribulation,

Tempered with a quench

Of Humanity and Humility,

Shall always win the day.