peeny wally

Trackback pings

Trackback URL for this entry:
http://chompy.net/mt/mt-tb.fcgi/217

Comments

Celeste Fremon
Topanga, CA

For My Son Who Doesn’t Want to Go To War

My 17-year old son,
who is away at school,
phones after the State of the Union speech.
He wants to know if the President
could make him fight this war.
Not yet, I say.
“I would go to Canada,” he tells me.
“I’m not kidding.
I love my country,
but I would go to Canada.”
His school counselor, Eric, is an
ex Marine who wants to fight.
“Eric has a baby daughter,”
my son says,
“so he doesn’t want to die.
But he wants to go to war.
I don’t understand it.”
Eric is a decent man, I tell him.
It’s good to be willing to die
for something. Freedom.
The First Amendment.
Your children.
But that’s not what’s at stake here.
“I know Saddam’s really bad,” Will says.
A monster, I agree.

I tell him about the 17 year-old
who works at the local print shop.
He’s smart and loves computers,
like you, I say.
He has a web site called the Wacky Iraqi .
He’s also worried about this war.
His cousins are in Baghdad.
His eldest cousin sometimes calls him
late at night.
“An intellectual,” says the print shop boy,
“Always reading.
And he loves computers too.”
But this year the cousin had to
join the Iraqi army.
Look,” this smart, tall boy says.
“Everyone in Baghdad
wants Saddam gone.
But they don’t want an American war
because the cost will be
a lake of blood so deep
it will rise up to our knees.
Up to our knees. That’s how my
father says it. And whose blood
do you think will fill the lake?
My aunts, my uncles, my father’s mother,
my computer-loving cousin.
That’s who Americans will be killing.”

The print shop boy believes
if we bomb Iraq
it will bring jehadis to America.
“Suicide bombers in LA
shopping malls,” he says.
“My father thinks
if terror really comes here
we’ll be twice at risk:
first from the jehadis
then from the Americans
who see all Arabs
as part of the problem.”
(I don’t tell my kid
about the shopping malls.
He is scared enough already.)

“So are you going to march for peace?”
my own boy wants to know.
Well, right now I’m going to write a poem.
“I don’t think that’s enough,” he says.
Depends on the poem, I answer.
Depends on the number of poets.

I am a poet, and I would die to keep my son out of this war.
I am a mother, and I would die to keep my son out of this war.
I am a defender of free speech, and I would die to keep my son out of this war.
I am an American, and I would die to keep my son out of this war.
I am a patriot, and I would die to keep my son out of this war.

I will not let him make or become
a lake of blood.

And with every passing day there are more mothers,
fathers, sisters, brothers, patriots, poets
out here
just like me.

— February 12, 2003

Posted by: tam on February 12, 2003 5:08 PM

I like this site. I submitted something; did anyone else?

Posted by: seth on February 12, 2003 6:47 PM

i love this poem you cited tam. i will begin at A, too.

“So are you going to march for peace?”
my own boy wants to know.
Well, right now I’m going to write a poem.
“I don’t think that’s enough,” he says.
Depends on the poem, I answer.
Depends on the number of poets.

Posted by: cho on February 13, 2003 9:10 AM

i like this one too, all the way down in Y:

Yorifumi Yaguchi
70 years old
Hokkaido

Made in America

“Hello,” “Hello,” “Hello,”
Bullets greet each other
As they crisscross in the air.

Posted by: tam on February 13, 2003 10:44 AM