Dave Minton

Don't You Do It

He looks like a tragedy waiting to happen,
15 years old in a photo studio draped in
an American flag
his parents both goody-two-shoes straights
even though one of them is my nephew
I thought he'd know better
having my good sister as his mother

He looks just like the type to
volunteer for Iraq because he
wants to defend
the (outmoded) American way of
the 20th century the last of which he
was born into
damn you Ronald Reagan
damn you George H W Bush I
damn you George W Bush II
you motherfuckers of priviledge who
know nothing about life
who hate the live and let live
and know nothing of the politics except
partisan-kill the Bill Clinton & FDR Democrats in the media
& in your fucked up economic policies
designed to circumvent & undermine our
very nearly flawless & very workable Constitution

and my nephew's son
who will volunteer enlist go
to fight for
American bases in the middle East to control the oil
America's continuning fight to put pincers around the
cold war Soviet Union which no longer exists except in
the imagination of people who want it back so they can
make lifetime careers fighting it with other people's dead bodies
the Henry Kissinger doctrine which is:
create bigger conflict where conflict already exists and
keep it going so American contractors can continue to
make profits making products that destroy themselves and
have to be remade like
bombs
tanks
artillery
war planes
shells
bullets
guns
soldiers
missiles
and products like
field hospitals
mess tents

the other day I read an innocent little news article about
how suicides among soliders in Iraq are 'down from last year' &
this was attributed to
various factors including
'air conditioning'

fuck it man
you had better not kill my nephew's son
you have done enough harm to him already
his thinking is not right
I can see it
I know it
and I ain't no self-proclaimed psychic
but I know what I know

You had better not kill
my nephew's son

Don't you do it
Don't you do it

though I know these words fall on
deaf ears
except for my preaching to the choir

and next thing I know you'll be having me in
court trumping this up as some kind of threat
poetry
poetry
but don't you kill my nephew's son
don't you do it
don't you do it
or you're no better than a Muslim suicide bomber
though you don't care about the finer points of
rational logic
I know it
I can see it
and it's almost a hope on that count that
these words fall on deaf ears
except for I'm counting on
the choir to
echo this
loud & clear
loud & clear

don't you kill my nephew's son
don't you do it

-David Minton
Lakeland, FL
7/22/005
10PM EDT