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CounterPunch

March 13, 2003

Help!

By ROBERT CREELEY

Help's easy enough
If it comes in time.
Nothing's that hard
If you want to rhyme.

It's when they shoot you
It can hurt,
When the bombs blast off
And you're gone with a squirt.

Sitting in a bunker,
Feeling blue?
Don't be a loser,
It wasn't you--

Wasn't you wanted
To go kill people,
Wasn't you caused
All this trouble.

I can't say, Run!
And I can't say, Hide!
But I still feel
What I feel inside.

It's wrong to kill people
Just to make them pay.
Wrong to blast cities
To make them go away.

You can't take everything
Away from fathers,
Mothers, babies,
Sisters and brothers.

You live in a house?
Wipe your feet!
Take a look around--
Ain't it neat

To come home at night
And have a home,
Be able to sit down
Even all alone?

You think that anyone
Ought to get pushed,
Shoved around
for some old Bush?

Use your head,
Don't get scared,
Stand up straight,
Show what you're made of.

America's heaven,
Let's keep it that way
Which means not killing,
Not running scared,

Not being a creep,
Not wanting to get "them."
Take a chance
And see what they want then.

Maybe just to be safe,
Maybe just to go home,
Maybe just to live
Not scared to the bone,

Not dumped on by world
They won't let you into,
Not forgotten by all
The ones who did it to you.

Sing together!
Make sure it's loud!
One's always one,
But the world's a crowd

Of people, people,
All familiar.
Take a look!
At least it won't kill you.

ROBERT CREELEY is one of the nation's most acclaimed poets. He is the Samuel P. Capen Professor of poetry and humanities at the State University of New York, Buffalo. His most recent book of poems is Life and Death.

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