Standing at attention conjures up images
of soldiers listening, eyes front, back straight,
down to toes pointing at dictated angles.
In the fifth grade, VietNam war smoking,
piling up body bags in jungles out of sight,
I imagined being drafted…and not going.
Training to kill or be killed made no sense.
Now that I know the true reasons for war,
who wages them, at whose expense, all
seems lost. There is simply way too much
money in war—too much power to give up
for the sake of saving a family here or there.
You can blame the colonizers. I do, knowing
open air prisons run in first class to economy.
Thank G?d I was born in Puerto Rico not Gaza.
