US Marines Charged with Murder

I haven't yet discovered how to get our usually faithful Blogger to break lines as I want them to be broken, Bush, when I write a poem for you. What follows is supposed to appear in short, ragged lines, not the ones you see, all justified to the left like a bunch of compliant soliders on parade. Ah, well, as they say, we can't have everything. Try to imagine what it's meant to look like as you read. It's called:


ABOUT THOSE FOUR...


… United States
marines, indicted, charged
with the murder
of twenty-four
Iraqi civilians, in
the city
of Haditha:
unforgivable, should
their actions match
those for which they
stand indicted. Such
actions, even
in times of war, merit
harsh punishment.
And yet…
I see the face
of this one
supposed offender, so
fresh, so young,
so
“American” in its
innocence
of the duplicity
of the world out
there; I see
young eyes, brilliant,
devoid
of malice, eager, even,
to do right
by his buddies, by
his country,
and
I think, war
is it; it is
war
that turns this
man, this boy
into a monster.
And
there goes my
heart again, grieving
for our
barbaric species, that
slaughters its
young, grieving
for our state
of unenlightenment, for
the victims and
the victimizers; grieving
for the complicity
of our nation, for
my own
complicity
in this peculiar, unforgivable
insanity we call
“war.”
End sum: it’s
all of us, it’s
an abomination that
we fail, time
and again, to see
how simply
fucking
tragic
it all
is.