Sunday, August 30, 2009

GEORGE W. (STANDS FOR WAR) BUSH AT THE FUNERAL OF EDWARD M. KENNEDY

by Joel Solonche


Even here
even in this church
this house of peace

this place sacred to him who said
blessed are the peacemakers
even in this place

this warmonger
this criminal of criminals
this shiftyeyed one

this george w stands for war bush
cannot conceal his crimes
the murders by the thousands

the mutilations by the tens of thousands
the devastation in its utterness
visited upon the innocents

the old men and the young men
the women and the children
they are on his face

I see them there
small shadows on his face
they are in his eyes

especially do I see them there
in his eyes
that cannot stop glancing from right to left

that cannot stop glancing from left to right
that cannot come to rest on any single thing
that will not find a resting place in any place

that know no peace
that know no peace
that know no peace


J.R. Solonche is coauthor (with wife Joan Siegel) of Peach Girl: Poems for a Chinese Daughter (Grayson Books). His poems have appeared in many magazines, journals, and anthologies since the 1970s. He teaches at SUNY Orange in Middletown, New York.
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