Just Peace
by Bill Costley
USA Memorial Day 2012
One of my uncles, a submariner,
another, a bomber waist-gunner,
another an OSS assassin in Poland,
another, a mountain ski-trooper
killed in the Italian alps; his widow,
a WAVE, married to an Army cook,
none of them ever marked me for war
except my father, rejected by the army:
for wearing glasses, for being married,
for having a child (me), incredulous that
I wouldn’t accept the Vietnam War draft:
“You’re a citizen! You have to!” He'd never
learn I beat the army's draft by checking-off
“covert homosexual" (hidden in its long list of
debilities) during my pre-induction physical.
How can we deflate war-delusion?
No draft. No war. Just Peace.
Bill Costley
has served on the Steering Committee of the San Francisco Bay area
chapter of the National Writers Union. He lives in Santa Clara,
CA. The latest volume ( Number Eleven) of Costley's New Verse News epic The Chen@id can be accessed by clicking here.
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