NO DRAFT, NO WAR . . .

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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