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| Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) this week said that a war with North Korea would be “worth it” in the long term. "All the damage that would come from a war would be worth it in terms of long-term stability and national security," the senator told CNN. —The Hill, March 2, 2018. Caricature via Pinterest. |
What we want is to step over
the border and give our nearest neighbor a
black eye.
What we want is to gather up our rival countries like cards,
to stack them in a deck,
to shuffle or bend them whenever we wish.
We do not want trivialities, like hands holding other hands,
or a soft touch on the face, or peaceful encouraging voices.
We want our words to slap, to shout, to break knuckles, to cut the skin.
We want our words to weigh
down all other words, to suffocate them.
What we want is the power to press a
button and turn the lights out on a whole continent.
But what we want most
is to launch a missile that,
with its sharp nuclear warhead, will
stab the earth as if it were poking out an eye, blinding it
for once, and for all.
Bill Meissner is a teacher/writer and the author of four books of poems, two short story collections, and a novel Spirits in the Grass which won the Midwest Book Award. He lives in Minnesota. Visit his Facebook author page.