You should apologize. <br />Get down on your knees and plead, <br />but your apology will be worthless, <br />like expectorant into a sewer. <br />yet do it, do it, do it <br />though it has less value <br />than a mass murderer’s <br />plea for forgiveness. <br />It must be done <br />as an acknowledgement <br />to crass arrogant greed, <br />to frat boy stupidity. <br /> <br />We have seen this deed before <br />at Cold Harbor, <br />at Gettysburg, <br />at Fredericksburg, <br />on the Somme, <br />on useless Pacific islands <br />and a thousand other travel folder <br />sites selected for war hell <br />where someone sent frightened brave men, <br />mother’s sons, <br />fathers of never born children <br />to useless horrible deaths <br />fulfilling a zealot’s goals. <br /> <br />But never has someone done it <br />while a nation plays, <br />as those back home <br />party, rock and dance, <br />while billionaires are created <br />and sales of luxury yachts <br />and private planes multiply, <br />while preachers preach righteous fury <br />against sins perceived in old men’s minds, <br />evils that cannot match yours. <br />Dead is dead is dead <br />blown to death in desert sand, <br />limbless in hidden wards <br />minds rewired by unfathomable horror, <br />all to further a lie <br />generated by old fools <br />chatting on country club bar stools. <br /> <br />Decorate a soldier’s skeleton <br />until it looks like a Christmas tree <br />with noble words you made hollow, <br />like freedom and democracy. <br />Tip your glasses <br />at your fancy balls <br />and raise another million <br />to be in position <br />to send America’s children <br />to die for an aristocracy <br />populated by draft dodging plutocrats. <br />Apologize please, <br />not for your being despicable, <br />but for converting virtue <br />into a marketing scheme <br />that yields death.<br /><br />Duane Robert Pierson<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/apologize-mr-president/
