The failure of American culture to embrace humanity

As bombs and napalm fall and Iraqi children
are mutilated by unseen Americans,
this site also is under attack from the same
apologists for death and destruction, the merchants
of our nation who confuse personal comfort
with freedom and liberty. Brainwashed soldiers kill
to make the rich even more rich and who are then
abandoned by the same, doomed like Philoctetes
to un-curable festering wounds—wars’ Payback
for turning on humanities young without thought.
Oil-garchs stay far behind the lines and send death
flying through the air to the bedrooms of children
and call it bravery and a necessity.
It is a failure of the deep human wisdom,
that connects our different strands in a wide net
a mosaic that tells us all is one, not endless
death and war for the enrichment of a few who
the antithesis of anything human.
It is our collective failure to carry forth
the spirit of revolutionary impulse
that our nation was founded upon and that
corrupt capitalists and priests seek to destroy
that causes human world culture to turn it’s back
on the America that young soldiers die for.