Soldier



The soldier is a pawn, lost betweeen the margins of a global transaction
Collateral damage of imperialistic actions
Caught between Iraq and a hard place
All competitors in the great race
Race to salvation and eternal bliss
Grace and morality makes for misplaced enmity
Pray every day to avert calamity
Fear of falling in a foreign field
Yield your life to the forces of fate
Bishops and knights on Bush's global gameboard
Spinning the wheels of fortune, spinning, spinning
Anteing the soldier's token existence in a gambit for domination
Without the soldier society can grow no older
No wiser no bolder without this essential fodder
The best army that money can buy
No triumphant victory march will these soldiers enjoy
Rank and file of protesting veterans, benefits and lessons
Dignity is demanded but the battle-scarred receive no respect and no compensation
Viet-Nam vet forgotten dispossessed and forsaken
Raging against the impassive nation
Horrific futuristic disintegration of the soldier's institution
Leave the rotting infectious wound alone and you lose control
Another step or two and the fall from the dizzying heights commences.

21 March 2004