Susan
Bright is a poet, publisher of Plain View Press, author of 18
collections of poetry, peace and environmental activist and parent.
She lives and works in Austin, Texas where she is a year-round lap
swimmer at Barton Springs.
Unbomb Iraq
Rewind reality so the gray heap
of someone's brains rushes back into
a broken skull. Unlight the firestorm
so fragments of ash
meld back together. Attach severed arms and legs
to bodies, breathe life
back into dead children
and their parents. Repair the waste of soldiers who
are battered and die
obeying an illegal campaign.
Draw blood and bad water up from sand, purify
the water, restore
the lives of human beings caught in the human
catastrophe "shock and awe" has wrought
on the world in our name.
Apologize.
It is a mistake to think weapons fix anything.
Justice solves human problems, not bombs.
Unbomb Iraq.
This is wrong. Americans are not monsters.
Hitler would find no fascists here. Ay!
We suffer from bad government. That's all.
Enormous errors tangle the American will.
We think we are a free people.
We're not.
We think we have a free press. We don't. Stealth corporations have
usurped our constitution.
Human survival on earth depends on our being able
to control them. I startle awake, these words
on my lips -
Unbomb Iraq.
Unbomb Iraq.
Unbomb Iraq.
(c)Susan Bright, 2003
Permission to reproduce for not-for-profit purposes
download
the poster (PDF)
Photo: ©Alan Pogue, 2000. "Water Treatment
Plant," south of Basra. 2000.
Larry Kerschner and Phil Steger hold a sign that compares the destruction
of Hiroshima and the sanctions on Iraq. With the help of Veterans
for Peace this facility has since been restored. It now provides clean
drinking water for 30,000 people. (In March, 2003, US and British
forces took it out again, leaving the people of Basra without water.)
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"Hard times ain't quit. And we ain't quit."
Meridel LeSueur
