anti-war poems

Omaha Beach June 2006 – A Poem by Roy Pullam

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The tides have taken the beaches back
Lonely pillboxes on the hill
Crosses and memorials
Beyond the rise
Bear witness
To that Omaha beach day
The silence of the morning
The whisper of the tide
The bark of the gulls
Interrupting the reverence
Of the June morning
In the distance
Children wade the surf
Their eyes directed down
To catch the sight
Of aquatic life
How somehow I expected
A freeze frame
The gravity of the carnage
Too strong for change
But life goes on
The old man
Bent on his cane
Looking across the horizon
As if to see once again
Comrades at arms
The boys following
The ebb of the water
With the events
So far back in history
That it has no meaning
Life goes on
With the old man
Stranded on an island
Of sad memories

Shame | Dan Tindall

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The stories we invent to explain
The make-believe and
Ritual slaughter and so
Atone for killing
The living and breathing
Another chapter in
The lie of the glory of war
Leaves us worthless
Slow to share
Quick to murder

More at http://www.dantindall.com.

Punctured Sacks of Meat | G. Louis Heath

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Is the goal of war to mass produce punctured sacks of meat?
Is it to empty men and women of their humanity, drain them
of blood? Our homes and schools produce our soldiers, while
our factories make bullets for our enemy’s demise. And the
enemy does likewise.

Bullets do the job, but bombs and missiles deliver more bang for
the buck. As our factories roll out our best ordnance, we march
our sacks of meat to war, as the bands play on.

Our sacks of finest meat array on the battlefield against their sacks

of finest meat, and the puncturing begins. The blood pools and runs
in dark, scarlet rivers onto which infinite tears rain. This rain
cleanses
the battlefield of blood, so grass can grow again, ready for more
sacks of meat.

Washed Up | Lynn White

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So many dead people
caught in the crossfire
created by the the money men,
the arms traders,
the super ego-ed politicians.
They lie dead where they fell.
Flesh and blood transformed to
fertilizer to nurture the seeds
and grow the crops, in a future
they will not see.
Their bones decaying to dust
to form the building blocks
of homes they will never inhabit.
Dying where they fell,
over there, not here
and not looking like us.
Unseen or soon forgotten
by us here.

But the dead washed up
on holiday beaches
look like our flesh and blood.
They’re wearing our clothes.
They’re washing up to haunt us
in the Old World.
Then there’s the living,
washed up alive
and by any means necessary
moving on to bear witness,
if any one is listening.
To bring the horror home
to those who created it
in the Old World.
Bringing it home to the Old World,
but not as yet to the New.

More at https://lynnwhitepoetry.blogspot.com.

Silhouette | The Wayfarer

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The battered armless tire rolls on the rough sand,
Crinkling and crunching jagged glass.
The boy with his gentle eyes and hopeful smile,
A contrast to his sooty battered frame.
He spins the wheel, his laugh echoing through the haunted land,
Past the smoking rubble and the lives buried beneath.
He pays no attention to the phantom echoes of anguished cries.
Trudging on, a silhouette against the last, pale light from the west.

More at https://awayfarersmemoirs.wordpress.com/.

At the Wall | Roy Pullam

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The wall stands somber
On that windy morning
Gales blowing rain
Into my face
I look at the names
Finding a school chum
A poor boy
His fate sealed
By lack of opportunity
Not unlike
Other 1A card carriers
Unable to afford college
To find a doctor
Who would shield them
From the draft
He believed
Willing to wear
The green
To fight in a land
Beyond his knowledge
One day in America
Experiencing the good life
The next
Landing in a strange world
A land of constant
Uncertainty
Four months
Of wading paddies
Four months of ambushes
Intense firefights
Then the pajama-clad phantoms
Disappeared
A land mine
In a clearing
A fatal step
And his life ended
Not the homecoming
We wished for him
But we gathered
Just the same
To hear the minister
Searching for an answer
Then sharing memories
Good times
With the boy
We knew
I took the paper
Placing it
Against the wall
Dragging the pencil
Across the paper
His name rising
On the page
Bold letters
I have read
Over and over
Remembering each time
The futility of Vietnam

Grass Grows on Grease | G. Louis Heath

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In these fields in the shadow of a butte,
Tufts of grass march in the gleaming mud.

You can lose a shoe in the slippery muck.
Be forewarned, tourist. If you lose one,

Abandon it. Freeing leather from the tight
And desperate embrace of greasy soil will

Ruin your trip abroad. Feet slew and slip
Across these fields of muck guarded by a

Sparse army of grass. The grass corps are
Survivors of the flower-strewn corpse-pyre.

Verdant blades march across the leaking,
Slippery hummocks to grow on the grease.

Feeding the Grinder | Roy Pullam

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The Greyhound bus stopped
At the Webster County courthouse
A group of boys
Men by selective service designation
Came forward
From family cars
Some mothers
Hugging their sons
Others weeping
The shadow of Vietnam
Hung over the morning
Thoughts of apple-cheeked boys
Fodder in an endless war
Was reaching
The rural homes
Fathers who had known war
Mothers numbed by network news
Not ready to send sons
To a faraway war
The bus was crowded
We stood in the aisle
Hoping that stops
Would discharge passengers
Along the winding Highway 60
Small towns and short stops
Waited all the way
Leaving hours before Louisville
Eddie still drunk
From the night before
Hollered from the back
Of the bus
“Next stop Vietnam”
We cringed in our seats
The news cast
Bringing the horror
To our door
Our desire
Just wanting to live
To have our lives
In peace
He did not get
The laugh
He was looking for
We snailed our way
Both anxious
But in no hurry
The bus slid
Into Ft. Knox
One of a number
Discharging its human cargo
Two days for an hour physical
Some rejected
Others dejected
The culling process
Less defined
As the war amped up
The return trip quiet
For some
The freedom soon gone
As they would merge
Into the green morass
I too lived
With the verdict
My heart’s weakness
Keeping me home
While my brother fought
I gave them a final look
Men I would not see again
Some returning
Much older
Some not returning at all
It is the boys
Who fight
Old men’s wars
Paying a price
No one
Should ever pay
My life would be
On the sideline
My guilt mainstream
Watching from safety
As others
Marched off to war

We Regret Peace | G. Louis Heath

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We regret they made peace,
Before we could kill them.
We have a lot of bombs to

Drop and missed our chance
To drop them. Now we are
Saddled with a pile of rusting

Ordnance and our enemy is
Full of joy and he gloats. This
Peace drives us up a wall. We

Love our bombs. We apologize
To our metal gods. We love to
Make war. Peace is no fun at all.

Memory and Meaning | G. Louis Heath

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Who wants to be remembered? Many do, of course.
We cut slabs of granite, erect megaliths over their

Last remains to beckon the living to memory. Or
They endow a scholarship in their name, hoping the

Youngster will carry forth their glory. Remember
Me is a mantra of mankind. No one seeks to live

For naught. The millions who died in war, civilians
And soldiers, many remains unfound, suffered the

Ultimate sacrifice. They all want a niche in memory.
Yet, without identifiable remains, where do we erect

A stone and who will pay for an eponymous scholarship
Or maybe a mnemonic building on a campus? Who will

Make the sacrifice in even small measure to remember
And hallow their demise? Perhaps they need not so much

Memory as meaning. We can realize that for them in a
Massive campaign for peace. We owe their memory that.

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