Without Me Again

Your tight jawed dark blue corporate jacket
drenched in coagulated blood, new blood
pouring down the shoulders, streaming off the sleeves,
spilling over putrid scraps of sliced flesh
stuck to the cloth, jammed in your pockets,
your firm decisive evasive oil-powered voice
hoarse with the screams of napalmed children,
silent with the pallor of missile-made widows,
raucous with the last screech of some species,
your polished slick just right fisted black shoes
mirroring razor wire, slum tenements, children
your tests and tests and tests have consigned to death,
once again you have gone to war without me

and now you ask me to join you
because our boys are fighting there,
because you are our commander in chief,
because I must line up and like you
and follow your lead

without apology I tell you they are not your boys
no matter how much they cheer and grind sand grit
in their teeth and commit high tech murder in your name,
no, Hernandez, Logan, Longo, and Waters Bey,
Little Horse, Bastek, Bergman, and Jones,
the three hundred Iraqi soldiers killed yesterday,
the Iraqi soldiers who resist you,
the crowds in the streets of Jordan,
are all our boys,
the women and men filling death row,
filling soup kitchens and shelters,
the aimless youth filling city streets,
caribou, salmon, owls, eagles,
AIDS orphans of Africa, our elders
denied medicine by your bloody friends,
are our boys
and our war is against you.