Equal Shares (Poetry)
21st February 2016
He’s hidden by dark banks of cloud
the target’s far below
a foreign city full of life
whose people cannot know
above them death is hovering
on nerveless wings of steel
and nobody can save them for
there’s no court of appeal.
The pilot hesitates — a doubt
intrudes and nags his brain
he pictures them — those families
their lives so much the same
as folk at home. One button-press
it all goes up in smoke
and he becomes a murderer
in just one damning stroke.
* * * * *
He’s practically invisible
behind his polished desk
he signs the crisp white document
it’s not him that’s at risk
the fighting’s half a world away
where soldiers go to war
while others rake in all the spoils
the dead are paying for.
The hand that wields that fountain pen
will pat a baby’s cheek
and hold a christian hymn book
in the chapel once a week
’though he’s never been in combat
and most likely never will
a pen like his has power to
take aim ... and fire ... and kill.
* * * * *
The factory worker at his bench
makes bullets day by day
and worries that he shares the blame
each time he takes his pay
and does the blood wash off his hands
or stain him by default?
association makes it crime
he can’t escape that thought.
It’s just a job he tells himself
he didn’t fire the gun
and yet guilt burns as hot as flame
for death can’t be undone
and every time the news reports
fresh tolls of casualties
he questions his own innocence
distressed by what he sees.
* * * * *
She shakes her bright collecting tin
yet most folk hurry by
and do not stop to give a coin
nor will they meet her eye
it seems that public sympathy
for those engaged in war
is shifting — former patriots
have turned against the corps
in deciding the real victims
suffer on the other side
while politicians do no more
than bluster and divide
opinion — on the subway wall
more slogans beg for peace
and an end to senseless violence
high time all war should cease.
* * * * *
Yet ...
who is there who’s not part of it?
for everyone’s involved
self-interest at the heart of it
it’s how mankind’s devolved
to value profit over life
each one of us the same
and that is true equality
and why we’re all to blame.
the target’s far below
a foreign city full of life
whose people cannot know
above them death is hovering
on nerveless wings of steel
and nobody can save them for
there’s no court of appeal.
The pilot hesitates — a doubt
intrudes and nags his brain
he pictures them — those families
their lives so much the same
as folk at home. One button-press
it all goes up in smoke
and he becomes a murderer
in just one damning stroke.
* * * * *
He’s practically invisible
behind his polished desk
he signs the crisp white document
it’s not him that’s at risk
the fighting’s half a world away
where soldiers go to war
while others rake in all the spoils
the dead are paying for.
The hand that wields that fountain pen
will pat a baby’s cheek
and hold a christian hymn book
in the chapel once a week
’though he’s never been in combat
and most likely never will
a pen like his has power to
take aim ... and fire ... and kill.
* * * * *
The factory worker at his bench
makes bullets day by day
and worries that he shares the blame
each time he takes his pay
and does the blood wash off his hands
or stain him by default?
association makes it crime
he can’t escape that thought.
It’s just a job he tells himself
he didn’t fire the gun
and yet guilt burns as hot as flame
for death can’t be undone
and every time the news reports
fresh tolls of casualties
he questions his own innocence
distressed by what he sees.
* * * * *
She shakes her bright collecting tin
yet most folk hurry by
and do not stop to give a coin
nor will they meet her eye
it seems that public sympathy
for those engaged in war
is shifting — former patriots
have turned against the corps
in deciding the real victims
suffer on the other side
while politicians do no more
than bluster and divide
opinion — on the subway wall
more slogans beg for peace
and an end to senseless violence
high time all war should cease.
* * * * *
Yet ...
who is there who’s not part of it?
for everyone’s involved
self-interest at the heart of it
it’s how mankind’s devolved
to value profit over life
each one of us the same
and that is true equality
and why we’re all to blame.