That Thing of the Poets 8: To Kill and Die

Sunday night in New York; I hear the the sound of cars on the street, crushing and splattering snow and mud with their wheels. Meanwhile -- right now! I say -- our tender children continue to kill and die in Iraq.
I swallow my anguish and let the Dirty Old Man speak for me:

a great white light dawns across the
continent
as we fawn over our failed traditions,
often kill to preserve them
or sometimes just kill to kill.
it doesn't seem to matter: the answers dangle just
out of reach,
out of hand, out of mind.

Charles Bukowsky
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