Without Legs To Stand On. (The Bush- Cheney Legacy)

Without legs To Stand ON!

 

 

 

 

He was told they would
have to amputate

what carried him
to serve his country
due to injuries

caused by compression
which soon enough became
cause for depression.

Thoughts of running

up the beach,
bouncing a baby

boy on his knee,
bracing himself

with elbows and legs
over his most

passionate Love's sighs,
long walks,

hand in hand, together
sports with the guys,

and simple things
like rising each morning,

and standing to pee
all passed through his mind
like lost memories.

So many have been

maimed in Iraq
coming back from

insurgent attacks
no longer intact, in fact,
genitals and faces,

were subtracted
as well as arms and legs,
an awful form of

disarmament,
chunks of flesh

ripped from torsos
that would heal

into huge dents
eyes gone,

ears gone,

noses blown
in an explosive spray.
and here once again,
stands soon enough
on prosthetics
a hero reduced
to a crippled state
nubs will haunt

him whenever
sleep finally beckons

each night.

All this,

and he had to
return to a country

run by men
who never had

a leg to stand on
when it came

to making war.
or fighting one,
They took

wild guesses
and made

horrible messes
Cheney even confesses

to five deferments
cause he had

better things to do.

Bush and Cheney

never had to serve
in combat situations
were never put at risk
where body parts

could vanish
in a bloody,

bone pulped mist,
Their flesh was

never kissed with
shrapnel embedded

deep, within
oozing wounds that

seeped infection,

They chose instead
a form of dereliction
Their families too
are all immune

from harm
protected by the

wealthy's charm
of "Money talks,

leaving poorer souls
to learn to re-walk,
when they fall crushed

beneath the thwock
of an IE D's most

vicious shock."

Over 30.000 or

more maimed
in the staggering

punch drunk
Rums fields of Iraq.
AmBushed daily

they come home
in large groups

looking like
some strange creations

by Lon (Dick) Cheney
pieced back together,
in patriotic Frankensteins.

And let's not

pretend that
the world back

home will be
their friend in

just a few years
when thousands are
ignored by their peers
and grown adults stare
at the disfigurements
and children point,
with mouths agape.

When Iraq is no

longer a great idea
and the public

has grown weary
of history,
hysteria repeating itself.

Bush has retired with
all his body parts intact

minus his brain

which never

was all there.

and he will pass

some of these men,
squatting on the corners
begging change,

while he simply walks by.

If you doubt this,
take a little trip
with me now to the
Veteran's hospitals
all across our fine nation,
and gaze with me at
the cast offs of society
from the Korean conflict,
the Vietnam conflict
and even some

very old men
from World War Two
crippled, forgotten
except on

national holidays
and forever institutionalized
with nothing

else to do.

Visit the cancer

wards to view the
years of ravage by
Agent Orange, and the
Persian Gulf syndromes.

Go to any

Homeless shelter
round up some vets
and buy them dinner,
You may end up broke
but happier

for the effort.

I wonder where all
the proud repuglicans
who continue to praise
all of bushes

efforts are this morning
when former PFC

Tommy Shellshock
needed to move his bowels
but couldn't be

lifted over a bedpan
cause the staff

is short on help
and his sheets get soiled
for the umpteenth time.

Or when a

former Sargent
from the war will

breathe his last
in a cardboard box,
cause his wife left him
and no one

would hire him
because half

his face is gone.

Where will the

support for these

troops be then????

It is so easy

to talk the talk
and walk the walk
cause the spin masters legs
and their children's legs

are in safe zones
where they will remain,

un-maimed.

97 percent of

Congress had
no children

involved in Iraq
No investment in the

war they helped wage.

Now, sometime this month,
another legless son
will come home for good.
to the arms of

another poet I know,
but most of you

will never know that
most of you have

stopped reading this
about thirty lines up.

I weep for America,
and wish Godspeed for the
return of

all of our boys
who were sent
from the heart of America,
but not from

the pockets
and God forbid

seldom from the lineage
of the loudest supporters
of their dying.

©-MFB III