Kundalini Splendor

Saving Democracy

Their leaders told them
their country was in danger,
and so the brave young men and women
hurried to sign up,
to protect their native shores
from untold assault.
At first it seemed easy,
they rode triumphant through
the streets of a far away land,
the people shouted,
they even held a victory celebration
on a great ship of war.

Then things got tougher.
Somehow, there had been a mistake,
somehow the information
was confused,
there had been no huge threat
after all,
no great and imminent danger,
but now they were there
and the natives had grown
unhappy with all the foreigners
on their soil,
and had begun to attack
the very forces who had
come to save them

In a battle, you do not question
right or wrong,
truth or lies,
what you do is shoot
whatever is in front of you,
and curse the ones who
are against you, whoever
they may be.

The dead piled high,
tens of thousands of
people who lived there,
whole families young and old,
(no one knew for sure
how many,
they were not known as persons
but rather classed as
“collateral damage”)
and more than a million fled
their homeland
to live in tents or under the sky
in other lands.
And the blood of thousands
of the martyred invaders
fertilized the soil
of this far off country
now turned to rubble
where houses and streets
and schools and hospitals
had once been.

The struggle continued
for many years,
though now no one
could quite remember
how it all started,
why they had come,
what it was they were trying
to achieve.
The leaders continued to talk
about honor and victory,
but nobody was sure
what that meant,
how they would know
when it came.
The ranks of the enemy grew
as more and more came from across
the land to join their brothers
in combat,
and the profits of the companies
serving the troops of the invader
ballooned on the balance sheets
and in the banks at home
and democracy was saved again.


October 22, 2008
Dorothy Walters

(Ordinarily, I do not post political poems on this site. But the times are so critical that I felt it was important to speak out. Many writers and other artists are doing the same--we all recognize the acute danger confronting us as a nation and as a planet. Pray.)