Choices...

[Triana]

Choices

Would you rather have health insurance
you can actually afford, or occupy Iraq?
Would you rather have enough inspectors
to keep your kids from getting poisoned
by bad hamburgers, or occupy Iraq?
Would you rather breathe clean air
and drink water free from pesticides
and upriver shit, or occupy Iraq?

We're the family in debt whose kids
need shoes and to go to the dentist
but we spend our cash on crack:
an explosion in our heads or many
on the TV, where's the bigger thrill?
It's money blowing up in those weird
green lights, money for safety,
money for schools and headstart.

Oh, we love fetuses now, we even
dote on embryos the size of needle
tips; but people, who needs them?
Collateral damage. Babies, kids,
goats and tabby cats, old women's sewing
old men praying, they'll become smoke
and blow away like sandstorms
of the precious desert covering treasure.

Let's go conquer more oil and dirty
the air and choke our lungs till
our insides look like stinky residue
in an old dumpster. More dead
people is obviously what we need,
some of theirs, some of ours. After
they're dead a while, strip them
and it's hard to tell the difference.

-Marge Piercy
Copyright 2003, Middlemarsh, Inc.

A Note About the Poem:

In January, 2003, First Lady Laura Bush invited Marge Piercy, along with many of the nation's best known poets, to attend a poetry event at the White House. In response to President Bush's then-pending invasion of Iraq, a number of those poets protested and were joined by others throughout the nation, who wrote poems in response to the upcoming war. There were 13,000 poems submitted, many offered for viewing on the website of Poets Against the War, and a small selection, including Marge Piercy's 'CHOICES,' above, anthologized in print.