Poetry / Failure to Serve

We call our young men and women
“to arms… to arms”
go out into the world
do your duty, for God and Country
and with advertising campaigns
we sell the myth
“Be an Army of One”
all that you can be
here’s your ticket boy
we’ll be proud of you.

So our poor rise up
take the only opportunity they see
to escape their poverty
cracked-out street corners
shadowing their futures
and walk into this spoon-fed lie
with a blind hope.

They do what we ask of them
go where we send them
We watch them in the glow
from the safety of our television set
for a brief moment
until, distracted by the latest gossip
we change the channel
to vote for our next Idol.

Our children come home
from policing the world
only to find that what they fought for
watched their mates die for
lost a limb for
they’re only last season’s politics
and no longer in fashion
so they go home
unappreciated, discarded
back to the streets they thought they’d escape.

We sell them a fable
that they have a duty to serve
bud do we, the greatest Country in history
not also have a duty
to return the service
with more than broken promises
a life made lie?
How do we as a people justify our blindness?

We cannot blame our politicians
because they have failed us.
We put them into office
and we keep them there…

We have failed ourselves
our sons and daughters
and both litter our streets
yet we pass by them
with empty eyes and hollow hearts
and check out our reflections in storefront windows.

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