Non-Combatant's Sound & Fury

Non Combatant’s Sound and Fury

An officer of Bonaprte’s army once said
That war was nothing but a wrestling match
Well that’s outdated now.
A general who once carried white northern star and
Blue Atlantic Ocean says,
“War No Longer Exists”
But a shrewd Italian’s words to the Magnificient
Of Florence
Still rings true, and he smiles in his grave.
Holy Wars! Holy Wars! Jihads and Crusades!
I say we bring’em on. Avenge Sevenfold
For nameless 3000 and something and counting.
And do not look at me with accusing stares,
Old Men.
Your protests and flowers and smokes didn’t stop
The jungle war, don’t expect same from us.

We knew a president who got a B.J. in Oval.
We know a president who says “Nukular”
We play video games that kill hundreds.
Don’t expect us to fall from grace,
To lose our “innocence.”
We haven’t got any.
They should start Gitmo II and Gitmo III; it’s getting crowded.
Maybe do away with all countries that start
With “Ira”, they must be so furious.

Soldiers, troops, watch out for those IEDs.
Sorry, no WMDs.
There’s a Iraqi man with Chinese Rashkolinov
There’s Iraqi kid your age with a suspicious cell phone.
But I don’t know how to cry for you,
Don’t know how to say sorry.
Just my age, bunch of kids, or Vonnegut’s
Bunch of babies. Carrying black
Disfigured penises, into hell and back.

There is a wall between us, you an I,
My dear troops, my dear coulda been friends.
I’m sorry I don’t have that yellow ribbon
On my car’s rear, I don’t have a car.
But this wall is there, and I don’t know what you feel.
Dear God, don’t let it be as long and tall as that dark wall.
Dear God, not the dark wall in the capital.
Or is it too late?

Send bunch of kids to fight.
Give them a rotten hospital.
Send bunch of babies to fight.
And not the rest of us.
Send bunch of young men and women to fight.
How do you oppose a war, when you really don’t know?
How do you oppose a war, when it no longer
Exists?

How do you break the wall? When your leaders
Fixes it up for you for your comfort and viewing pleasure?
Do not ask me, for I do not know.
I’m just a teenager back in the states
And they are just teenagers
Stuck in sandstorm.

by Sae-byok "Jack" Kim