The title comes from the song SCARBOROUGH FAIR by Simon and Garfunkel. This one line has inspired me to write this poem. Isn't that what Generals do, "order their soldiers to ****?" And that's what soldiers do, as well as being killed, as happens to too many of them. Why don't Generals (who are themselves rarely killed) order their soldiers to love, to put down their weapons and find another human being and give that human being a hug. Maybe even break bread with their fellow member of the human race. Killing each other is insane. We no longer have to use high-powered military weapons to **** our distant relatives. Some crazy ******* (e.g. **** Trump) may accidentally, or on purpose, drop a hydrogen bomb on a city, let's say, and in so doing, **** all of humanity in short order. Nations are anachronistic anyway; catastrophic climate change, which threatens to **** all living creations on Earth, tells us we are all in this together. There are no national, political boundaries to keep us from possibly dying of the coronavirus pandemic. The Arctic and Anarctic glaciers that are melting as I compose this poem are oblivious to national, political boundaries. So are the toxic fumes that oil-using nations spew into the air that all living creatures eventually breathe and, in time, die from doing so. Why do we need Generals ordering their soldiers to **** when presidents and dictators are doing a far better job of killing than Generals ever could? I myself prefer a hug to a hydrogen bomb.
Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks
A graduate of Andover and Columbia College, Columbia University, Tod Howard Hawks has been a poet and human-rights advocate his entire adult life. He recently finished his novel, A CHILD FOR AMARANTH.
