This a poem that I wrote when I first learned of John Ashcroft's proclivity for reading the racist rag called Southern Partisan.



Civil War

the american swastika of stars n bars flapping in the wind
dirty scuffed jack boots raising dust as the remnants flee
sweat flows into a visages of grooved lines of hatred and bitter defeat

(what respect does one have for closet racists
at the beginning of the third millenium?)

under a sunless sky
over bubbling brown waters
walking on a lacerated landscape
a straggling column of fundamentalist fanatics chanting

(what do you call men and women who worship
the inner moral depravity of a culture based upon
bondage?)

tatter clothed, unhorsed dragoons
in resolute blind eyed fatalism
leaderless except for their belief in HIM

(what will our progeny think of us who are silent?)

their foot prints upon the desolate grasslands
having waged their brutal pitiless war
there is only a line of unmarked mounds marking their passage
their foot prints will vanish upon the coming of the new year