future grandads

This blood-dripping
saddle says to me
that my lord
(that old bastard)
will possibly not
be cantering, cantering
home for tea

on spreading green swards
under a monkey-puzzle tree

because, in fact,
he's beastly dead.

He was a very silly
man, we all agree
and it was not
come to think of it
a very bad thing that
he died in glorious battle
for the sake of family.

Well, now
he's dead
fancy that.

We'll have to look
more or less
to the future
in which certain
things will happen
not, perhaps, good
things, but we are
secure, for the moment
I think, I truly believe
among nervous friends
and the usual plague
of greasy sycophants

but but but
there is danger still
as ever and always
that the whole
wobbly edifice
so haphazardly built
by our drunken forefathers
will crumble and fall
down
down
down.

I would vote
if we had elections
I would walk
if I had legs
I would salute
if I had arms
I would laugh
if my mouth
wasn't ripped
apart and covered
with bandages.

War is not so bad
not really,
you can pick up
a few things
here and there
as long as you
don't get killed
or maimed
forever.

You have to
go your own way
you have to wing it, baby
and isn't that what
we all believe?
leaving the others
the civilians
the refugees
the starving survivors
to pick up the pieces
or fall down dead, so sorry
in the rubble of broken dreams.

Being young
helps, that's
what it's all about
really, it's true, not thinking
when we have to drag out
one more screaming
prisoner. Kill em all
is what I say, guilty
and innocent alike, dirty
smelly fuckers.

You sit at home, but
democracy is a tough job.

You sit at home, and
I envy you at times
I want to go to the Mall
I want to go to the movies
I want to drink in the smell
of a blonde-haired girl
or a brown-haired girl
or any sweet-smelling girl at all
while I clean and oil
my M-16, my feminine beauty
my waking and sleeping
constant companion
and I know that you
can't do what I can do

I can kill people.

When I go home
I can work in the store
stacking shelves
but I think I might
go to college instead.
I think I'd like
to become a lawyer.