Morning Rage

This is not a poem about romancing war

or a lament for dead soldiers.

I can’t speak for men and woman who die

for absolutely nothing

or fake sheiks and oil-slicked dreams

and secret mercenary hutches

and goofy governors swearing

allegiance to gods that kill.

This is not for smirking presidents

This is not about children in empty rooms

wives with no one to hold, credit card debt

Egyptian women who want to drive cars

Christ blow up dolls, the Indian trinket on your rearview mirror

or crying in your beer because you can’t afford

diapers for your parakeet or your mate.

This is not for poets who swoon possums in the night

and collect MacArthur Grants hooting, “Me myself said.”

This poem is not about legislators wearing Exxon tampons

tacked to retirement packages.

This poem is not trying to clean the windshield that is you.   

This is not a poem about driving cars you can’t afford

This is not about the cell phone

you can’t put down for fear of death or loneliness.

This is not about last year’s grief, or me or

lack of confusion, or kings, or queens

or cross–eyed donkeys that hold hands

with your life these days, or is it?

This is about Sgt. John Mele, 25, from Bunnell, Florida, killed in Iraq

14 September 2007, who left a wife and six year old daughter.