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Poems

By VVAW

A gut catcher

Have you ever seen
A gut catcher?
Perhaps not
If you never had to use one.
There is no patent on them.
They're make shift
Depending upon time
And place.
I've seen ponchos used
And a pack
And a canteen cover
Or your hands.
You catch the guts of your buddy
As they spill out of his body
And try to stuff them back in
But they keep sliding out.
For a face blown in
For an eye blown out
For an arm blown off
For a body blown open
.........a gut catcher.

—Stan Platke
4th Infantry '68-69

For Those Who Fought

For those who fought and died, a bitter wall
Rises before the eyes of those who sent
A city of young people out to fall
For old men's greed and vanity. They went
With young men's courage, fought the best they knew,
Better than the bureaucrats deserved;
They did far more than generals could do
To save the honor of the land they served.

And we who by our best lights fought for peace
And walked the path of march, and prayer, and fast,
Who worked to make the death and killing cease,
Now walk, un-monumented toward the past,
We ask no wall—just some small guarantees,
Or hope, at least—that their wall be the last.

—Marian Henriquez Neudel

Flashes

Old men's fissured lips
In history's aged
Mirror sneer
Again.
War becomes peace.
Peace becomes war.

Flashes of blinding
White light belt
Churches to graveyard ash
Their pilgrims
Disillusioned
Disappear.

Leaden days
Bear barren night.
Silent winds
Rage through time
Then slowly cease
Spent of will.

A ray of light,
A seed is sown.
A blade of grass.
A babe is born.
A mirror cracks
Again.

—Ed Damato
VVAW New York