cannons of the yellow emperor

   (On chancing to be clearancing a collection with Fred Turner's Iraq war poem that I replied to, in it)

Enough of refutation for us all
of time has passed, & i but sympathize
now: for in the end the poet's cause
is not with any side, but with the aisle.

Twenty years well might have been enough
on an assembly line, to piece together
dreams for me or you or any other
possessed of a normal appetite for life.

Yet here we are, with nothing being built:
& quite a lot in the meantime's been destroyed.
Poets don't make things happen; ink gets spilled
& blame assigned, at which we're way adroit.

But twenty years more, we certainly have not got.

Moving on.