poetry UnAmerican Activities

Arkansas poet Gerry Sloan speaks to global absurdity (think Ukraine) “weapons of mass destruction place…victory out of reach…”

Gerry Sloan
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UnAmerican Activities

By Gerry Sloan 

 The chances of writing a successful

political poem are slim to non-existent,

but we keep rolling the boulder uphill

while the raven perched on our shoulder

keeps croaking like Bertolt Brecht:

"Why were their poets silent?"

 

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Because we're the Forlorn Hope,

idealistic volunteers to be first

through the thermo-nuclear breach

since weapons of mass destruction

place notions of victory out of reach,

our leaders playing high-stakes chicken,

the absurdity of their rhetoric

enough to make a maggot sicken.

Gerry Sloan is a retired music professor living in Fayetteville, Arkansas. His poetry collections are Paper Lanterns (2011) and Crossings: A Memoir in Verse (2017) plus six chapbooks, the latest included in Wild Muse: Ozarks Nature Poetry (2022).