Thursday, January 31, 2013

Market Day

Inspired by an account of what happened to a Guatemalan village during the 1980's.


Soldiers came into town
on their Market Day
Freedom fighters for the
American way
Set fire to all of their
fields of standing grain
Took the men and boys out
and blew them away
Next for women and girls
after they had their way
sent them down the village well
to a mass grave

There was no black or white back then
against red, all turned to gray
we wrote out the invoice and
left the innocent to pay
The sad truth is we sold them out
...on market day


To secretly fund the thugs
who embraced our side
a monopoly for drugs
tangling webs grew wide
Evil empires have to tell
their own people lies
like scandalous gangsters
exchanging drive-bys
collateral damage mounted
how many lost lives?
maybe even God lost count
if our stars aligned!

There was no black or white back then
against red, all turned to gray
we wrote out the invoice and
left the innocent to pay
The sad truth is we sold them out
...on market day

1 comment:

  1. It is a stunning poem.The refrain has made it haunting. Humans have this dark, grisly strain in them. They have done similar things across the length and breadth of this earth. There is no guarantee it will not happen again.

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"Government is instituted for the common good; for the protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness of the people; and not for the profit, honor, or private interest of any one man, family, or class of men: Therefore the people alone have an incontestible unalienable, and indefeasible right to institute government; and to reform, alter, or totally change the same, when their protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness require it." -- Constitution of Massachusettes (1780)