Uncle Sam
Nicholas Moore
War Poetry Contest 2005 (view all the winners)
Honorable Mention
I think my enemies are getting close.
I think I've sown the seeds of my own doom.
(And all I ever meant to sow was love
With no one special or exactly mine).
Perhaps I never should have thrown that last
Dead cigarette outside this moving car.
Last night I spied my Uncle Sam in stars
And stripes, his shovel breaking earth to bury
The bodies of assassinated leaders
From sundry thrones in South America.
The moon described his laughing silhouette.
I think my enemies are going mad.
I'm sure they're planning something bloody bad.
So I went calling on this girl I know.
(She'd always had a careless honest way.
I figured she was someone I could trust.)
She opened her front door completely nude
And drinking water from a vase of roses.
I asked her what she thought my plan should be.
I asked her what my back-up plan should be.
But she just said my cigarette machine
Attracted danger to her gasoline.
She said there was a mental car bomb that
Was wired to my girlie magazine.
So I should never open it again,
Unless I want to hurt my fragile mind.
She said that I was one false move away
From being happy all the time and rich.
She said that I was quite an ass for not
Discovering how much good luck I have.
I asked her if the two of us could have
Some friendly backseat sex inside my car.
She said that "Stolen nothingness won't taste
Like bread, regardless of how starved you are."
Today while I was urinating in
A public restroom I could swear I saw
My Uncle Sam was standing next to me
And pointing his nine millimeter gun
Right at my temple and was saying that
I had two choices and that both of them
Involved my brains exploding through my skull.
I said that I choose not to vote this year.
He said that I was some ungrateful dumb
Anti-American. The troops had died,
He said, to save my right to eat his gun.
I said that he was crazy, old and wrong,
And I walked bravely out the bathroom door.
As I was leaving though I think I saw
My Uncle Sam's triumphant march into
A stall already occupied and as
I closed the bathroom door I heard a quick
Exchange of heated shouts and then a gun
Discharged and then I heard a body fall
And crash into the cold, wet, tiled floor.
I couldn't help but think, "That's what you get,
When voting booths are where you go to shit."
This morning I was shocked to find that all
The churches were as empty as a lie.
The statues of our Jesus Christ had all
Come down from all their crosses and were gone.
A man saw Jesus standing next to him
When he was waiting for his bus to come.
Another guy saw Jesus in the Knife
And Gun Department of a Boise K-Mart.
The Christians all have peeled their eyes for him.
I saw a headline on the front page of
The New York Times today that plainly said
THERE IS NO REASON YOU SHOULD BE AFRAID
OF THAT BIG SPACESHIP FLOATING NEAR YOUR HOUSE.
So I broke into the spaceship; it was full
Of old white men in very silky suits.
They had pie charts, line graphs, and secretaries.
They were the enemies of human kind,
And they were speaking through their satellites.
In bed at night I feel this sharp foreboding.
I think I hear my Uncle Sam reloading.
