3 poems :

Revolutionary Poet

All is not well North of the Mexican waters,
For here, South of the Canadian *sol,
They oft refer to their tropical neighbors as their back yard,
Or banana republic, which only leads the poet into exile
Out of the great land that forgot her statue of liberty
Into the land of Sandino, whom they have labeled leftists,
While little is known that *ti`o Sam is thought of as quite facist.

But why does the poet fear that the latter is closer to the truth than the former?
Ideologies of the right spit out their rhetoric
While the other extreme quickly grabs the spittoon
Swiftly flipping it back into their malignant rostrums
while slipping on a banana peel installed by ti`o Sam.

Oh, revolutionary poet of *Dari`o , brother of my spouse
In the mountains of Zelaya, fighting off the louse
Paid by the bastards who have stolen our tax dollars
To try to overthrow the system of Sandino.

History of shame, intervention after intervention,
Nicaragua forgive me, for I do not support the genocide
Being waged against you by those who govern my people.

12./3/1983 j.s. whitfield
*sol= sun ti`o = uncle *Dari`o = Ruben Dari`o, Nicaraguan poet & father of "modernism"


VILE WAR

Alas, ti no longer concealed, shall ye not know
Of the illegal, 'Contra War', si` anti-Sandino.
As if fifty thousand 'twere not enough
That perished in a civil battle, so tough
Was the bully caudillo fleeing to Florida's shores,
Only to have found that all those former whores
Were no longer to be seen in the dictator's back yard.

And how they have been left scarred,
Thirty thousand or more, over two hundred thousand in the region many say,
These only since our great white leader paved the way
for genocide, who gives a damn about the Hague?
Tis just an international court of Justice, and so vague,
How dare ye commandeth the giant stain so tall,
Or the neutrality Act, the hell with it too, for we can play ball
In our back yard, while the rough rider with the big stick declares
That he can violated that act without a soul aware.

In the backround the gunboats flare at the terrorist it fears,
Oh fearless ti`o Sam, forget not to look in the mirror.

7/1/86 j.s. whitfield


Peace in the Wind

Listen please dear Uncle Sam,
Was not suffering the tone in Viet Nam?
And no, give us not now Iran.

Let the wind blow for peace in Centro Ame`rica,
No, tis not our back yard, hear ye not the poet weep?
Be not a creep and sow more war.

Shall justice be brought to our own corrupt?
Not a scandal, nor a gate, though si`, a cover-up,
For how dare it be said that no law was broken
When four thousand Nicas were murdered while
The Boland amendment was still in effect.

Can it be denied?
After all tis clearly genocide.
Over thirty thousand dead in this dumb old war.
In a nation of three millon of course they want no more.

We ignored the vague International Court of Justice,
And the United Nations told us too, to cease the aggression,
And now the president of Costa Rica, Oscar Arias has come our way
With the Nobel Peace Prize in his hand.
My dear Uncle Sam, what would Martin Luther King say?

10/28/ 1987 J.S Whitfield