People are Dying by the Thousands - Let's All Go Buy Slogan Tees - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

 

People are Dying by the Thousands – Let’s All Go Buy Slogan Tees

 

XL, L, M, S, and Petite

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Domestic carnage now filled all the year

With Feast-days; the old Man from the chimney nook,

The Maiden from the bosom of her Love,

The Mother from the Cradle of her Babe,

The Warrior from the Field – all perish’d, all

 

Wordsworth, The Prelude, 1805-1806, Book X, 356-360

 

We busy ourselves in our accustomed ways:

Dishes to wash, the still-green lawn to be mowed

The vacuum cleaner to annoy the household pup

A book, a chair, a reverie, a glass of tea

 

But then

 

The evening news is a call to our conscience

With offerings in two senses only

Tastefully muted sounds and filtered visuals

Across a couch with a motorized recline mode

 

Dead bodies fuzzed out on the evening news

And peace-loving intellectuals chanting

        “Gas the Jews!”