Carl Stilwell AKA CaLokie

Photo by Charles Ardinger

Endless War

I was 7 when war was declared on Japan and Germany

and 10 when we celebrated the end of World War II

But I didn’t understand why it was necessary

to drop atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki

I was 15 when the communists invaded South Korea

and 18 when the Korean Armistice Agreement ended

armed conflict between the U.S. and North Korea

I was 28 when we came close to World War III

during the Cuban Missile crisis

Thank God John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev put

negotiation over escalation to end this nightmare

I was 29 when LBJ signed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution

And then—

Oh it’s 1-2-3

What are we fighting for?

I don’t give a damn!

Next stop is Vietnam

I was 30 when President Johnson sent 42,000 troops

into the Dominican Republic to save them from communism

and their nation becoming another Cuba

I was 41, a father of two boys and a teacher in Los Angeles

when the Vietnam War ended

I was 49 when our super power nation sent armed forces

into Grenada to save an island of 100,000 people

of color from the evil communist empire

I was 57, my sons, 24 and 22,

when “blood for oil-1”

or Gulf War fun

did begin and end

Just before I was 67, al-Qaeda terrorists attacked

the Twin Towers and Pentagon which led

to the War in Afghanistan

I was 68 when my wife and I

divorced ending our marriage of 33 years

and the “blood for oil-2” or Iraq War blues began

Oh it’s 1-2-3

What are we fighting for?

I don’t give a good damn

if Osama’s still in Afghanistan

I was 77 when the Iraq War ended

and 87 when our last troops left Afghanistan

But right after Asian war ends, Russia

invades Ukraine, the home of Chernobyl

and 15 nuclear reactors  

And so here we go again  

World without end 

What the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. said in 1967, that the United States "is the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today," remains true and even more deadly today, with no end in sight. The United States was founded on violence, conquest, militarism and slavery— almost always making war somewhere.— Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz