Colorado Poet Robert Cooperman ~ “A Partisan, as the Fighting Drags On”

A Partisan, as the Fighting Drags on:

By Colorado Poet Robert Cooperman

Narrated By Roger Netzer

I know what we’re fighting for,

but sometimes I ask myself

was it so bad before, that we needed

to arm, train, then actually kill,

sometimes at a gun’s clean distance;

sometimes up close with bayonets;

once, strangling a kid not much older

than I was when this war began.

Then I remember how Guns

for America and the Neo-Liberty Boys

and their representatives

in Congress and state legislatures

and those five Supreme Court warlocks

tried to steal our rights, like grabbing

a child’s toy after making a gift

of the rattle to the innocent tyke,

and I see a tide of blood, like the algae

that pollutes the Mediterranean,

and I want to shoot everyone who looks

like a self-satisfied, “patriotic,”

gun crazed Neo-Liberty Boy.

Still, I grow tired of the fighting,

which looks like it’ll go on forever;

I’ve got to psyche myself and my unit

that if that’s the case, so be it,

this is our fate, our duty.

But I almost wish we’d surrender,

so I can finally sleep again, though I know

exactly what surrender and sleep

will mean for us.