Friday, October 17, 2025

Cannon Fodder A.K.A Beloved Daughter

 Cannon Fodder A.K.A Beloved Daughter

 

NeNe, I've never spelled her name before, had no need

Easy, that was her deceased son's nickname

Blown away on the Newark streets, another casualty

Like autumn leaves falling from the trees casually

But in the dirge of death the community's spirit overflows

Mourner's packed the church house for the funeral

Some in suits and some in tatters, it's the heart that matters

 

Jessica, nice young lady, singing the soulful street serenade of sorrow

No education, no experience, no relative to lay down nepotism

Economic think tanks serve the lustful desire of the Federal Reserve

Calculating to four decimal points how to maximize potential profit

And if the numbers rising on the sheets equates death upon the streets

Well it's somebody else's child irregardless, not their mess

 

So NeNe wept when Jessica enlisted, it's her way out she insisted

The crazed maze is carefully crafted by master psychologists

Slavery is packaged in a pretty green uniform under an American flag

You'll be serving your country, become part of a grand family

Just hope you don't get raped, physically, mentally, spiritually

Robots make efficient killers, we haven't mastered MK Ultra just yet

So Irving Berlin's 'God Bless America' defeats Woody Guthrie's 'This Land is Your Land'

Let it be known that nothing is of yet written in stone

For Jessica at the moment is both alive and well

 

As we journey collectively on our space ship Mother Earth

Wars wage, in every age, the planet's spinning and we keep sinning

A war on terror is the bold declaration of a total farce, unless you look in a mirror

Where more of our soldiers commit suicide by far then die in combat

And we pray for Jessica with all of our might

She is amidst enemy territory unaware of the peril infesting her soul

Please Lord, don't let our beloved child die in some useless war

The prayer echoes in Chinese, and Russian, and Arabic and Hebrew and...

For these words are not a sonnet of surrender

Rather a battle cry for forevermore, a war on war

When statisticians coldly calculate the predicted rate of slaughter

Do not see cannon fodder rather know it is Jessica our beloved daughter

I don't want to see NeNe cry at a funeral no more 



 POLISHED FRAGMENTS

Poet To The Poor


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