Eli came back from Iraq
And tattooed a teddy bear onto the inside of his wrist,
Above that a medic with an IV bag,
Above that an angel
But Eli says the teddy bear wont live
And I know I dont know, but I say, "I know."
Cause Eli's only 24 and I've never seen eyes
Furthur away from childhood than his
Eyes old from a wisdom
He knows I'd rather not have
Eli's mother traces a teddy bear on the inside of my arm
And says,
"Not all casualties come home in body bags."
And I swear,
I'd spend the rest of my life writing nothing
But the word light at the end of this tunnel.
If I could find the F'n tunnel
I'd write nothing but white flags
Somebody pray for the soldiers,
Somebody pray for whats lost,
Somebody pray for the mailbox that holds the official letters
To the fathers, mothers, sisters and little brothers of
Micheal, 19
Stephen, 21
John, 33
How ironic that their deaths sound like bible verses
The herses parked in the halls of the high school recruting
Black, brown, and poor
While anti-war activists outside
Walter Reed Army Hospital scream
"100, 000 slain"
As an amputee
On the third floor breathes forget-me-nots onto the window pane
But how can we forget what we never knew
Our sky
Is so perfectly blue it's repulsive
Somebody tell me where god lives
Cause
If god is truth god doesn't live here
Our lies have seared the sun too hot to live by
There are ghosts of kids who are still alive
Touting M16s with trembling hands
While we dream
Ourselves stars on Survivor
Another missile
Sets fire to the face in the locket
Of a mother who's son
Needed money for college and she swears
She can feel his photograph burn
How many wars will it take us to learn that only the dead return
The rest remain forever caught between worlds of
Shrapnel shatters body of three year old girl
To
Welcome to McDonalds can I take your order?
The mortar
Of sanity crumbling
Stumbling back home to a home that will never be home again
Eli doesn't know if he can ever write a poem again
One third of the homeless men in this country are veterans
And we have the nerve to Support Our Troops
With pretty yellow ribbons
While giving nothing but dirty looks to their outstretched hands tell me
What land of the free
Sets free its eighteen-year-old kids into greedy war zones
Hones them like missiles
Then returns their bones in the middle of the night
So no one can see each death
Swept beneath the carpet and hidden like dirt
Each life a promise we never kept
Jeff Lucey came back from Iraq
And hung himself in his parents basement with a garden hose
The night before he died he spent forty five minutes on his fathers lap
Rocking like a baby
Rocking like daddy, save me
And don't think for a minute he too
Isn't collateral damage in the mansions of washington
They are watching them burn
And hoarding the water
No senators' sons are being sent out to slaughter no
Presidents' daughters are licking ashes from their lips
Or dreaming up ropes to wrap around their necks in case
They ever make it home alive
Our eyes are closed
America
There are souls in
The boots of the soldiers
America
F your yellow ribbon
You wanna support our troops
Bring them home
And hold them tight
When they get here