This poem is on Marge Piercy's own home page on the web. It makes some excellent points, like much of her writing.
"Choices: A Poem About Bush's War"
Would you rather have health insurance
you can actually afford, or bomb Iraq?
Would you rather have enough inspectors
to keep your kids from getting poisoned
by bad hamburgers, or bomb Iraq?
Would you rather breathe clean air
and drink water free from pesticides
and upriver shit, or bomb Iraq?
We're the family in debt whose kids
need shoes and go to the dentist
but we spend our cash on crack:
an explosion in our heads or many
on the TV, where's the bigger thrill?
It's money blowing up in those weird
green lights, money for safety,
money for schools and headstart.
Oh, we love fetuses now, we even
dote on embryos the size of needle
tips: but people, who needs them?
Collateral damage. Babies, kids,
goats and tabby catrs, old women's sewing
old men praying, they'll become smoke.
and blow away like sandstorms
of the precious desert covering treasure.
Let's go conquer more oil and dirty
the air and choke our lungs till
our insides look like stinky residue
in an old dumpster. More dead
people is obviously what we need,
some of theirs, some of ours. After
they're dead a while, strip them
and it's hard to tell the difference.
-Marge Piercy,
Copyright 2003, Middlemarsh, Inc.
