What's Real? A Poem About War.

WHAT'S REAL?

Pictured between reruns

and what commercials want to sell,

explodes another war

in some far place

          that I can't spell.

To me,

war appears as broken bodies

burning buildings

and smoking gas,

interrupted by auto salesmen,

frosty colas

          and kitchen wax.

Every evening

around dinner

devastation

is served up with my meal,

then sprinkled with laughs and laundry powder.

Can you tell me

          which pictures are real?

---

©1997 sara holbrook

Am I Naturally This Crazy?

Boyds Mills Press

Although the copyright on this poem is 1997, my database of poems tells me that I wrote it in April, 1991.  A different war. Or is it?  War is always unfair.  How would more bombs help this little boy? His family?

The book this first appeared in, Am I Naturally this Crazy, is out of print.  How I wish we could make pain and chaos that is war go away as easily.