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FREEDOMWAYS                 SECOND QUARTER 1973

Pandering their cankerous wares
In the marketplace of death . . . 
Am I their cohort . . .
What manner of mother am I
Standing stock-still
In the filled-in swamp
Outside their battlements
Watching their mock maneuvers
Manipulate a Nation's fate . . .
My hands take tempting tidbits
From their store of war-spoils—
Strip-mined from foreign forests
By megalomaniac monsters
To use in bribery by me . . .
Compromiser of the dead to be done
Before my sons become fully grown
Old enough to be blown like lotus leaves
To sleep on foreign shores
In Africa or Asia . . . 
Sun shadows shower the earth
Searching out the birthing
From the fertile furrows . . . 
In the Asian peasant's paddies
It is the noon nursing hour
For the fear sprung-out crying
Clawing at the hungry mouth
Of the just born tawny boy,
Born
To be torn — still sucking
From the soft bosomed sanctuary
Of the milk-heavy breast . . .
       And the wounded woman wails
       Flinging my memory back — seeing
My own son flung forth
From the spongy hearth
Of my child-thick body - 
       Cast atop the stainless table top
       Barren steel — cold nothingness
Christen-stinging his tiny tendons,
Touching the trembling air-stung lips
Seizing his primal gasp of breath

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Transcription Notes:
---------- Reopened for Editing 2024-02-21 18:12:03