Wordplay Poetry Blog

Back To Iraq song lyrics chords and mp3 by David Michael Jackson

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G
d7…………….G
They had nineteen guys with box cutters
………………………………..d7
and an old man in a cave.

We had F sixteens and B2 Bombers
………………………………………………..G
and our smart bombs are the rage.
………………C
But that dirty old coward
……………….G
brought down those Twin Towers
……….d7……………………………………….G
and laid all those people in one grave.
…………..C…………………..G
So we went to war in Afganistan
……………d7…………………………..G
and we fought with the Taliban
……………C……………………………..G
and we had him cornered at Tora Bora
…………..d7…………….G
but he got away again.
………….C
Oh I’d get that old man
……..G
but he’s in Pakistan.
………………d7……………………G
And I’m headed back to Iraq

……….C……………………………G
Yes I’m headed back to Iraq
………..d7……………………G
How many tours is enough.
……….C………………….G
My babies barely know their daddy
………d7………………………G
because he’s back in Iraq.
………….G
Oh it doesn’t take courage to sit beside your fire
……………………………………………………….d7
and send young men to die in your place

And ten thousand virgins ain’t pay enough
…………………………………….G
to die for a coward in a cave.

…………..C
Oh I’d get that old man
……..G
but he’s in Pakistan.
………………d7……………………G
And I’m headed back to Iraq
………..C………………………………..G
Oh I know I told you when I’d get back
……….d7…………………….G
but I got stop lost in Iraq.

…C……………………………..G
How many tears are enough.

Copyright 2008 David Michael Jackson
contact david_jackson01@comcast.net

Can we try so hard we lie?
Down with devils and angels
Flying too close to the sun we melt
Our wings and come twirling
A baton in the hand
Of a little girl told
In sudden and slow cancerous ways
You cannot succeed beyond what you
Do not have
Between your legs
The dagger
That may one day pierce you
Pierced your mother and your
Grandmother
Before you
Without
What you have not
You would not
Be here!
Don’t forget that
Little girl
So dodge bullets
Run in circles from
Enemy fire
Play the games
Boys play
But don’t get caught with your pants down
Old ladies will expose you
Old men
Will laugh at you
All will despise you
For what you do not have
And will
Never have
But hey
The lies you tell
Are borrowed from the boys anyway
Aren’t they
But you should be better
Shouldn’t you
Why not?
(I won’t tell a soul.)

Even all night long while
the night train

pulls me on in my dream
like a needle.

Even then, down in my bed
my hand across the sheet

anyone’s hand
my face anyone’s face

are held in the mercy
and kissed

the water
the child

the friend
unlost.

The God of the World says,
“Feed me my customary meal
Of quaga tongues braised
In spearbill oil.”
And the Goddess of Earth replies,
“Your customary meal is extinct.”
“Bitch!” the God rages.
“Rapist!” the Goddess rises in rage.

Now what? We humans scurry like ants.
There is no answer.
Shall we turn on each other,
Choose up sides?

Righteous, the God declares,
“How can I maintain the good life
I have provided if you will not
Give me what you always have given?”
“Peevish, you old fool,” taunts the Goddess.
“Second childhood has left you
Nothing but an impotent whiner.”
“Impotent? Hah!” bellows the God.

Weapons fly, and words like thunderbolts,
To launch armies of love starved
For Jesus or Allah, the Promised Land
Or the family olive grove.

I cry, at a contradiction too deep
For even hypocrisy. But days
That add up to any lifetime
Still require cutting up onions
If we have any, washing laundry,
Just opening and closing doors,
Wiping a baby’s nose.

“I demand…!” the God bellows,
Frightened at a disobedient World,
A terror to a World unable to obey.
“I’ll heat the seas till
Ice bergs fly through the sky,”
The Goddess retorts,
Fed up beyond endurance.
“Stupid female,” the God snorts;
“Heat melts ice, not launches.
I’m the one who can launch mountains.”
“Your logic is hollow ritual,”
The Goddess replies, dripping ice.
“My ritual births the cyclone.”
“What can a cyclone birth?” the God
Strides haughty, “but famine and flood?”

Sandbags and storm cellars, we struggle,
Hugging each other or fighting.
But the sand is full of land mines;
The storm cellars have depleted uranium
In the aggregate for the concrete.
We bicker and flail.

Here and there, a blade of grass grows.
What sort of answer is that
For us humans?

© Uncle River 2008

A darkness over two lives
four decades
finally the secret spills out
one sister whispers to the other
time shifts into reverse
slides them back to
hot summer’s day
stepmother’s nerves
shredded by heat, squalor,
three children they’ve
not yet squelched

On the north edge of town
a world away
the birth of rock ‘n roll
the Music gettin’ ready for a night
on the roof at the Hi-D-Ho

The frayed cord snapped
and with it the child
popped like a wet towel
against the hard foundation
forty years ago we believed
without question stories of
babies falling off beds
onto their heads
the child was buried
on a hot, windy day,
forgotten…

…Until one day lately
the music sang itself from
one sister to another
and back again
until the notes made their way home

Found consonance in the tough heart
of a criminal district attorney
who inexplicably heard
the fain strains of song
two fat middle aged women
had the grace to sing.

© Cheryl M. Tyler, San Antonio, Texas 1997

Morning darkness, headlights, street lamps.
The shadow scuttles along beside the man,
Leaping off houses and behind dark
bushes,
Like a dog walking his master.

High then low as the terrain changes,
Melding with the flat or rough and
Then…quickly, disappears when
The man steps from walk to street.

Just a shadow born of form and light.
Having no life of its own but living
Off the substance of other objects and,
Dying when exposed to direct light of street
lamp.

A pansy,
butter-yellow against the snow,
strains against frosty burden.
Able, in deepest winter,
to stand bravely
as the coldest air
destroys her botanical fellows,
this velvety flower
cannot tolerate
the weight of wind-whipped
ice
that batters her softness.
Petals folding gracefully,
she bows her head
in snowy defeat.

c. 1997

GOLDEN APPLES

how so kindly

we nourish

this flowering

tree,

let none

deried

its blossoms.

To the side of the boat
I’ve nailed my heart,
to the side of the boat
where the foam-crests part.

Wash it with unceasing salt,
wash it, sea, wash it, sea.
You’re for consolation,
the land’s for misery.

To the strong prow
my heart is nailed.
Look, boat, you’re leaving
blood in your wake.

Wash it with tremendous salt,
wash it, sea, wash it, sea.
Or break it on the prow,
and set me free.

On the ship I’ve loaded
all the rubbish of my life.
Change it, sea, in the hundred days
you’ll have it for your wife.

Change it, sea, with your hundred winds,
wash it, sea, wash it, sea.
Give your gold and pearls to others,
but give forgetfulness to me!

it was a mulling sparce crowd
where i espied a stranger
looking back and looking back at me
pleasing to the eye was he
so i lie down - wrap myself around him
he showed he enjoyed the wrap around but did not move
just as i say ok self, and rise
an ol’ love flutters by
momentarily, and i
say self, it’s fine, it’s good
i’ve places to go and things to see
i’m young and free
running gleefully thru the grass
the cloud and i alight upon my bed
with the thrill of a gleeful grass running memory
the memory of eyes looking and looking again
memory of an old friend
then another
how are you?

down in the dirt where the living was poor
down in the love where my heart hid sore

and then along came James
he wanted to marry me, he
a joy to my heart long denied
i said “yes o yes”

then a couple of old biddies
right out and bluntly asked
“Are you gonna have sex.”
i said “yes o yes”

up pops the sun!

and in my up and declining years
electric oxygen tank breathing
post hysterectomy and complications i sing

“those

were

the

days my friend!”

This Easter I will pray
Because research shows
Those who pray are happier
Than those who Don’t and
God knows the news we
Watch day by day by day
Of a fucked- up planet
Pompous people and
Degenerating society
And like Christ on the
Cross, this World at the
Cross-roads in its crucifixion
asks are we forsaken and why?

Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me,
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea.

But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.

Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
When I embark;

For tho’ from out our bourne of time and place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crossed the bar.

How do you say night
unloads its heavy stone,
shades of bone fade
to white moonlight,
water moss unfurls
silk tongued scarves
in the milk dark pond,
she’s gone, she’s gone
all in a one word song?

Once upon a time.

Oh, they like to get you in a compromising position
They like to get you there and smile in your face
Well, they think they’re so cute when they got you in that condition
Well I think it’s a total disgrace
And I said:

I fight authority, Authority always wins
Well, I fight authority, Authority always wins
Well, I’ve been doing it since I was a young kid
I come out grinnin’
Well, I fight authority, Authority always wins

So I call up my preacher
I say, “Give me strength for Round 5.”
He said , “You don’t need no strength, you need to grow up son.”
I said, “Growing up leads to growing old and then to dying”
“OO and dying to me don’t sound like all that much fun.”
So I said:

I said Oh no no no (3X)
I fight authority Authority always wins

Lose your watch,
the seconds and minutes ticking by
will not help the rhythm

You must have a comfortable chair
soft enough to slip the dream-thoughts
from darkness into daylight

Drink coffee, or lots of tea
when your hand trembles, the words
fall more easily from pen to page

A large supply of chocolate is good
especially dark—the combination of sweet
and bitter provide flavor to the lines

Wear layers:
you never know where you may be traveling
along the black and white road

Scab land, they call it,
ridges of fissile rock and crumbling shale,
incrustation over earth-skin break.
No plow moves on where stone
proclaims stay clear.

Seen from the air the cultivated acres
barley, rye and wheat
stretch long and wide.
Fed by rain and river, field after field
brings grain, life-giver.
But dotted here and there
to east the flow of growth
the scabs appear.

Beautiful fracture. See
thick rind turned inside out,
a heard revealing fact
the chronic wound and want
stubbornly not healing.

Their sorrow is something like
buyer’s remorse. They chose
their paths but now regret it,
realizing– too late– they could

have gone to the seashore
or forests of sweet pines.
But there is one I like, ignored
by engineers, looking like

the sorriest of them all. It’s off
the map in Idaho and rises
and falls, goes over rickety bridges,
seems almost to lose its way

completely but finally staggers
into the yard of the old farm
one sepia evening, the years
peeling back like stripping bark

from a willow. It’s the time
the old man cleared the land
for the homestead and hammered
the old house together

with his bare fists.
Tonight I catch the scent
of sawdust, the new siding still
white as a stripped willow.

my heels click on the cobbles
as i wander down this dark alley
what’s behind leers
what’s ahead seems to menace

there are doorways
with hawkers selling their wares
do this, believe that
selling not the truth but conformity

but instead of safety
i put more doors behind
creating more leers
and walk forward into what

what is up ahead in the dark
it doesn’t help to squint
each door hidden til too late
and the last door possibly oblivion

my heels click on the cobbles
as i wander down this dark alley
what’s behind leers
what’s ahead menaces