McNamara's Ghosts

The Best & Brightest were neither
It wasn't only a Battleship they steered wrong
They looked up at Dawn's Slippery Sky and cried “Ours”
Thought a nation's most sacred trees could be tortured into spying
Feared the Creaky Springs of Youth more than Napalm Rings of Atomic Warplanes
Loaded up Heroin Haystacks with Hidden Needles, created Dr. Paranoia with injection
           of Bad Magic Breath, & described the Wide-Eyed Corpse as a drop in the hour's
           popularity poll:

If history's lessons are now all learned, why Carnegie's hired soldier-ghosts still wearing
           steel-toed boots to bash in living skulls?
Four decades after “Howl,” why croaking Moloch of heavy judgment & skeleton treasury
           still worshipped as Angelic Guardian of Father Knows Best Family?
Why Tantalus still sacrifice his DeVine child & assemble Archivo death squads to grab a
            few runaway Arbenzian banana republics?
Why Urizenic newspaper of record Editorialists always so righteously angry thirty
           years too late?
Why is it still so fucking tough to be poor in America—is it New Deal or Civil War
           those robber-baron phantasms want to fight over?

Ah, citizens slouching toward 500 TV channels, isn't it fun watching our retired execs
           rip out their apologetic livers?
Isn't it cool to hear McNamara's melting historical sax moaning a true blues riff?
Got to admit, it's cool, it IS COOL! knowing even McNamara's samsara
hangs out looking looking looking for forgiveness & love!!!
Okay, now can we apologize to Vietnam
for the 3 million dead?

Eliot Katz 1995