Suicide Missions

This picture is from Dennis Holmes Designs
 www.illustrationsof.com

Humans send young men to war.
Termites send old ladies.

Too old

to forage for their colonies
they provide one final service—

sacrificing themselves,

breaking apart their bodies,
creating a toxic goo

that seals the tunnels

that lead to the nest,
that kills the predators.

With their abdominal walls broken,

the defenders die.
 

Old men start the wars, but it is young men (and these days, young women) who must fight and die.  I always thought we should send the old men to war.  There might be fewer wars if we did.

© 2012 Catherine Giordano

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Are you interested in the secret lives of insects?
it is fascinating.
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Not Yet Begun to Fight

In the wilds of Montana,
five traumatically wounded veterans
search for a balm from war.

One young man lost an eye.

One young man lost a leg.
One young man lost his voice.

All have lost something

more precious—combat taints
your soul in large measure.

In the war on Terror,

you are asked to do
very violent things to people.

War is never really over

for those who fight, or
for those who love them.

The poignant documentary,

“Not Yet Begun to Fight”,
puts a face to war.

The mix of wild beauty

and ugly reality
is no accident.

The film is ultimately

about the loss of identity,
about struggle, and about
the resilience of the human spirit.

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© 2012 Catherine Giordano

Last year on Memorial Day, I wrote a poem called “In Remembrance. I wasn’t satisfied with it and I wrote it last Sunday.  I was struck by the similarities in my poem and the news story about the documentary film, “Not Yet Begun to Fight.”  My second stanza is: “ All wars take a terrible toll/All wars poison the earth/All wars poison the human soul./Broken minds,  broken bodies, broken lives,/ Soldier or civilian,/No one survives whole."