Fists on Fire: Poetry from the Heart of the Revolution

WEAPON OF MASS DESTRUCTION

by Jack Hirschman

For almost twenty

years, these streets have been home

to the victims


-- and there have been more

each year -- of the horrible

use of the weapon


of mass destruction

that has grown more evil

each succeeding year.


Surely you know it.

Look at the sidewalk and the

ravaged body on it.


Look in that doorway

where your brother or sister

is curled up in pain.


How many god bless yous

have followed you home, how

many thank yous.


You're a veteran

of all this by now, you're a

street person who's seen


so many disappeared,

murdered, murdering each other

-- the silence, the great


silence of shame

under all words, all noises,

turns in on itself,


is itself lost, no

longer getatable, might

as well be dead,


who has lived knowing

the weapon of mass destruction

intimately


precisely as the

dirty tip of a boot that

looks you in the eye


when you wake in the

morning in some shelter

anywhere you can get to.


O weapon of mass

destruction, we've inspected

you all our lives


and find you everywhere

capitalism, and want you

irrevocably dead.