[Note from Kathie Malley-Morrison: Today we welcome guest author Tom Greening, a humanistic psychologist, member of the American Psychological Association division on peace psychology, and a poet.]
Bombing Civilians
There was a time, before Guernica,
when it was considered barbaric
to bomb civilians.
Then came Coventry, London, Hamburg, Dresden,
Hiroshima and the rest.
We’ve outgrown our squeamishness and,
as one door gunner put it,
“There was a My Lai every day.”
Thus do we evolve,
and out there in the universe
there are lots of targets
we can go gunning for.
If they are inhabited
by strange or familiar creatures
they’d better start preparing.
Tom Greening