What if the War Came Home

(ed. note: I think what America lacks, due to it's indoctrination by television, driven by the consumer culture, is empathy. The following poem is by Amy Fugate, 22 years old, a Student at Purdue, studying Creative Writing. She gives me hope there are a still a few humans among our young.)
from Poets Against the War website
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What if the War Came Home

What if the war came home.
In a town, like any American town,
you see a desert and then the soldiers
in lines, in columns, arriving on the battlefield.

Your town became a desert,
because this is a dream or a blurring.
Because you wanted this so much.
For them to come home. But never
like this, you think. Hanging your head

outside your truck, you see your boy,
Private Jeffrey, blow your neighbor's head off
near a hay roll, but it's not really a hay roll
because this is a desert, you remember.

Ted bleeds out in the dust,
still clutching his rifle.
His other hand is over his eye
where the bullet entered.

Opening up your truck door,
you walk toward your son,
who is bent over Ted and heaving.

He doesn't see you
and that seems right
because this is a dream.

And then the produce store,
where you bought apples with your wife, explodes.

Apples turning to sand
as they rain down from the sky.
And everyone goes running.

Soldiers screaming orders
at family they don't see.

Just enemies, now. And the way they run,
like in the movies, you think.
In the movies where people run toward nothing.