Frank Simone

New York poet who hails from The Sugar Hill (W 145th –155th) section of Manhattan. He has been actively on the ‘Poetry’ scene for 15 years and has been published in several magazines and on several web-sites, as well as being on cable TV.

Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace

The garbage picker wears his donated charity a jacket sewn with the words "Atheists Say God Bless America" I swear I saw this old man shuffle with his heavy bag full of Tin Cans sitting pretty in the Persian Gulf With Tomahawks ready to scalp a few Metrocards scavenged from the floor Of the 125th Street Station Overlooking Harlem "There’s a war on, don’t ya know it?" past those buildings ‘bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young’ I could hear its Hughes swelling up with colors In the fires of the sun someone else’s city is burning up ‘til its tar on the rooftops chimneys gone up in a puff of smoke in heavy diesel oil crude and bitter sweet That father who wishes his boy was eating chicken at the kitchen table And his glass was filled with milk on Sunday Moses leads his flock right to the Dead Sea, but we all know who really took his son to that land of hot honey in March to the place where things begin to stick take hold and crystallize into amber like fossilized candy, O’ sugar, O’ Oil, God, this great nation! Take a good, a good look from the 125th Street Station

and see that old man with his Jerry Cans That’s Uncle Sam the undertaker

1)"bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young’ from

; "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" Langston Hughes

(American 1902-1967)

2) Tomahawks ( a type of missile)

3) Tin Cans ( a metonym for destroyers)

4) Jerry Cans ( WWII cans to hold gasoline )

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