Nightmares of a Radical (1967)

From The Western Socialist #5, 1967

In the bottom of my Campbell soup cans 

Vietnamese orphans squabble on a trash heap

For the freedom to lick empty G.I. lint. 

From the crackle of my Dow Saran-wrap 

Flaming "targets" scream and old men weep.

A Saigon mother in my wife's sad eyes 

Whores for Marines to feed her baby girl 

My fenced yard is full of mental refugees. 

Ten thousand miles of Pacific Ocean fail 

To pacify them; nothing shuts off this newsreel.

I, a socialist, whose children salute 

The stars and stripes, whose hands exchange the buck.

Whose telephone supplies the guns we shoot, 

I try to believe I'm better than a hawk 

Because I held a sign and gave a talk. 

Stan Blake