(November 6, 1976-April 22, 2004)
A Poem for Glenn Beck
In Honor of Pat Tillman
Glenn Beck! There is something we miss
in this country
that has made both of us
think about honor
and since you have just had the decency
to apologize on Fox News August 29, 2010
(I have a big fat mouth)
for calling our President a racist New York Times, August 29 2010
let me apologize in turn
for writing a whole book about America
of one hundred thousand words
in which the noun honor does not occur American War Machine
when both of us
along with your huge red state audience
and my tiny blue state one
should be able to agree
to recognize and celebrate
the honor of Pat Tillman
who gave up a lucrative NFL career
to enlist as a U.S. Ranger
and fought in the Iraq war
with (as he noted in his journal)
little or no justification
other than our imperial whim Krakauer Where Men Win Glory 167
and then after emails
about his desire to talk to Chomsky Krakauer Where Men Win Glory 227
was killed two months later
by a comrade in “friendly fire”
Pat Tillman is what we have missed for a long time —
a national hero!
Not like the hypocrites above him
as high as the level of Rumsfeld’s office
and eventually the White House Krakauer Where Men Win Glory 307-8 324
who in an election year
ordered a cover-up
and then a cover-up of the cover-up
burning his clothes and his notebook
in what his Ranger brother called
a series of intentional falsehoods
that meet the legal definition for fraud Krakauer Where Men Win Glory 319
(with the destruction of evidence
and three bullet holes
in a tight cluster in the forehead
the doctor suspected criminal intent) Krakauer Where Men Win Glory 317
Where are you Woody Guthrie?
And where are you Pete Seeger?
Is there not now some Leonard Cohen
who can bring us all together
to sing in the football stadiums
and poetry boutiques
across America
in honor of Pat Tillman
and condemn those hypocrites
who as could have been predicted
punished the men at the bottom
including the innocent Krakauer Where Men Win Glory 311
while General McChrystal of JSOC Joint Special Operations Command
whom the Army’s own inquiry
recommended be disciplined
for giving misleading answers http://www.johntreed.com/McChrystal.html
and who had already presided
over the torture and cover-up at Camp Nama Esquire August 2006
was promoted to the highest rank? http://www.johntreed.com/McChrystal.html
Cf. Jon Krakauer, Where Men Win Glory: the Odyssey of Pat Tillman (New York: Doubleday, 2009)
Peter Dale Scott’s latest book of poems, Mosaic Orpheus, appeared in 2009 from McGill-Queen’s University Press. It can be ordered from Amazon.com. His other chief poetry books are the three volumes of his trilogy Seculum: Coming to Jakarta: A Poem About Terror (1989), Listening to the Candle: A Poem on Impulse (1992), and Minding the Darkness: A Poem for the Year 2000. In addition he has published Crossing Borders: Selected Shorter Poems (1994), published in Canada as Murmur of the Stars. In November 2002 he was awarded the Lannan Poetry Award.
Poetry and other websites are encouraged to repost this poem (with attribution to GlobalResearch.ca).
