I Cannot Stand the Guns

All night the guns Like barking dogs would not go to sleep All night the mothers heart Roamed weeping the sinister streets And still the air explodes Like fourth of July Or even Christmas When the heart is silent most of all The fireworks like stars explode As if some longing Some macabre need Leaving trenches where soldiers bleed Where mines maim the promise of tomorrow And children become fragments of humanity Limbless and listless Against the merchants of ammunition Guns shipped in cradles of greed Like unwanted medication Or some foul chemical for unwanted weed In the Third World ghetto A child can have no dream Until the city sleeps Until the manufacturers Of wars and the instruments of death Have crumbled in a heap To weep On the still form of a personal loss A child dead its own blood A bitter cost For power that death still turn to dross All the guns Angrier than our butchered sleep Through glottoral cordite weep. I cannot stand the guns My soul for silence yearns Will someone blot out that noise, please The innocent weeping without conscience Stop them where they make them Collect them where they ship them Ban them where they use them Destroy them I cannot stand the guns All night barking like mad dogs Against the peace of sleep.