Push Button War

This poen was written before I joined the military. I have no
date on it but I think I wrote it between 1975 and 1977 while I
was at Webb High School.



As I Sit at the Center of this Push-Button War

I sit in my cellar all night long,
Waiting for the teller to say of the throng,
Of people and places that soon will be gone,
As I wait in my cellar for the clock to go "bong"
It means that the day of judgement is here
As we wait for the bright new nation to appear,
For now I see the sign that tells of there plight
The hissing and booing of the infinite flight,
And all of us know life is a bore,
As we sit at the center of this push-button war.

And now all the radioactive dust that goes up
Will come down again to fill my cup
And for your information
There's plenty of Decimation
And it's only been an hour
Since I went to the shower
To find out some more
About the push-button war.

We all know its been a very short war
There is plenty of gore
But it is still a big bore
And the thing that I found
Is that the buildings are down
And maybe I should repopulate the race
In order to find a new flying ace
To kill people by the millions
If not by the billions
And I liked folk lore
At the start of this war

Although it seems the worst is over
For five hundred thousand years
As I look at the ground and shed a few tears
For the ash and the trash of the big plane crash
That carried for their side our great destruction
And all of the work when we start reconstruction
I think of the building, the destroying, the helping, the hurting 
And all of the Gore
Just because we wanted a push-button war.



© Tim Dolan, 1977