A short poem I wrote long, long ago

Many, many years ago, I was a crewman on a mobile battlefield nuclear missile system called the Pershing II. (Picture a flatbed tractor trailer with a 30 foot nuclear tipped missile on the back.)


Those of us who crewed them used to sit around on quiet nights and shoot the bull about what we would do if we ever had to actually launch one of our missiles.

Many of us, myself included, argued over the 'guilt factor' of incinerating 10's of thousands of people with the push of a button.

I couldn't express my feelings properly except in prose:

Fire claws innocents without number
As charred cinders replace green life
Death takes good and evil to their slumber
And guilt stabs into me with its knife