Ping Pong Poem by David Keig

I killed them one by one
methodically
never looking in their eyes
gun to the head
and bang
pull the trigger
and that sound
would ping and pong around me
a musical death sound.

PAUSE

I'd been quartered near to basra
we'd got rid of most of those
sorry - god damned arabs -
wearing fundamental clothes
the truth is that it got to me
and everything i've done
i thought was for god and country
and i thought that we had won.

But now the truth is testifed
and i have to make a plea
that all those things i done to them
was on orders - don't you see -
i am not a angry man
i have not a grain in me
that would really ever lead my men
into such depravity.

OK - we did things different
in that gaol house near baghdad
OK - we may have overstepped
the orders that we had
but we were never questionning
all the orders that they gave
we had heard our president
say this country we would save.

Those damned iraquis had so much
of evil weaponry
not just guns and planes and tanks
but those WMDs.

So we could never find them
and they may well not be there
but sitting in this courtroom
i am making up a prayer
why if saddam was so evil
did we have to........

PAUSE

Ping pong those bullets raced
clean and tight behind my face.