Put Down Your Weapons Poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar

Put down your weapons!
What do you defend?
Your right to bury natives,
Upon their own land?
What images of grandeur
Do you perceive?
Bugle calls from cavalier mountings...
Will not come forth descending,
With surrounding cavalries
Conquesting in glee and bravado!
What messages do you send...
To ancestors awakened from this grief?
Your ways to conquer peace,
Has been defeated by barbaric imaginings!
Put down your weapons!
The alarms that ring,
Come from your own shores you sell...
And leave abandoned and unfenced!
Your backyards are beginning to burn in flames!
And yet you stake claim to treasures not yours.
Not worthy of the blood you shed,
Or interests of those displeased by the cost of guilt!
Put down your weapons,
Or eternally bow your head,
In sorrow with no guarantee...
You will be recognized,
At your own doorstep that has been sold
Prior to your return
Of any valor professed to have earned!
These are not those days to relive in glory!