Thank You For Not Serving Poem by Raj Dronamraju

Thank you for not serving
Thank you for not being another cog in the war machine's wheel
Thank you for scraping together the money for college tuition some place else and not taking their blood money
Thank you for not putting on a uniform and ticking off lives

War outside of defense is the criminal muscle of empire

Thank you for not succumbing to the recruiters' well rehearsed sales pitch and their colorful brochures
Thank you for not killing people in other countries
Old people and children and wedding parties and people planting vegetables
Killing people close up and killing people from far away

A just war twists tongues and strafes logic's bungalow with indiscriminate gunfire

Thank you for not letting the hollow pied piper of patriotism lead you along with the other rats
Thank you for not pulling a trigger or pressing a button
Turning on the fountains of blood which shoot up then shower down on the working people, the poor of the world