Why Is It? Poem by David Harris

It makes me angry when I read
how murders, rapists and drug dealers
can be treated like kings;
even the scroungers of our society
are elevated in stature.
Yet our armed forces,
those brave men and women
who go out to battlefields
are frowned upon
and treated with deprivation
by those who send them to war.
They are the last ones to get help,
substandard help at that.
Yet child murders have praise heaped on them,
given new identities
all because they passed a couple of exams.
If you go and fight for your country,
you are treated with scorn
for doing a duty a lot would not do.
Maybe if they refused to go
were would the politicians be.
They would have to enlist
all those they have treated like kings,
the dregs of our society.
Let them go to war with meagre equipment,
let the enemy take their lives
and save us the job
of having to keep them in a kingly fashion.
Of course this will never happen,
only the brave go to fight
while the cowards stay safe at home
and live off what the brave
should be getting and never get.

29 July 2008