{"id":21562,"date":"2012-09-17T12:00:09","date_gmt":"2012-09-17T11:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=21562"},"modified":"2012-09-14T17:51:38","modified_gmt":"2012-09-14T16:51:38","slug":"not-ours","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2012\/09\/not-ours\/","title":{"rendered":"Not Ours"},"content":{"rendered":"

I intervened in a dog fight
\nto save my beloved dachshund’s life
\nand felt like I’d plunged into World War III.
\nThe noise was deafening,
\nit seemed to last an eternity,
\nand although I prevailed,
\nI got bit.
\nWell-anesthetized in the emergency ward,
\ngetting my minor wounds stitched up,
\nI comment to the doctor on
\nthe far worse plight of Afghani civilians
\nbeing maimed and killed by mines and bombs.
\n“Three a day, by the mines,” I remark.
\n“Not ours,” he replies.
\nAh yes\u2014the former Evil Empire’s.
\nLet’s compute how many quarts or liters of blood
\nhave been spilled by whom,
\nand explain to God or the Martians,
\nor maybe the dead,
\nthat we only spilled some of it,
\nand always for a good cause.
\nWill I then feel free
\nto ignore Afghanistan again
\nand rededicate myself
\nto what really counts,
\nto protecting a pampered pet?<\/p>\n

Published in <\/em>After Thoughts, a book of poems about the 9\/11 attack. <\/em><\/p>\n

_____________________<\/p>\n

Tom Greening:<\/em><\/strong> \u201cI engage in five professional activities:<\/em>
\nFaculty Member at Saybrook University<\/em>
\nPrivate Practice of Psychotherapy<\/em>
\nClinical Professor of Psychology, UCLA<\/em>
\nInternational Editor of the Journal of Humanistic Psychology<\/em>
\nWriting (Poetry).\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I comment to the doctor on
\nthe far worse plight of Afghani civilians
\nbeing maimed and killed by mines and bombs.
\n“Three a day, by the mines,” I remark.
\n“Not ours,” he replies.
\nAh yes\u2014the former Evil Empire’s.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[182],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry-format"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21562"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21562\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}