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Ready to Kill

by Carl Sandburg, 1916

Ten minutes now I have been looking at this.
 I have gone by here before and wondered about it.
 This is a bronze memorial of a famous general
 Riding horseback with a flag and a sword and a revolver on him.
 I want to smash the whole thing into a pile of junk to be hauled away to the scrap yard.
 I put it straight to you,
 After the farmer, the miner, the shop man, the factory hand, the fireman and the teamster,
 Have all been remembered with bronze memorials,
 Shaping them on the job of getting all of us
 Something to eat and something to wear,
 When they stack a few silhouettes
         Against the sky
         Here in the park,
 And show the real huskies that are doing the work of the world, and feeding people instead of butchering them,
 Then maybe I will stand here
 And look easy at this general of the army holding a flag in the air,
 And riding like hell on horseback
 Ready to kill anybody that gets in his way,
 Ready to run the red blood and slush the bowels of men all over the sweet new grass of the prairie.

Published in Chicago Poems
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