Apparatus

Saigon, Vietnam 1963
Elderly Buddhist monk sets himself ablaze
Suicide as protest to the Diem regime
Complicit in U.S./French hegemony

D.C., Pentagon 1965
32 year old pacifist, father of three
Douses himself with gallons of kerosene
Under the window of McNamara

Detroit, Michigan 1965
82 year old woman burns herself to death
Despondent with the horrors of the war in Indochina
Charred bones thrown into the cogs of Apparatus

With great guns and reater hate
This beast thought itself equal to the force of life
Some say Apparatus cannot be stopped
Some say Apparatus cannot be stopped
Some say Apparatus cannot be stopped
One swallows dry and takes a chance

Defeat of the global American Empire
By a revolution of peasants abroad
And astonishing protest at home
'War is the health of the state'
And this Apparatus hungers for flesh
Those who threw themselves into that machine
Slippery with foam and blood
Choking the hangman with noose drawn taut
Made the gallows as holy as the cross
Some say Apparatus cannot be stopped
But one swallows dry and takes a chance