WAR Poem: JUSTIFIED, by Dale E. Ritterbusch

It had been years since
I’d gotten out of the Army.
No excuse then.

But someone had dumped
four bald tires on the lot line
shared with an incorrigible neighbor.

The city sent me a letter—
brusque, mean-spirited, informing me
of my violation: No tires allowed
for disposal and a fine if I did not
remove them.

I wanted the cops to fingerprint
the tires, find the miscreant
who had dumped them on my lawn.

I thought about dumping them
on that bureaucrat’s lawn
at four o’clock in the morning. Something
for him to wake up to.

I thought of writing a letter,
but it is fruitless to argue with the city.

Nothing but futility and more aggravation
in that.

So I disguised them as garbage
and dumped them at the city dump,
the Disposal Center, as the city
prefers it to be called.

When someone left a grocery cart
on my curb, I called the store
that cart belonged to,
asked them to come and retrieve it.

They did not. Fearing another letter
from the city for this detritus left on my curb,
I called the grocer again,

And again, no response.

The cart sat there gleaming in the sun.
I imagine it carried someone’s
belongings, and the homeless one
left it behind; perhaps an errant wheel
made the cart too hard to push.

Or, perhaps, someone in the neighborhood
with no resources for a car or a cab
pushed his groceries home
and left the cart on my curb.

Regardless,
I called again. Nothing. The next day
I took a crow bar and beat it to death,
bent every bit of wire on that cart,
beat it until it was nearly flat.

I took my reciprocating saw
and cut it into manageable sections,
loaded it up and took it to the dump.

I flung each piece as far as I could
far as my anger took me.
I felt justified in my anger,
felt good about winning the war.