The military and the monetary
Get together whenever they think it's necessary
They have turned our brothers and sisters into mercenaries,
They are turning the planet into a cemetery.

The military and the monetary
Use the media as intermediaries.
They are determined to keep the citizens secondary
They make so many decisions that seem arbitrary.

We've been standing behind the 'Commander-in-Chief'
Who was under a spotlight, shaking like a leaf
Because the ship of state had landed on an economic reef
So we knew he'd be bringing us messages of grief.

The military and the monetary
Were 'Shielded' by January and went 'Storming' into February.
They brought us pot-bellied Generals as luminaries.
Two weeks before I hadn't heard of the sons of Bitches
And then all of a sudden they were legendary.

They took the honor from the honorary
They took the dignity from the dignitaries
They took the secrets from the secretary
But they left the 'bitch' in 'obituary'

Yeah, they had some 'smart bombs'
But they had some dumb ones as well
They scared the hell outta CNN in that Baghdad hotel.

The military and the monetary
The military and the monetary
The military and the monetary

Get together whenever they think it's necessary
War in the desert sure could seem scary
But they beamed out the war to all of their subsidiaries
Tried making 'so damn insane' (Saddam Hussein) a worthy

adversary

Keeping all of the citizens secondary
Scaring old folks into coronaries
Making us all wonder if all of this was really, truly necessary.

We've got to work for peace.
We've got to work for peace.
If we all believed in peace we could have peace.
The only thing wrong with peace is that
You can't make no money from it.

The military and the monetary
Get together whenever they think it's necessary
They've turned our brothers and sisters into mercenaries
We are turning parts of the planet into a cemetery.

We hounded the Ayatollah religiously,
Bombed Libya and killed Qadafi's son hideously.
We turned our back on our allies, the Panamanians
Watched Ollie North selling guns to the Iranians
Witnessed Gorbachev slaughtering Lithuanians
So we better warn the Amish, they may bomb the

Pennsylvanians.

We've got to work for peace
Peace ain't coming this way.
We've got to work for peace.

Peace is not (merely) the absence of war
It is the absence of the rumors of war and the threats of war
And the preparation for war.
Peace is not (merely) the absence of war
We will have all touched the power of peace within ourselves.
Because we will have come to peace within ourselves.

Peace ain't gonna be easy.
Peace ain't gonna be free.
We've got to work for peace.

[Now and Then: The Poems of Gil Scott-Heron, Payback Press/Canongate
Books, Edinburgh, Scotland, 2001, p. 29-31. Recorded on the "Spirits" CD, TVT
Records, 1994.]

Tags: Saswat, Literature, Black Power, USA