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.