DU

My name is Mikhaelo
I like to play with shiny toys
I’m just a child
Like other little boys
What’s leukemia
Won’t somebody tell
Is it as pretty
As this little bullet shell

My name is Hanan
I’ll be dead within a year
But if I could speak
And if somehow you could hear
I’d ask some questions
Maybe some that you could answer
Like what’s uranium
And why was I born with cancer

I’m Juanita
For me, life’s been short and strange
Born with no arms
Here beside the bombing range
They call it DU
The stuff that made my life this way
And my parents were arrested
At the protest yesterday

I have no name
On this military base
Born and died here
A child without a face
To serve his country
My father went off to war
And it followed him home
Back to the Mississippi shore

I am your baby
The poisoned children of the earth
And I will haunt you
Wherever you give birth
In the war zones
Whichever side you’re on
Because the dust is never settled
Once the battle’s dead and gone

Yes, I’m the future
Of a planet on it’s knees
Radiation
Sickness and disease
I’m all the armies
I’m the life that couldn’t be
And when you see another baby
Think of me
When you see another baby
Think of me

“DU” first appeared on the 2001 CD, Living In These Times.

Depleted Uranium is not depleted of radiation, though the name might sound like it is. It’s highly radioactive. It’s nuclear waste. But instead of attempting to store it somewhere in relative safety, or better yet, not creating it in the first place, the US military sees fit to put it in their munitions, and turn places like Iraq into radioactive wastelands, with a skyrocketing cancer rate as a direct result of these US war crimes. Also American soldiers suffer terribly from the effects of DU in Iraq and in firing ranges on military bases throughout the US where DU is regularly used.