Marlboro Country, 1975

On Merchandising Machoism & Murder

Welcome to where the flavor is –
The flavor of fresh, menthol Viet Cong
and premium Virginia tobacco blended with flaming napalm.

Breathe deeply and enjoy the fragrance ah
polyester body bags 'n
villages blasted off any map.

Taste the excitement of Marlboro Country –
a place where new things happen fast.

If you're a man who enjoys excitement
with a hunger dying ta be satisfied
join the army and shoot away –
we offer you a blast day after fuckin' day!

Bored with life?
Take a puff!
Smoke this crap 'n soon enuff
you'll be tooting 'yankee doodle'
while yer machine gun chants 'tut-tut-tut!'

Terri: (with a mixture of revulsion and disbelief) What disturbs me most about this poem is the sheer, calculated level of uncaring. It takes the language of a cozy afternoon smoke and wraps it around the stench of napalm.

Kris: (with a clinical, detached gaze) Satire is often an insulation from pain. Perhaps the author was using a jagged, ugly humor to keep from being swallowed whole by a harsh horror. If you don't laugh at the absurdity of marketing death, it might be difficult to stop screaming.

Sam: (with a faint, cynical smile) To smile at death itself – is that not brave? But look at the bravado of it all. To stare into the abyss, to smile at death while machine guns 'chant' - doesn't that represent something undeniably heroic?

Tim: (sighing wearily) Perhaps, but at times I wonder if the author doesn't secretly admire the very thing he's criticizing. There's a pulse in these lines—a frantic, adrenaline-fueled energy—that makes me fear he's half-in-love with the 'blast' even as he mocks the 'crap' they're selling. The heroism of nihilism is not actually heroic! A braver thing is to affirm things that are fragile, things that can be easily destroyed, things that can bleed.