I got so many friends
Who’d be willing to stand
In an endless line
Just to find a sign
For the end of times

Bathroom reading
The left behind
******* propaganda

Pants wetting
While forgetting logic

Riling themselves up
With biblical justice
From a petulant deity

And that is just
An inkling of what
Is gnawing at me

Programed people
Getting brainwashed to believe
Far out fairly tales

Those poorly conceived
Spiritual explanations
For what we can see
Things that can be explained
If you studied diligently

I got a problem with
Guilt for built in sin
From a god who made men
An all-powerful being who condemns
My family and friends
For what comes naturally
For desires deep and genetic

When preacher teach things that are pathetic
Flood stories and tales of whales
With men living in them
Burning witches and the apostic
Because of some drunk prophet
Who is vile and caustic
Some slick wicked trickster
Who convince you to demean
Our sisters
Said all sin is their fault
And birth is the punishment
That the fruits of evolution
Are seeds of deceit

And this is just a sample
Of why religion is bothering me

Immortality is dissolution of the self
Mind dissolving in the acid of time
Losing loved one
Losing memories
Losing passions
Changing patterns
Whiles others remain stagnant
Boredom
Mental fatigue
Cosmic defeat
Is what immortality
Will do to me

They want a professional
Serious
Uniformed
Individual
To conform
To company
Policies
Hair trimmed
Beard gone
Shirt tucked in
Socks long
Black shoes
Scripted interaction
Lacking satisfaction
Just sterile reactions
A perfect attitude
Till I am a
Twin of
The men
And women
Who work with me

He say it is his right
To take what he wants
Respect by a bullet
Money by the bank full
And property from the poor
Drunk on false history
Abusing society
God complex in shadows
This swaggering drunk
Takes what he wants
With a little pill in the drink
He puts the world to sleep
***** in hand to demand
What he thinks
He is owed as a man
Robbing and murdering
****** and lying
The courts let him off
The cops call him boss
While I fluster in rage
Watching that *****
Get his way

"The pity of war, the pity war distills". - Wilfred Owen"

Just as a feral war begs for armistice,
    a season of peace engenders
a violence vacuum that begs to be filled
    as surely as a hollow begs for a pond.

It seems a cosmic battle rages
      between the oversouls of people
who would chisel a sculpture to grace
     and those who would hack off its arms.

History’s fools fire up their bully horns
     shouting proud oratory to ignorance -
and lemmings goose-step to the precipice -
      doomed to plunge into a sea of misery.  

Then there is quiet - guilty and reflective.
     How could we let this happen
with so much gain and loss in the balance?

and the sculptors of civilization
      find fresh marble to once again
carve reason, beauty, purpose
      from the acrid ashes of pride.
    
But the oversoul of hate will brood and re-fester
     as long as it's thought noble to **** for a cause.

© 2016 by Robert Charles Howard

I have been coddling you in swaddling cloth
Speaking while gently critiquing your lack of truth seeking
Holding half of my heart in so I can let you begin
To be better than what you see and believe
I have been daydreaming and scheming
With verses, stanzas, lines, and pages
Simplifying while truth lying
Taking a creative license to inspire  
Before the lighted fire expires within you
Making my milk sour in disappointment
Seeing days end and more tragedies begin
But still struggling to believe in the human
There is an acrid odor amongst us
A bitter taste that tightens the tongue
But I am not done
The light in me will see how splendid we can be
And in my poetry I will show you how to be
As beautiful as I know you can be

The children played
With fake rage
Displayed
The false bullets sprayed
And bloodless pictures
That the media portrayed
Were meant to dull
Our thinking ways
If only they could see
The black coffin
The red tree
That they will be
Buried beneath
Perhaps then
My dearest friends
They would choose to play
Tea parties instead
Of these childish war games

The greatest propaganda
In America is
The delusion
That you are free

Though you do not
Rest in a cell
You are not free

When you submit
To the ruling class
To get by
You are not free

Standards and laws
Made to protect
Divest you
From yourself
You are not free

For the sake of stability
You conform to a job
That you hate
A good little drone
You are not free

Even if you do not agree
With the laws that they make
You must obey
Or they will take you away
You are not free

In order to maintain
The basic family bonds
You are constrained
By their wants and needs
You are not free

If you want to fish
Or hunt
To feed your family
Or just for fun
You need a license
You are not free

Even when you vote to decide
What’s wrong and what’s right
And elect politicians for your side
Those people lie
Doing for the rich and their own kind
And the choice you had
Be it good or bad
Was a fractionally effective
Cause you are not free

Tolls on the roads
Taxes on your checks
Fines and other fees
Cause you are not free

Been a while since the draft
But that could come back
If the private war contractors
Ever get busted
And taken out of the field
The army will make you yield
Or imprison or ****
Cause you are not free

And freedom of speech
Could cost you your job
Slander if spoken
Libel if written
The rich lawyers and judges
Give and take permissions
PC speech
Abstract unwritten rules
Condemn you and yours
Cause you are not free

Any laws that you break
The ones you did not make
Could turn you into
A prisoner of the state
Enslaved, forced labor
Cause you are not free

And if you want to leave
This great country
To travel freely
You must pay for
A small passport
Or you will be confined
To the imaginary lines
People made up
Cause you are not free

Some will say
If you speak this way
You are not truly American
That other countries are worse
But what they lack
Or if I can’t solve this problem
Does not detract from the fact
Does not make lies true
What I am telling you
Is you are not free

I’m tired of this rant
Cause the list is to long
And I wish I was wrong
So tell me please
Where is your true liberty

How many mothers are aggrieved of themselves
Shattered by the heart of matters which they take part of the blame
No longer denying in their crying
That they too were made fools
Beggars yearning for a redo
To undo the terrible truths
Revealed and reviled

How many parents would stab their own heart
To undo the part they played
On any given horrendous day
And see the ones they lost
Returned
Unburnt
Unscathed
Unbathed in blood
By the horrors of the day

And whilst some cannot rewrite those dark nights
Perhaps they can pass on the lessons in wrongs
So other mothers can make this life right

Our nation is a father
Who spends sons unwisely
Wasting their wonder
On warrior blunders

In nations swelling pride
We see our children
Committing suicide
Honor bound to pursue
Patriotic truths

If mothers ran the world
Would it all be better
Or would maternal malice
Malform modern intent

Blue eyes telling lies
Of war and all its’ glories
Grey hair sitting there
In old reclining lawn chairs
Celebrating fantastic stories

But I know the lives lost
Were not always spent wisely
Were not always sacrificed justly
Why does it feel like no one else sees
Have I become Don Quixote

Fatherland motherland
Better planned
Would be brotherhood
And sisterhood
All that love spent for the good

Like this poem
We have lost our way
Perhaps better stanza
Will return the wisdom
Of our better sages

There was a man sitting at the docks with a boat as he watched a young boy drown. The drowning boy cried help me in gurgled tones. The man with the boat at the dock sat and said "I will pray for you." He prayed patiently waiting for an answer while the boy drowned.

religion should be about hope
not putting fear in other people's souls
should be about about peace
not about starting wars
about forgiveness
not about punishing innocent hearts

imagine all the people living life in peace

but how can one do this when bombs are thrown
instead of love
when moms cry
and children die
peace is impossible to be seen
when music dies and we hear only desperate hearts
praying
begging
wondering why.

we have different Gods and rules
our prayers sound different
our holy books are not the same
and
there are many sins in our souls
but
you're not God, nor am I
and none of us should play
the game of washing sins away
with spilled blood
and shed tears.

We suffer fools to fare better
Then those who walk in poor weather
Then those who struggle to find the truth
And in suffering those other flagrant fools
Those corporate and theological tools
We cause greater suffering to
All of our youths