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Nat Lipstadt Dec 2013
This was written a few Septembers ago.  Walking on the streets of a now deserted beach island, only the leaves, in various states, to keep me company.

September,
walk with me,
under bridges of wedding tree canopies,
still green aplenty,
tho subtle marked for change,
making summer illusions,
environmentally unsustainable.

September,
stroll on pathways
of lesser, off the track, shaded lanes,
the sun blocker trees wear new necklaces,
brown and yellow diamonds,
a coming attraction of
their denouement,
their denudement.

The September trees are:

Ever so slightly stooped,
bent with weight of a surety,
knowing with high certainty,
their future, bleak,
bowed and drooped,
discouraged by the
cold travails soon to arrive.

Living in the recent past,
I am dressed inappropriately,
white tee and shorts,
past pretender,
still dressed in my
Gap issue summer uniform,
summer suspended animation.

Island streets are de-humanized,
gone home are the children,
newly fallen leaves have,
their place, taken.

The leaves are:

magically organized along
the sidelines of empty streets,
quiet stadiums of would be
kid's touch football fields.  

browned, crisp and soulless,
first greet this solitary stroller,
like a cheering throng of ghosts,
celebrating a sighting -
man, as a seasonal fossil,
one that still is living
and worth reminding, yet
human too shall pass when
his fall arrives.

the leave's cheers make over
into jeers and mocking laughs:

Oh humans, they say,
your summer songs naive,
mais tres charmant.

On Crescent Beach,
the driftwood sadly forlorn,
looking more adrift than ever,
for no one passes to express
admiration at the past seasons
Nouveau Expressionism,
an objet d'art lonely,
for the beach gallery shuttered,  
raising questions existential.

Is driftwood on the beach sans
human admiration,
art, truth or refuse?

I am looking backwards as the
Earth moves forward.

My own axis, my eyes,
conscientious objectors
refuse to be pressed
into service of the seasons.

No, no,
to involuntary servitude,
to rotation and revolution.

Nature's witnesses,
trees and leaves write
their own poem,
of foolish men who:

Bow and droop,
discouraged by the
travails soon to arrive,

Delaying their own fall,
finally shed summer delusions
like leaves upon the ground,
summer poetry silenced,
summer suspended, no more.
an old summer~fall poem, revived, out of season, like me. See August 25
I am a Summer-Man
Ryan Bowdish Jan 2013
Melting madness and shimmering isles
The bubble-gum boils in drug pedophiles
Let's teach the East to love Western style
We come in with strap-on's and pillage with smiles
The rest of the world watches their watches
People keep saying we're at hour eleven
We're changing the design on our gold lockets
From a heart to a blackjack, Seven Seven Seven!

The college boys assure you that they know the lyrics
And the meanings behind them for they've been enlightened
They swarm out like locusts and pretentiously parrot
Verbatim the textbooks they read when they're frightened
That they'll die with nothing to show for their efforts
They want everyone else in the world to remember
That they did exist on some scale of importance
Even though we're just spun yarn of grass, dirt and oceans

Intelligence streams the consciousness seeds and conscientious objectors it seems
So pardon me for the fallacy of pardoning tyrannical dictator queens
It seems these days to be discovered you need to cheat on your spouse or your lover
You'd think that with all the war crimes we've seen we would have hung at least one or the other
We've got two parties, so pick one or scram! (Look at them squirm as fast as they can!)
They're starting to think for themselves again! Quick, strangle the market and feed this man
Acid and bath salts and give him some tear gas and send him on in to disarm the smear traps
And **** everyone so we'll jump to conclusion with no where to turn, the final solution!

I'm drunk again and we're falling in, the shoreline is riddled with explosions
We don't speak of the war, we have no comment, we're almost out of original content
We're frantically searching for a brand new contest to prove that our nation is still the best
Whether you're China, Russia, Israel, Pakistan, the U.K., or India, the U.S. or Japan
Let's take all the gangbanging **** out of Oakland and drop them in to the Atlantic Ocean
Or better yet, set them loose in Uganda, let's see how long they last in Rwanda.
I'm done with religion and socialized medicine, this aristocracy of pull and deception
So for once in our lifetimes, let's seek a vision, because God knows people can't make ******* decisions.
the first half: http://hellopoetry.com/poem/the-world-raps-1/

When I put these together they should hit about a 5 min 30 second full hip hop song.
Alan McClure Nov 2016
Remembrance in November grows repellent
each year we rob it further of its sense
by hunting down objectors to compel them
to stand in line or cause a grave offense.
No private contemplation or reflection
when strident shrieks of nationhood prevail
Un-poppied collars count as insurrection
a slight to every brave, red-blooded male.
Division, thumping drums and waving banners
the media wades in with guns ablaze
forgetful of respect, or simple manners –
that’s not how we conduct ourselves these days
If this is what our fallen heroes wanted
I wonder why the cenotaph is haunted.

We cannot know what sent the soldiers hither
or claim the fallen courage of the fight
think boys who marched to foreign fields together
were simple symbols drawn in black and white
If we could rise above the spite and chatter
We’d find unbordered bonds and understand
that shells and bullets lacked the strength to shatter
the looking glass that straddled no man’s land
From timid chaps to lunatic berserkers
we canonise the men who heard the call
if wives had had the power to shoot deserters
there never would have been a war  at all.
Let’s render restless spirits more forgiving:
to honour best the dead, honour the living.
Jessica Jan 2018
Through our conscience,
we perceive, how life is meant to be.

Cowards,
they may have been called, through out the first world war,
but I believe, they were brave,
as they stood up with words,
not swords a blaze.

It is sad to say,
that they became a nuisance in society rule,
the white feather they endured.
Alienated from their place,
their neighbourhood,
their way.

The isolation was put in place,
to break them,
to propaganda their way.
Don't forget the brave, advertised as afraid, who save the world from obedience and pain.
Joe Cottonwood Nov 2017
“If you grow old, it is your own fault,”
I say to Terry as we climb
the mountain behind his cabin.
Terry is wearing a device that transmits his heartbeat
by cell phone to doctors at Stanford.
Terry has a flutter, nothing serious, probably.
Terry has a great heart, actually,
something serious, warm and wise.

We ascend this hill on Tuesdays every week
discussing poetry and plumbing, our twin passions:
the gathering of mountain water funneled into pipes,
delivered to homes,
the ordering of words funneled into pages
delivered nowhere, sadly.

We discuss friends fallen or falling,
the arc of marriages, parenthood, oddball relationships,
each a story and a puzzlement,
webs woven of love and rage.
That, and motorcycles, we talk,
pacifist veterans who walk still seeking sense
of an incomprehensible war that shaped our lives.
Objectors, conscientious, we realized too late,
not an easy path but better than following orders.
We walked away from war.
He, the Air Force; I, the draft.
Branded dishonorable.
So we hike, hearts pounding,
the simple friendship of two old men
seeking the hilltop
again and again.
First published in MOON Magazine June 2017
Perveiz Ali Feb 2016
Innocence Denied

Oh dear! Let me open my heart,
To let you read what I am.
What my thoughts are composed of,
The turmoil that's on my soul.
Share the angst of my existence,
Give light to the pain of my oppression.
Am I difficult? Or am I so deprived,
Let them say what they want.
But Alas! Chaos and confusion reigns,
Should we bow to devious tyranny?
To be held by them, against our will?
To write our destiny in blood?
They wish to ****** our free will,
Soaked in streaming blood.
Should we stand firm or cave in?
On the lines to be handed the scraps,
Objectors dragged and humiliated.
Charged for crimes we didn't commit,
Ye innocent and chastised souls.
We seek only liberty and real freedom,
To enjoy the fruits of happiness in shade.
No longer prisoners of political ambiguity,
Our will finally to be imposed is out wish.
© Perveiz Ali
Andrew Duggan Oct 2017
I walked in Jinci Park today, listening to the echoes of the past wandering around the papered walls with memories of death open and unnamed.
 
Amid the cracked curtained windows and hurried echoes of the last battle, I saw three horsemen about to siege the winter.
 
Once their tempers and coming swords passed into times earth. Now their striding spirit vents noxious words to the ungainly tailless lizards who want a time when nobody thought.
 
Interpretations differ, but I said ‘Come and see’. Then I heard what sounded like a voice and saw the horsemen dancing under fire, lightning and thunder singing around them, hurried by the mountain and waiting for the sun to crush the day.
 
If it is true, and in this place I think it is, that letters and words are strange and urgent, then the siege of the cities is lost.
 
And what of freedoms vanguard and voices that merge with memories. What of words like bullets and thoughts as simple as death.
 
Forget them at your peril.
 
Imbalances can be corrected, heroines of great objectors created.
 
I walked in Jinci Park today, caught up in the spirit, the old trees whispered "Look around they are the last”. This was my temporary home and I was one of the last souls.
Jinci Park is a park in Taiyuan, China. I walked there yesterday
Charles Sturies Nov 2018
1) Identity crimes that get to the core
Of the soul if the person credited with mind and body "*******"
doing most of the damage.
2) Violent *** crimes
3) Character assassination
4) slander
5) petty theft
6) some mental patients acting out
And disturbing the peace
7) premeditated ******
8) forcing conscientious objectors
to fight
Had enough?
I bet I sound sorta self righteous?
Yenson Sep 2020
see them
Pity them so
the aggrieved cult mice
made poor from born poor
harken in the shrine of the talentless
in hate, jealousy and resentment they praise
moribund in ignorance irrelevant to copious insignificance
singing the hymns of the guilty nonentities with nothing to lose
but the chains round their empty heads and minds now displaced
as backwards as backward does our modern day bolsheviks squirm
in the mirages of classless conscientious objectors fighting smoke
fashion them a lost war fitting to their common incompetence
build houses of blames and dens to hide their self loathing
barracks to drill angsts and harness their blindness
no kitchen for brains has long been cooked
instruct that freedom is hate
and senseless anarchy
self destruction
is 'power'

— The End —