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Terry O'Leary Mar 2016
The typewriters tap,
with a rat-a-tat-tat,
like a fourth estate rap
to provide us the pap
(that serves as a snack with a rat-a-tat-tat)
in a newspaper scrap
crammed with meaningless crap
from the editor's yap
(spewing flimflamy flak, booming rat-a-tat-tat)
after gashing a gap
in the daily recap
with a snip in a snap-
sounding thundery clap
crackng rat-a-tat-tat and a rat-a-tat-tat.

And the talking heads speak
with a rat-a-tat-tat,
of the news of the week,
tweaking tongue in the cheek
(with a click and a clack like a rat-a-tat-tat),
thus ignoring critique
'cause they're mild and too meek
in the midst of the reek
to report of the wrack (except rat-a-tat-tat)
whilst the pundits (oblique
when protecting the chic
of the upper class clique
at the top of the peak)
chatter rat-a-tat-tat and a rat-a-tat-tat.

The NRA ghouls
plug a rat-a-tat-tat
while their blood money tools
fill the Hill’s vestibules
(where deceit behind drapes drips a rat-a-tat-tat),
spreading folly that fuels
frenzied hands of young fools
bringing guns into schools
(at the drop of a hat there's a rat-a-tat-tat
splashing blood in warm pools)
for now anarchy rules
(which the hype ridicules
'til the temperature cools)
hailing rat-a-tat-tat and a rat-a-tat-tat.

Lawless cops, cutting loose
with a rat-a-tat-tat
spraying bullets profuse
without any excuse
(just a split second splat with a rat-a-tat-tat),
splay a rattled recluse
like a Thanksgiving goose
gushing cranberry juice
from six slugs in the back (with a rat-a-tat-tat).
To redress such abuse,
bend the branch of a spruce
with a neck in a noose
while Death's drums beat diffuse’
rolling rat-a-tat-tat and a rat-a-tat-tat.

War brings freedom to all
with a rat-a-tat-tat
(well, excluding the thrall
with fear, facing the wall
[ often smacked with a bat, throbbing rat-a-tat-tat ],
until feeling the call
to creep out of the kraal
biting back with a gall
[ with a *** for a tat and a rat-a-tat-tat ],
or to mangle and maul
if still able to crawl
and be part of the brawl
in a freak free-for-all,
midst a rat-a-tat-tat and a rat-a-tat-tat).

Holy warmongers praise,
with a rat-a-tat-tat,
any soldier that slays
and all rockets that raze
(the drones zoom with a vroom and a rat-a-tat-tat)
leaving smoky arrays
of gray ghosts in the haze
cloaking mute cabarets
(hushed, the hip and the hop, by the rat-a-tat-tat)
while ol’ Cerberus bays
with mankind in his gaze,
so society prays  
as it rots and decays
(Satan's trumpets of doom blare a rat-a-tat-tat)
until one of these days
in a flash through the maze
mighty mushrooms will blaze
with invisible  rays,
fin’lly braising the craze
of the rat-a-tat-tat,
   and the
            rat-
                 a-
                    tat-
                          tat.
Got Guanxi Jun 2015
soldier of fortune, making moves on the battlefield,
chess checking chances,
Suntzu advances,
as the sun moves and dances.
creeping in trenches, sleeping in shifts,
bullets fly overhead as you hope that they'll miss.
butterflys in the rose fields,
butchered guys in the poppy fields.
broken dreams, decimated teams,
regiments unravelled at the seems
unrivalled scenes that you could never believe.
superhuman movements and medals achieved.
let go and breath, silently amongst violence and tryrants.
No man planned, for no mans land.
The best laid plans lead to mass graves,
massacres last for days, it's hard to understand.
tactics underhand, gas masks steal identies,
you must move fast to counteract the effects of mustard gas
and hidden identities.
popup cemetries, innovative remedies,
death strikes at any moment,
yet it's hard to keep focus.
Don't lose your mind.
Mistakes of mankind, repeated in time.
babyfaced freshmen turn to hardface veterans in the spaces of seconds.
replaced in moments with conscripted kids deplaced from happy homes.
men never found and no chance to atone.
warmongers amongst them that soon change there tones.
railway children leave villages in rubble.
cornered and in trouble as the bodycount doubles.
darknights spent in candlelight
children sleep in there bed as bombers glide overhead.
the bleek reality goes over there heads.
the blitz is a travesty that decimates articheture and leaves structures in travesty.
calamities in the evening and in the morning a start clarity of the destructive reality.
hindsight in bombsites, mortuaries from mortar shells
instructions to give them hell,
you believe them less as each days passes.
bodies piled up in masses, teardrops without caskets.
only dogtags identify the men in the bodybags.
men treated worse than dogs, the living skip over the corpses
of fallen comrades
peace will not come fast. hard to run fast with rations and rucksacks.
bullets start to wizz past as they proceed to fufil dumbtasks,
whiskey in hip flasks. trying to shoot back,
wishing you just get a lift back home to the motherland.
Fighting in foreign lands,
your mother holds her head in her wrinkled hands,
her husband holds her close and hes been there before you.
fought in the great war too and lived through to tell the tale
and ironically see history repeating itself.
a picture of their son sits on the shelf.
he lies wounded in battle, needing there help.
o well.
give them hell.
its just one of many stories to tell.
This was influenced by a verse by Ra Rugged Man
nivek  Apr 2014
Warmongers
nivek Apr 2014
someone from all the tribes
always had war
in their heart
infected the weak
the ones we lost
and loathed
in their havoc
nivek Jul 2014
your neon thoughts lit the sky
beaming a hidden message
all were caught like rabbits
we should have kept running
Pia Montalban Aug 2015
This is no love poem
No love, no art work, no poem
No music nor rhythm
But of images

Of farmers exultant
Though they break their backs,
Or their bones creak,
With every slash of their sickles,
The heavy strokes
Wounding light in the fiery heat of noon,
The gaunt-faced sons of earth,
Bringing home harvests of gold
To the people's granary,
Where no greedy landlords are in sight.
For centuries, the land robbers
Had squeezed their souls dry
In constant toil.
It may be that their time is up.

But this is no love poem
No love, no art work, no poem
But of history

Of workers milling around a lingering twilight.
Pounding their hammers with their might,
Ecstatic at the thought of freedom,
Yet battling still, long dreaded ills
Of feudal *******, barratry,
Imperialism
Storing up for the people’s cause,
Building a new commune in the new place
Freed from the landlord-minded President
From the imperialist ogres
Of IMF-World Bank and Uncle Sam,
The warmongers,
From oppression
And poverty and wretchedness
That, like a python, had wound
Around them to the end.

But this is no love poem
No love, no art work, no poem
No fictive tale but of radiant truth.

As throngs of men
And women march
Out of their homes
With new-found hope,
Gathering strength
As from a blasting storm,
Defiant now of lying saints or heroes
Or of murderer Presidents
Who speak with forked tongues,
As the throng march out into the streets
Flooding the cities,
Ready to offer their lives for freedom
To them would come such happiness,
Such love
No poem would express,
No art suffice to render.

This is no love poem
No piece of art, no song
Only a sense
Of how it is to tell of battles won,
Of folding in to feel the surge of triumph
Though brief perhaps,
Within this flashpoint moment
Of the people's war.
Esz-Pe-Bea Jul 2014
It's the next best thing!
It's a scream!
It's got a screen!
and a million little buttons
that won't ever do a thing
to erase that feeling
that you're feeling.


why you are always waiting.


like the Rockie's or the Canyon.
like Columbus and the the great depression.
like Woodstock and world wars.
like the Illad and the Odyssey and The Beatles.


something more than
The consumer generation.
a definition through epic episodes.
a defining moment.


The revolution has been sponsored
by manufacturers and broadcasters
and warmongers and pundits
and people getting paid to tell you what you think.
and what do you think?
Why are we content with being incomplete?
unfinished and beat?


What the **** is so Comfy about that seat?


You are not generation X
or Y or Nothing or Nowhere.
or any of these false names they've created
to make us believe we are less than we are.
we've been duped.
the youth is not the future anymore.
It's firmly in the grip of the old and accomplished.
Your fate is their whim for a dollar.
Your life is fuel for the fires.
crass entertainment inspires your desires.


And well, **** that.
pull the wires from your brain
and we'll fight to regain.
what territory they've taken away.
Make decisions for ourselves today.
December 11th, 2011.  Part of a series of Status Updates.  Only now does it gain a proper title.
Joshua Adam Jul 2015
Without Peace We All Know Where We're Headed......


Give peace a chance, will those of nobility declare
Intelligence of spirit, who could ever compare
Valiantly fighting the evil in the world, unwilling to fail
Earnestly helping those needy, without ever becoming frail

Peacefully sacrificing time and energy without ever reconsidering
Endangering themselves to constantly make a difference
Antagonizing the establishment for an instance
Coming home with battle scars to wear and none to share
Emphasizing they are not heroes, only that "they care"

Angering all others, for showing they disagree

Considering the options with nowhere to hide
Hiroshima and its aftermaths, would never subside
Attempting to disrupt, what those warmongers insist
No necessity to justify, the results do persist
Coming full circle does our world continue to exist
Ending in oblivion, if we don't learn how to desist
A short poem on the importance and need of pursuing peace, and the great nobility of all those that have sacrificed themselves in one way or another to TRY and bring about that peace. As world history has shown time and again, death and devastation on a world (numbers) scale, sadly, are all too real.
Jake Bentley Jun 2013
Parliament's headquarters--Back alley for smokes n' such.
Politicians deliberating on the bread and the butter
While the starving go hungry and the Truth begins to suffer.
Never point to the signs on the wall
12 steps, Denial before the fall.

Consumerist, zombie shuffle back to the car, the market's full up.
Look for the polyethylene creamer. Metallic coated groceries
For the plastic (PORTIS issued) consumer.
"Coke is it" they would say as they take the morning grind (black/two sugar.)

Racists make the sea of Policy makers and warmongers,
Bathing in other's poverty, hunger and pain;
Fearing death before the climb, G-d before the fall
Slashing at the necks of basilisks until they turn to stone.  
Blind and petrified to the core,
I swear God, Parliament will smoke no more.

Comes along the Harbinger, you've got one new message.
Message one, There is no god, only me. I'm your Hypocrisy.
Cry to an empty thought, kid the kidders, sin among sinners.
Shamble back to Parliament's sanctuary, the legislators are in,
Let Smokes n' Such begin.
Again, wrote this while listening to Eyedea and Abilities, thoughts I've had and personal experiences (sometimes simultaneous) Some of the content is also influenced by White Noise (Don Delillo)
I was so proud
Following Cupid
The greatest Cherub
Gifting all of mankind
With the power of love

Aiming the arrows
Dipped in that emotion
Where two fall together
Giving their precious hearts
To be with one another

We never leave anyone out
Be it man loving woman
Man in love with man
Woman falling for woman
Need be, even man and sheep

But I tried to stop war once
Shooting arrows at Presidents
Hoping two men of power
Could bring the love of peace
To a world deeply in need

They had to assassinate them
Put two more warmongers in charge
So once again I tried
Once more they were assassinated
So I hung up my bow and arrow

You see, never blame the Presidents
Because they are only puppets
On strings, led by power mad Generals
Using war to make a profit
But also preventing true love
Copyright © Chris Smith 2012
Nat Lipstadt Sep 2014
These are the words and the actuality
that in conjunction,
drive mothers of young children
to depression and distraction

Poets to look inwards yet once more,
for sources of olden inspiration,
finding only
been there, done that

Warmongers to chop lick lips
in eager anticipation of
past and future smokey glories,
gun batteries sparking and
other men's children dying

Overcast and cast out is loveliness,
only words of ancient, somber lineage,
populate, pursue and expectorate,
sunny notions and love poetry none,
dried up, to fallen leave piles dispatched

For on this day of rest, the foggy sky
grants no permission slips to draft
smiley faces and upbeat tempos,
comforts foods perhaps, but nary a
comfort word to make us cheery

Enslaved to nature this day too,
my exteriors reflect inward and my
mirror'd observatory of starry images
no longer available on any
of my two thousand TV channels

I have checked each one in a
be-quiet-you're-too-noisy dismay groaning,
as well as my ordinary, toujours,
quiet desperation

The sun tantrum tantalizes for I see
it's bodacious attacks repelled
by cloud banks rich with deposits of gloom

Slip into a mystery, an old novella
of Stephen Kings, an homage to the
drama of the four seasons, but this old friend
is elementary ancient, for its tales
are deep sad, writ upon weary worn pages
and tho apropos, grant no comfort

The sailors all to bed have gone,
plowing pillows instead of waves

The squirrels and other homeowners,
in view of the absence human,
are cheek to chop, jowls acorn full,
doing "Storage Wars" of winter prep,
in HD, in broad daylight arrogance,
mocking the summer man, adding their
sauciness to his moody blues
meal of melancholia

Am I such a creature of nature,
that I am captive no matter
what the sky color be,
is there a moody madness the
psychiatrists have labelled
that best describes a nature slave
most unnaturally?

I repair to the couch and chips,
reruns to pretend distraction and
poetry to record my inaction

The weather lady, a fresh faced blonde,
smiles white and exclaims that
the work week commencing tomorrow
all sunny all unseasonable warm,
and my groans so loud,
I am banished to parts bedroom foreign,
where I am ordered to write
perfunctory odes to gloom,
in silenced doom
Marshal Gebbie Feb 2010
There's a well of disappointment
In observing human nature,
For regardless of the colour,
The religion or the creed;
There's a metabolic failure
Apparent in the makeup,
And it's all about ego
And materialistic greed.

I see it in the corporate's
And the hallowed halls of banking,
It drips like grease from politics
And stains God's children too.
It permeates the populace
With a cloak of ashen pallor
And extends from Kings and Demigods
Through humanity to you.

And even little children
Are caught up in the maelstrom
Through television's fanfare
Of fashion and excess,
I feel tragedy unfolding
In our hedonist behaviour
I see brother clawing brother
And the future in distress.

Take a look around you
At the evidence of trouble
Observe the calamity
Of Wall Street's greed.
Feel the discomfort
Of intrusion by Government,
Feel the pain in the pocket
Of taxation's bleed.

The war drums are pounding
All over the planet
Greed and anxiety
Run hand in hand,
Corporate warmongers
Driving the politics
Flailing for more
As their empires expand.

What of the people?
We ordinary people,
Who invisibly strive
Insignificantly?
Pushed and shoved
Bought and bartered,
....In this tempest of greed
What chance have we?

Marshalg
On another sick, sick day.
@theBach
Mangere Bridge
12 February 2010

— The End —