Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
Kendall Mallon Jan 2014
§
Battle of New Britain

Lieutenant Jim G Paulos led elements
of G Company in a savage counterattack
that ousted the intruders supported
by Lieutenant James R Mallon’s improvised
platoon of H/11, which remained
to help man casualty-depleted line.

Improvise (OED):
One: to compose on spur
of the moment; to utter
or perform extempore

two: to bring about or get up
on the spur of the moment;
to provide for the occasion

Three: […] hence to do anything
On the spur of the moment

Improvised platoon
Df James R Mallon:

When most of your platoon
lies dead in the pumice sands
of the South Pacific-Japanese
bushido bullets tear flesh and spirit
out of the corporeal—husks of limp
limbs you fought to defend and they you
Japanese mortar fire, machine and small-gun fire
fifteen yards in advance of the wire
how do you bring about or get up
the courage to grab whoever—
the nearest marine
talk through ears drums burst by mortar succeeding shockwaves
forget for the time the men
you spent months training
sipping beers in Australia
laughing over bar stool drunken jokes
men you shared your dreams about after
away from the mosquitoes
away from the constant moisture
rain rain rain day and night
soaking through fatigues through skin through bone
never enough sun to dry out
air already saturated
sweat or seawater—it is all the same
now you must find new men—men you have seen,
but do not know the same as your own platoon
their life and yours in each others hands
alone in a group of stranger-brothers
always faithful
keep composure in the face
your buddy’s entrails pouring into the pumice sand
hence to do anything
on the spur kicked into your side
to block what no man should ever be asked to see
and do what you can in the moment
to save your division from enemy fire.

§
Cyclops Black Eyes

One summer e’ening drunk to hell
He stood there nearly lifeless
A gal sat in the corner
And it’s how are ye ma’am and what’s yer name
And would ye like a drink?
She looked at him, he at her
All she could do was accept one

And rovin’ a rovin’ a rovin’ she’ll go
Through his pair of blue eyes

She knew not the pumice beaches and streams
Sometimes walking sometime crawling
amongst blood and death ‘neath a screaming sky
Where Cyclops black eyes waited for him
Was it birds whistling in the trees?
Always the Cyclops black eyes waiting for them
So they give the wind a talkin’

And a rovin’ a rovin’ a rovin’ he’ll go
Away from those Cyclops black eyes

And the arms and legs of other men
Were scattered all around
Some cursed, some prayed, some prayed then cursed
Then prayed and bled some more
All he could see were Cyclops black eyes looking at him

No Cyclops black eyes waiting for her
And a rovin’ a rovin’ a rovin’ she’ll go
And never know what saw his pair of blue eyes

Could she forsee in that pair of blue eyes
Decades he’d spend drunk to hell?
Sometimes walking sometime crawling
Rovin’ and rovin’ away from those Cyclops black eyes

§
Colt 1911**

I was nineteen when I learned
my Dad his father’s Colt 1911 pistol

when Dad was young he
and his brother found
the gun—hidden in the rafters
of the cinderblock basement
their father built; magazine bullets and pistol
on one rafter—separate, except
the bullets lived in the magazine

my dad and uncle, like any
young boy, were fascinated
by the pistol; though too young
to feel and know the power
and danger in the cold blue metal

when their father and mother were
away—home alone they snuck
to the hand-laid basement
reached around the rafters
through years of dust and darkness
feeling for the colt and mag
scrape-click-pop—ca-chick
round in the chamber—“freeze!”

so played boyhood fantasies
cowboys & Indians
cops & robbers
with a lethal toy


so my dad kept it a secret
locked in a tarnished steel box
locked through the trigger guard
magazine separate
four silver, dimpled, bullets rolled round between
their queue and releaser

I was struck by the weight—heavier than I expected—I felt the years of use polished into the wood grips—thick hand grease sweat blood humidity sand saltwater gun oil mud tears life saved and taken.
At the bottom of the wood grips ticked notches deep in the grain—both sides—different numbers; “What are these?” I asked running my finger across the nocth-ticks feeling their depths their absence consciously carved with his next best tool—kabar: workhorse that can baton through five inch diameter logs, machete through two-finger branches, dig a hole to burrow while machinegun fire mows down jungle; easy to sharpen, keeps an edge; full tang to hammer temples or tent posts

“I don’t know; the only thing we have is the lore.”

fI counted seven
the number the magazine carries
eight total, if you have one in the chamber

You have to commit to fire
a 1911, the cliché: don’t pull
the trigger—squeeze
is how the 1911 fires—a button
fits the crotch of the thumb and index finger
opposite the trigger on the handle;
to unleash the hammer then
lead, squeeze the two—firm
tight at the target; no shot fired
by accident—no Marvins with the 1911.
I am trying a new form of poetry called 'documentary poetry'. This is the story of my grandfather who fought five campaigns in the Pacific Theatre of WWII for the United State Marine Corps. (This is a work in progress)
Mateuš Conrad Nov 2016
even wording an intellectual debate
focusing on the word: warrior,
is, to me, something of a ****-in-your-underwear
and then swing it around like a missile
and hope that the other monkey is dead...

what do i find in terms of persistent Darwinism?
media akin to Groundhog day replication,
a distrust of media and politics
doesn't go anywhere akin to El Dorado,
it goes to areas of grey and thistles, and weeds,
and trying to defend a political system
that monopolises on the media? e.g. Iraq.

what's the modern trait of the **** sapiens?
he's not intimidated by the advertisement
industry to spend, he saves his buck...
modern **** sapiens feels no regret at not
having the chance to procreate with neanderthal
women who shout rather than moan,
modern **** sapiens isn't wooed by the ooh's and
the ah's of a modern public audience,
modern **** sapiens man isn't ready to turn
women into butchers in Afghanistan,
or what Sappho called: butch, butch, butchy, butch-butch,
      target practice for the *****:
   now your chance to shoot a machinegun.

the **** sapiens doesn't get the Coliseum,
in whatever shape or form as the modern solution
to what would otherwise be: watching paint dry,
    there's no football Sunday over brunch to
holler and cheer and get things done.

the **** sapiens man will not mate with a neanderthal
woman of these times... he has no need to lose
his integrity to mate with these over-sexualised creatures...
modern **** sapiens lives in a time when
science has lost its mojo,
and became arrogant like a chef cooking up
Sicilian pasta in Chuckle Street...
   modern **** sapiens man does not grace procreating
with the mannequins of neanderthal women...
oversexualised and almost Somali in caricature,
which is hardly 5 brats running around for the stately
                 feeding...

modern **** sapiens isn't interested in how offensive you
sound, or how uninteresting you actually are,
the 26 digits on your tongue will never quill a
woodpecker readied for carpentry...
you have physicists for that and that ancient gauge
of sclera iris and pupil: which kinda looks
like clouds, green, brown, blue, grey,
              pupil and to whatever necessary telescope
for the constellations / twinkle in the eye...

     the modern **** sapiens doesn't want to procreate
with modern neanderthal women because
he thinks his feces will smell of mustard...
          he's ashamed about the way sport has
replaced national identity,
              and that watching ***** do the exodus from
a ******* and assimilate into a genesis of an ****
has become magnified into 22 wankers kicking
a ball between two fishnet stocking pair of legs...
              neanderthal women get it,
**** sapiens man doesn't... he's wondering why
there haven't been many drunk intellectuals...
                to state this case.

**** sapiens man is wondering why this isn't even
an insult... by a version of a continuum
best addressed when worded, rather than
    chess-chanced on a board of fixations and
cheap-labour and psychiatrically guised excuses
that are in concerto: lethargy etiam propus.

   **** sapiens is wondering why history froze,
and this be the new ice age...
and why only one day gets a mention,
he's wondering why there's no media sabbath...
         i.e.: when no news happens.

**** sapiens is bewildered by this fresh zeitgeist
of having a need to speak...
  **** sapiens is wondering: why Ned the Destroyer?
**** sapiens is asking: what about the think?
       **** sapiens says of neanderthals:
i guess they really need to talk
because they cannot accept the monotheistic concept
of thought, and stress the democratic: blah blah brechen
to protest, stitch placards and walk a lot and do
cathedral bells a justice of repeating chants: kneel
to pray! tramps aren't trump! etc.

**** sapiens says: they once imagined telepathic
with telekinetic and then they said no to Marxism...
now there don't seem to be that many individuals around
apart from those in suicidal succor.

all in all, **** sapiens simply says:
i will not fornicate with these neanderthal women!
i don't care what my genetic prenup would look like,
    it might look ugly, it might look pretty...
            if we're going down this route...
there's me: exit,
                and then these women:
            lamenting what queen Sheeba said to
king Solomon:
                          the copper skinned will rule the world.

well, here's me and my automated reliance on
extinction...
                           i'm taking a bow...
i'm bowing out...
                                i find only one sensual solace in
this world...
                    music...
                           ­         i'm bowing out of the rest
that comes like a Mongolian revival of a horde...
          and even if there was a love for a woman worth
defending... i already declassified it as
neanderthal... so much for Darwinism when uncoupled
from theology and coupled to history;
evidently my mind is a bit blank when i try to go beyond
the written records... nice gallery by the way...
sure, the shrunken coccyx gave it away...
and i wish i was... doing acrobatics on trees, still;

**** sapiens said of neanderthals:
if only you had an immune system built to
                                        not succumb to advertisement!

but **** sapiens man said: poach the ivory,
but the elephant will play you a trumpet underwater,
      and you'll ask: why?
              because if the elephant farted you'd
get a methane jacuzzi, and not a quasi-jazz concert...
that wasn't even meant to be funny.
Its hard to concentrate
When your thoughts rattle around
Like machinegun fire
Caught in complicated clockwork
Trying to captivate
One cognitive idea
About Life
Conglomerate

While the tapestries
Of cliches attempt
To coalesce as they
Cascade
Only to fall away
As they dribble out my ears
The critics are unimpressed.

There is no one on this earth
Who is still interested
In simple lyrics backed by
Overwhelming overtures
When the focus is on expenditures
And the bottom line wont budge

Its as if it holds a grudge
Torturing visionary artists
Hiding in their closets
From monsters under the bed
And detained by superego authorities
While alone and afraid
Locked in Negative Headspace

But the artists becon of light
Is an ironic twist of common life
In a pedestrian plight
Captured on 8mm film
And put on Lifetime.

How do you write a song when
The melody is wrong
But the lyrics flow from the hand
Like the last latent ramblings
Of a dying, possessed man
Onto the page as
The imaginary lines fade
And the surreal becomes real

And in your head its something you can hear

In your gut, its something you can feel

But the fingers on the guitar
Cant catch these falling stars
And before we go to far
Its time to take a step back
To breathe

The guitar bleeds
But its blood isnt music
And if you turn away you lose it
As the sound gets trapped behind
The saturated limitations of the mind
The brass threads slowly unwind
Only to stab you in the neck.

And still,
The critics are unimpressed.
Mateuš Conrad Jan 2017
found in Styron's darkness visible... he survived auschwitz... but said adieu to life: by throwing himself down a flight of stairs.

millennial, generation y, huh?!
    also called the:
bearable heaviness of non-being...
   say: survivors of auschwitz,
and apart from Kundera,
i'm fudged into this stealth-culprit
     hangover...
   and when i speak the native tongue
i use double emphasis...
everything suddenly becomes italic...
    gówno... or ****... teutonic: gavron, ja,
ich habbe schtabbe ga ga, magpie on
              a licky-sticky schtaisse:
vroom bog-tie boom boom...
   everntually language is just that:
   magnifique sounds, mein herr,
    be that a cello i hear?
                      nada... mindlessly i too
  feigned a farting brigadier, farting into
       a brass horn: worth a gingerbread /
pumpernickle        marching rhythm.
yes, double emphasis in the native...
kosz (koš)... bin...
    trza błagać... błagać!
        o śmierć... beg for death...
             but hetman cossak said *smerc
... and it
sounded altogether better.
   a household argument,
   after prawn-pasta was cooked throughout
an afternoon of general bewilderment:
        a heap of pebbles makes more sense
than the Orion constelation...
              given the mathematical approach
to the situation, and subsequent mapping...
   because they really did drop a bomb on
Hiroshima and Nagasaki...
                and that's why 21st creativity
is trapped in a hamster's routine...
    karaoke is standard...
                         this insissting plagiaristic zeitgeist!
so i said: you really think you conquered
yapan?            jesus, je suis, zeus, yesus, jamaican
                              jah jah *** buck...
      rasta root mon, rasta root.
    battered and bruised...
               someohow this whole dating scene
passed me by...
                     and what happened to me aged
21... is strangely becoming the norm
                       of giving the circumstance:
  i can't remember being of any age, particular.
  the quicker argument would coincide with:
    give me a machinegun, and march me into
a Latvian forest...
                   because, right now, it's
a scenario of being coerced into donning a leash
   or more like a leech,
                         and an afternoon spent
pulverised by a pneumatic tsunami
                     of adverts... calling it a job done,
with a siberian brew: cow juice in
                       tea...
                     liquid werther's original.
Mateuš Conrad Nov 2016
among the people that i hold accountable to suggest
someone has lost touch with reality:
    well, apologies for not engaging in your
  cinnamon-laced *** life - i sought other spices:
as in chilli for the tongue, and salt for my eyes,
and pepper for my nose - because that's what's
being debated: when philosophers come back
from their adventure i'll let you know what reality
actually is - then the cathedrals will crumble,
   then the neo-Babylonian extracts from modern
architectural preferences will become less neo-Babylonian
English and more: Glaswegian dialects
surrounded by Croat diacritical markings -
    as if drawing hunting antelopes in caves
   giving us "more" clues about the one inhospitable earth:
or are we truly surrendering to Darwinism
rather than carpe diem? i'm i'll ******* chirpy
given a dinosaur bone, and the timescale -
             and given that we turned Cartesian duality into
a dichotomy, everyday seems challenging:
a blimmin' boxing match 'n' all...
                                    i can't remember how many times
i've been k.o'ed (knocked out) in my waking moments
(conscious or, rather mourning? don't know).
      i still find it staggering they (no paranoia collective:
simply scientists) came up with the fact that the sun
(or any star) is a reaction of helium and hydrogen:
do people really explode into chipmunk joviality when
   doing a b.b.q. of their bodies on a beach?
             (asking questions becomes a ****** syringe
after a while) - and yes, use the term joviality before it
becomes archaic, you never know when it might
unearth a wormhole of Hades and **** the fact out
and flush it into oblivion.
              and some don bowler hats and use folded
umbrellas as walking sticks, perhaps the monocle,
but definitely the bow-tie: and make rhetoric of language:
airs, courtesy (court-t'eh-c vs. curt-see): herr chirurg!
how do you insert the scalpel into the rhythmic expression
of dribbling that kauczuk? (rubber ball).
      (cow- -chook).
           i mean in Cockney: how do you juggle that word
properly while balancing an oyster on your tongue?
and yes, i'm starting to believe Polish (as a language)
borrows too much from German - of the few slavic languages
i also say Kaiser bun -          she's called a variant of
antoinette, i.e., a kajzerka, or Wilhelm (dressed as a little
girl, all hurly burly) akin to philippe duke of orléans;
someone say lace stockings?
      i could write out this ******* in chauvinistic bravado
aesthetic: or i could smoke a cigar...
     and sooner we realised that crows never prayed
but croaked -
        that pigs grunted and never prayed -
that pigeons cooed, and never prayed,
       that monkeys did the mambo knock-knock joke -
that woodpeckers were the original carpenters and
                invoked the existence of the machinegun
and the rattler.
so there are people (sophists) who wear
bowler-hats, smocking, monocles and disdain:
rather ardently -
                 and then there are those that spontaneously
explode, from out of nowhere,
and dress themselves in rags and never rags to riches
sort of attitude - because appearances are deceptive
and too can be gambled with and neglected and seeing
a decay of a royal house: is much fancier than seeing
autumn...     because aren't the Windsors
                                         vacating Buckingham?
as in: from rot -                 apple and pear sweetness.
(at this point the poem should end) -
       not always the case of: less is more...
speaking on behalf the man who read the karamazov
brothers
and stuck a leaflet on the back
of the book that read: the hash marihuana & hemp
museum - oudezijds achterburgwal 130 amsterdam
                    (next to the 'sensi seed bank' grow shop
   www.hashmuseum.com).
i mean you have read something equivalent of a brick
these days, at least one brick within that distractive
paradise of poetry - either the already mentioned book,
or war and peace, or in search of lost time,
or bolwesław prus' the doll - and they said
that life's short... not with these books being read it is...
life becomes a snail-paced traffic jam -
            it's what mystics aim at, across all religions:
the carpe diem momentum.
            it's not even boring, it's just a tedium-ladden
misanthropy: that suggestion is mainly aimed at seeing
an afternoon sitcom about 0-hour contract jobs...
       which is applauded by the terminally ill who
might say: thank **** it's not me.
            so we're all agreed - what the collapse of
communism left behind was a chance of a pension,
        given that all the western countries sold their remnant
versions of tribalism to stealth upper-tier formulations
         of "we're in this together" as otherwise know: companies...
we're not accompanied -
                   cold and wet and ***** -
                            which is odd why we'd think it
necessary to cause upheaval in iRaq...
                           given that the origins of communism were
in England, tested in Mongolia and then ingrained elsewhere...
ah, but of course, the profit margin: it's hard to
automate people surrounded by machines
        it's like olympians competing with para-olympians
where's talk of golf and the handicap?
              not here...
                       but i'm wondering, how can i redeem myself
after having stretched the poem for too long?
     point being: i can't change the status quo, and don't
intend to - and is that hypocritical or simply being
honest? well: if i managed to fit the concept of the big bang
into my little head: i'd choose the bullet every single time -
   we've established a majority, we've become as deluded
in our hopes for individuality: as was once deemed worthy
of the idea of god; we simply have established a constant
supply & demand parameters;
or what Heidegger calls: the perpetuated "ineffectual"
(well, not really him, my wording) -
                  basically a state of panic and
how different does concern compare with anxiety?
   a woman would tell a man that crimson is very different
from burgundy, as man would use the crude sigma:
red, red. n'es pas?

*i wish i could write something within the framework
of universal appeal; something simple
   and easily digested: like baby pulp, or simple
pulp of any fruit, mashed up and regurgitated
as if a seagull feeding its chicks... alas! not to be.
I wanna be an island
I wanna be a machine
i wanna be kind
but i don't wanna feel
i wanna be angry
but not to be bad
i wanna be your catharsis
to lift the weight from your head
i wanna be a machine
a machinegun
and spit bullets from my lung
i wanna be young and clever
like bugs bunny
i wanna live forever
i want life to be unreal
i want death to go away
i want fear to be the last thing to ever be felt
or get said
I want to be a wave
in the sea of your soul
I wanna burn out
but keep you warm like coal
I wanna be trash
thrown away, with no use
i wanna fall deep
cause i wanna cut loose
I wanna be fog
to keep myself hid
I wanna be a shape
with no part that could fit
I wanna be the sun
to shine and to burn
I wanna be your master
cause i want you to learn
i wanna be a tower
with a treasure inside
I wanna be a maze
cause you never shall find
I wanna be the ash
from the past that i burned
I wanna be the storm
that leaves no stone unturned
I wanna be me
but i would like you
to stay you
I wanna be a lie
yet i want to stay true
Max Neumann  May 2020
Fire
Max Neumann May 2020
sun in the creases of the hand
white roses withered
vengeance of shades and misery
vendetta-machinegun

israeli uzis and sand
a child's grin is the big fire
in the iris of the lion; right?
the lion is a dead radio
Today is a good day.
Mateuš Conrad Nov 2017
only with the oeuvre: BURN! slayer's mandatory suicide: count the bullet-holes in your head; ***** by machinegun fire; suicide, suicide, suicide, suicide.*

the anglophone world is so unfrequented
by the dualism of keeping one's
native tongue while establishing a
wordsmith perfection of an acquired
tongue...
           you know how in see the failures
of assimilation? not in the terrorist,
rather, in their harem's worth of
nunnery...
                  and backlog of bad ideas...
rancoids of agent orange debacles,
mirroring the current ******* affairs
of the lesser luster-year...
           abhorrent ******* koo nee see qua
kuu nee see qua - call that japanese
for variety all you wish...
it still spell out hollywood; ditto:
noah now dies.
         problem: a slayer oeuvre -
south of heaven,
before black sabbath was all led zeppelin
        but when the native tongue comes,
you're inviting your cousins...
you want to divide the atom,
why not dividing the quanta,
or the kilimanjaro?
                can i ask in latin
how little actually means
when you state quantum: how much?
can i ask: so by dividing an atom
we get hiroshima...
  what do get obelus quantum?
prior to: how little?

qua questio pro vel qua sors occultus -
as being a question for either,
or, for...
                    i'll just nut-crack your
******* like the catholic priests / theology
teachers treated me:
kept me in the dark, never taught me
any latin,
                  blah blah blah, blah,
and a blah later who the **** cares,
the pope sure as **** doesn't...
                  qua questio pro vel qua sors
occultus is as much latin to him a she latin
you just said is to your: saudi:
a ******* ibrahim judeo mel-frázī:
blah-blah-blee-bi-bi...
             **** burns, **** stays oriental
            by the limits of ending up in mecca;
sorry to have to add: hey presto!
Paul Glottaman May 2022
Your judgement rains down
like machinegun fire,
but I grew up in a viperpit
full of violence and ire.
You wonder why I'm distant
but I was raised under attack.
Struck down in the moments
before you swore you'd be back.

You want to share credit
for my accomplishments but
where even were you?
What claim has your absence
on these things that I do?
I made myself from your ashes
like some backwards phoenix
worried at all times of the you
inside my double helix.
I went booming across the midwest
chasing the Thunderbird
and nuclear aftershocks.
Hoping any moment to be stirred
to freedom by these mythical hawks.


I was awoken
consiserably broken
and while I've done work
glass just don't uncrack
and there's **** from which
we just can't come back.
I don't know what to say
don't know who to tell.
I'm sorry, Pavlov
but we can't unring that bell.

I love you.
I always will
I've tried not to
and here we are. Still.
You watched them turn
me into this horrible closed off
monster shaped man
and then demanded explanations
for why I am what I am.
I've not got it all fixed
but I'm trying.
I've got a past to escape
and the cracks aren't uncracked
but they are traced in painter's tape.
I'm gonna be better
I'm gonna likely die trying.
And the credit will be all mine
in spite of your lying.

I wanted more but here's
what I've got.
I want to be whole and normal
but ******* it, I'm not.
You weren't there to teach
or to provide or to even try.
I wasn't worth staying for
and I still don't know why.

— The End —