i hope there's a place for us
in the end.
unwanted, unpleasant,
they feel so uneasy when we bring it up,
the horrors of death.
they want to forget,
they want to be safe in their bubbles
of blissful oblivion.
right.
should we say we're sorry
for being too loud,
too angry, too stubborn,
not willing to die without a struggle?
perhaps we're just making it all up.
well,
although it was mostly pretend,
we really appreciate
your concern.
thanks for nothing.
i hope there's a place for you, too,
in the end.

a false promise of freedom to a captured man,
just like a cup of poison, filled up to the brim.
a note between the stones of all the walls we've built
and all all the walls they tore down just to fight again.
it's nothing like the light that breaks a peaceful dawn,
it's painted in the colours of a foreign flag.
and everything that burns takes us a lifetime back,
and everyone who died was not meant to be born.
acceptance isn't earned, it's but a weapon drawn
and aimed at those who dare to overstep the line.
a shattered cup of poison for a senseless crime
filled up by blood of every prisoner of war.

~
It feels like the anesthetic is wearing off

This circus of machines

From coin-operated hostility

To wholesale apathy refineries

They tell us it's winter down in the subdermal

They tell us the foundation has grown weak

Dislocation is a incoming storm

Mirrors are distorted screens

Placeholders really

In a city without children

Even the statues weep

Snow upon the ground that was once blood

Now an empire without heirs

Even the trees hate us
~

The soldiers scurry

away from what I don't want --


and not can believe.

Our soldiers wouldn't do

anything like that, we dream --


It can not be true.

Bang! I surely heard the graze of conflicting thoughts;
setting a battleground across their minds.
Every word was in a blaring tone, as every
negative word the world spoke of it; was its
quick and merciless first fire.

Bang! Shooting down the innocence of
young, innocence that was held an infant—
still it hadn’t stopped man from killing them
in an instant. A snap of  a camera, of every violent
act played on the news, following every instance.

BANG! The gun grew louder to the crime that was
deemed by fighting for resistance. And how so will we
ever find peace in a world, if all our actions leave it
in so many broken pieces?

Sometimes it is hard to know how to forge
     ahead.

The news has never been good, but recently it seems increasingly bad.

The grass is still green here, mom.

But it's drowning in rivers of red there.
Dead and brown and gone in other words and
other worlds that are even
still
part of this
     one.

What are any of us to do?

How can any of us bear not to bear witness?
And in bearing witness,
How does any of us retain the strength to live as though all is normal when it is so painfully obvious that it is not
so painfully obvious
that this cannot possibly be considered normal
or that if it is considered normal
then it is so painfully obvious that it should not be
that we should not want to be part of a world where this is normal.

So I return again to the question of how
is any of us supposed to forge ahead in a world at war?

Sometimes I take comfort in the idea that this, too, is the human condition.
We are a communal species, but a species that has always been at war with itself.

Nation against nation, tribe against tribe, clan against clan.

The only difference now is the scale.
We have globalized and commercialized war in a way that people 200 years ago would have found incomprehensible.
We have COD-- excuse me,
COMMODIFIED is what I meant
it into video games and movies and bumper stickers of AK-47s and how
how I ask is any of us to press on in a world so on fire that cities are burning and children are lucky if we can pull them from rubble and somehow hope that they, too, will not later seek to wage the destruction they were born into and borne out of.

And yet still,
The grass is green here, mom.

I barely know how we can love this world.
I hope that maybe we can still manage to love inside this broken plane. The myth of a phoenix is a beautiful one. Born of the ashes made from fire in a world that cannot cease
fire.

Always we hope for rebirth.

Somehow we must find a way to love
something or someone or some place.

In a world where the grass is still green..
And hopefully,
maybe,
can be green in otherwheres, too.

Grass does not grow if it is not watered.

And yet
we have poured a monsoon of kerosene on the plains of dead grass in a drought amidst famine.

Recall--god gave Noah the rainbow sign, said no more water, the fire next time!

What recourse do we have other than to love?

Love that which has burned
Love that which is not burned yet and which we hope to protect.

Love one another and hope against hope that this time,
Maybe this time

The grass will grow green there, too.

I know you've heard of RINOs,
Perhaps you've heard of DINOs,
Some Christians are called CINOs,
Are those men mere MINOs.
Women become WINOs
(the irony doesn't escape me thouogh)
Humans evolved to HINOs;
Friends are friends
I'll never call them  FINOs.
Avoid lovers who are LINOs,
And teachers who are TINOs.
Could a Jew be a JINO?

But make no mistake:
Terrorists are Terrorists,
Jihadists are Jihadists,
Haters are Haters,
War mongers are war mongers,
Liars lie.

It's We thePeople, PINOs.