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I WAS a boy when I heard three red words
a thousand Frenchmen died in the streets
for: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity-I asked
why men die for words.
  
I was older; men with mustaches, sideburns,
lilacs, told me the high golden words are:
Mother, Home, and Heaven-other older men with
face decorations said: God, Duty, Immortality
-they sang these threes slow from deep lungs.
  
Years ticked off their say-so on the great clocks
of doom and damnation, soup and nuts: meteors flashed
their say-so: and out of great Russia came three
dusky syllables workmen took guns and went out to die
for: Bread, Peace, Land.
  
And I met a marine of the U.S.A., a leatherneck with a ******* his knee for a memory in ports circling the earth and he said: Tell me how to say three things and I always get by-gimme a plate of ham and eggs-how much?-and-do you love me, kid?
Jonathan Moya Nov 2019
The stars on the flag started falling off
when Private Walker returned home
to Tennessee after six months of being
in country in Afghanistan.

At Camp Leatherneck on the treadmill
he folded five points to pentagrams,
imagined fireworks nova his welcome back.

The flag rarely flapped in the arid silence
of base camp.  Was MIA everywhere else.

He landed unmet in
Chattanooga on Veterans Day
in time to catch the parade highlights,
which happened two days earlier,
being ignored on the airport monitors  
in the hustle of terminal traffic.

No flags decorated Broad street shops,
no watchers waived the red, white and blue.
Police motorcycles fronted the parade
and patrolled the back in sunglass alert.

Two Vietnam vets shouldering hunting rifles
marched grimly in parade formation followed
by alternating school bands and ROTC cadets.

All two thousand stars dripped down,
faded blue in the rush to show the next ad.
Every which way he looked
the rushing crowd turned his back to him.

He remembered Anousheh, the girl
whose name meant everlasting/immortal.

The child who hugged him,
kissed his forehead when he gave
her a Hershey bar from
his mom’s care package
while patrolling the base perimeter road.

The friend, the daughter, the grandchild
who died in a Taliban wedding bombing,
one week after her seventh birthday,
three days after their embrace.

His heart, his tears, his breath,
his every word was Anousheh.
All was and will be forever Anousheh.

And when he prayed
he prayed like Anousheh,
and on his knees at the airport
he faced her outbound heart
and prayed for a mutilated world.
Nick Kroger May 2014
Georg lay waste to sharp shrapnel pangs.
The hand of Simon reached, gripping
The leatherneck deformity
Off the forsaken war floor.
Spitting slurred speech he raged to Georg
“Take my hand Comrade! Do not wait!
Gas is coming, can not you taste?”
Georg could taste the thicket of dust.
The dust preyed upon him—his youth.
Under cover the two discussed,
The pains of war—the loves they lost.
“I loved my wife” spoke he: Simon.
“I loved my books,” Spoke he: Georg.
“I loved my faith,” Spoke he: Simon.
“Tell me Simon, what good is faith?”
“I know not why—I just hold it.”
“I hold far too much don’t you see?
My father’s will doth burden me.
Besides, what of faith here entrenched?
They let us carry dead men, but
What of faith? I ponder this so.
Should not faith carry us comrade?
Oh how the faith has lost its weight.
Trust me comrade faith will not save.”
(Now words written some months back more urgent then ever)!

Trumpet call to action,
sans barreling totalitarian
tilt per prez zee dent shill faction
already wrecking ball -
even without Miley Cyrus - got traction.

Das boot Trump out-
(oust him to) Mexico or Waterloo
lip smacking gangs eagerly await
bully in White House and true
as Reince prescience fore tells poe
whit yawl get lucky strike
if keep Taj Mahal shaped shoo
fur deux hundred daze
starring scary motley crue.

╰☆╮I'm royal heir to peace mongering hoarders,╰☆╮
which comb hen might handy when borders
hermetically sealed, per heil hit lore
caw zing a furor with his stark orders.

Gestapo Re Don Dint (doomsday)
I dont wanna don a quack dynasty outfit,
or that of wood chucker
but...holy *******
kudos to heckler, who deems
steam roller Trump as one mean trucker.

Thus - for umpteenth attempt to post
with noah intention
to induce rabid reaction to roast
my *** (albeit scrawny just to be cheeky),
I duck rye America will burn like toast

if.... mister money bags reaches
full term finish line of presidential electorate,
he doth stick out pudgy leatherneck
with reassurance,
sans hiz safely guarded golf coast.

My anti Donald trump screed
WE MUST DO MORE THAN YODEL LOUD: all agreed
out....out...get...lest cruel nightmare har reed
thru legislation - ding ****
the witch's dead donald drake...freed

bigotry, derogatory hate, hence
out...of...here...without...his...coat...indeed
of...armor, nor golden golfing irons greed
dilly bought with monies usurped
unpaid/underpaid migrants MUST NOT heed
no passivity, who rightfully
feel indignant and teed.

I dune hot condone political measures
paws sauté fracas mane lion kapo - louse
jabbering indiscretion via his blouse
zee and breezy haughty snub nosed
air audacity, haughty, and superiority
on par with Doctor Zeuse
herewith continues poem,

I dashed off ala hill a re: huff - to douse
Auld don self serving trumpeting and gel lee
joie de vivre dystopian *******
inducing nostalgia fin d siecle
Barack Obama utopia of yesterday
now 45th lacking prez cred,

he doth thrive to squeeze gnarly paws,
around world asper hobnobbing
with bigwigs snatching grab-bag to carouse
invariably sparking angry birds viz
puffin that retweet his sewerage bilge -

strike horror tummy senses -
for antithetical opinions heed espouse
based on scary political fracas
and ominous nightmare whar mo' will grouse
to obstruct Trump accessing black keys to arouse

looming presidential nightmare
became real - gruff louse
he crushes sacred freedoms,
whence civilization goes off bluff
analogous to a rabid Tom cat
terminating the life of poor ole Mickey Mouse.

DUCK AFTER DUMP PING THE DON
air ring ma thoughts - no matter aye ham
juiced one twenty first century mwm ape
serves as genuine s cape
to fly (during pitch

black hours of night) and escape
burning effigies, where his jumbo jet,
a sonic boom stick bewitching like Snape
temporarily tough feign ruffled feathers sans ****
pay shuss selfish lust, when world
slides down behavioral sink into Old Rotten Gotham,
where he twill jape
at distant outlier from madding crowd a gape.

At sheer inanity trumpeting strumpets donning innate
prejudice and senselessness purr
blind faith toward self avowed demigod --
seize ***** viz Cesar

his hair coiffed and puffed like it whir
wind blown kickstart ting mobs to stir
paying bodyguards
to evict ruckus-causing murmur
oh...how the masses will let this country.

Go to hell in hand basket
and rack up stratospheric global debt
cause zing this one measly mortal male to fret
that totalitarian rule will force every man,
woman and child to march....het

two...three...four, while the billionaire
turns a third blind eye speeds away
in his foo fighter jet
argh...heavens to Betsy DeVos,
how did fickle finger of fate let

this pompous ***
vacuum majority votes across world wide net
to finagle vox populi,
and groom hooligan nasty ruffian thugs
with smashed face doughy as smart putty pet

bump ping uglies henchmen bedlam set
to create their own version of the tet
offensive, despite croup
bawling ashen faced deportees,

whose tears sentence innocent to po' ver tee
branding indiscriminately vet
so culled unwanted ill eagle "aliens"
labored with nose to grindstone

fingers to the bone vainly,
their American dream parched whence whet
long story short - pondering
rental circumstance will equal net

zero importance, and will be upended if this ret
chad, ewol, googly-eyed, gastronomic,
narcissistic bullish don will set
the spark for world war three -

via gone ah re: ha...ha...ha...to all vet
tureens within American crucible melting *** -
with backs whet
unless....Katrina and the Waves,
superman or Sabrina can oust him yet.
FDTA Dec 2020
I cried for a light, but fell through the floor.
There is no apt description for what I saw.

I had hoped to see the world bend and wilt like dried leaves curling in a brawl with flames.
The green invaded with ash which would take off into the sky.

But I didn’t.

I saw nothing.


Most of the world is empty, and yet we keep ******* it drier.

More food and mass for the black hole which will swallow us whole.

But before all that let me pick up this axe and drain the ****** amber sap,
Let me boil this ancient ones remains so that my tire may roll and my child can have a more sleek-looking doll.

My boots crunch on a shell, the earth is hollowed of life and paved, locked away in a scaly grey crust, tar. Staling the air, cloths and nails too, the air is stuffed with the stuff.


The man locked in the box without any lights knew that there were four walls, a ceiling and a floor.

He knew each step, each corner and crack, but could not say what was written outside, nor how tall or large it truly was. He could not stick his hands in to measure the width of the walls.

He could not see to find the door.


But in the pit the crowd went wild, a fit, ham ****** fight, bodies breathing sparks and singers speaking revolutions into royalties.

Our minds are empty, our fibres are flailing, they’re in the pocket whilst lining them too!

I saw no room for the bribery of interest and the interests of art to cohabitate this mental space.

The music spat out of the drums, and slid off the strings,
The bass drum and high-hat gasping, boom, tick, boom tick.
In-between the breaths, the guitar hovered over the top, whipping the crowd and the bass,
Shaking the earth, already buzzing from the stomps mashing down the dirt.  

I saw no room for silence when the sounds made shapes, and no room for sounds, when silence stole the stage.  

‘We want you’
Cries the buttoned up leatherneck, the premonition of he.
‘There’s room for you still, the war eats boys and ***** out men’
Thats how the get them in.
The next day he called ‘bye ***, ima go fly my flag and wave a gun’. She called ‘Have fun’.
Within three weeks of mud and rot, the boy got shot, face full to flat, wearing a green coat then black. Now there’s an empty place-mat. Just a conversation piece. The sad reminder of an empty chair.


I cried for a light, but fell through the floor
There’s just no justifying what I saw.

‘Don’t let them in, they’re vermin, they sin’
And if you ask what’s the difference between me and him, if you ask why the wall, why the dogs, Why we don’t take steps to emancipate, why anticipate hate when the power of love can overcome the love of power, that is when we reach our golden hour.

Today, I can’t imagine winning tasting so sour.
But I bite the prize and spit it out.

What the hell is everyone really arguing about?

So when they lower their bodies down, saying that we're dying proud, don’t sing our anthem too loud, keep the rhythm but listen, between the drum rolls and bullet snares, you’ll hear the cries of people outside the box. Perhaps if listened to they'll find a door, and shine a light. Maybe we don't all need to fight.

— The End —