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Seán Mac Falls Nov 2014
By the dawn's early light,
Casual ties of warring pride,
Who wear the fit of uniforms,
Creasing down the seamy streets,
Who once in his sights were called to order,
By arrow clutching eagles, sandbagged
By the rivers heart of darkness, *****-
Trapped by bootstraps pulled, torn apart
In tiger eyeing fields that lied
In wait while choppers dived, delivering
Payloads of giant dragon flied fire
And this unction was to be their balm
And the swordless Dons were spit out
Of skull hunting windmills, Jonah
Beached to thy kingdom cong.

And over their heads cried the phantom
Jets, bat out of helmet, to the straw
Pulling hairs and these heroes, we
Abandoned without bonds nor blindfold
And lashed them to the flagging pole
With guns saluting while the sirens
Wailed, no wonder they should crack,
Our green jaded Gods, our Greek
Journeymen, due south of lotus land,
No wonder they should break on the China
Seas in that cold, ******* land.
O say can you see, that it is we,
The people, in anger and in shame
Who have no mettle, to give, but tarnish
Foisted on the brave and they
Are worn, like trinkets to dishonor.

And over the deep non-ending sank
Our heroes, betrayed by ism's, discharged
By ghosts in the machining guns,
Unspirited by a corporeal world,
Bamboozled in the muddy thickets
And dropped to the fray on ****** wings,
To foreign soil, where children are lost
In the man eating groves and they
Were thus dutifully numbered by their own
****** arms and all were made
Guilty cold in that sliver of uncivil
And polar eyed land, O say can you see,
The burning of twilights last gleaming?
And, we sutured a wall for the trigger-
Happy dead, we dammed the bleeding,
But can there be no bridges?

And further from those chilling fields
They are casting us letters, address
Unknown and mid adrift are messages
In drowning bottles by the waysides,
They are swimming to our doors,
Where, we the people, have built a wall,
Made of stone, black and shiny, it will
Not smear— and we are polishing off
Our dead, say the cold blooded
Behind that face and in front runs a red
River running down the vane, glorious sun,
Yet, this humble partition, in stories and tears,
Is deconstructing grave white heads,
Quartered in pride and darts to the ground,
That warring bird, crowned to his vacant
Lots.  O— say can you see, the turning
Of twilight's last gleaming?
Poem written in honor of all fallen soldiers and commemorating the 'Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall' in Washington, D.C.

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial is a national memorial in Washington, D.C. It honors U.S. service members of the U.S. armed forces who fought in the Vietnam War, service members who died in service in Vietnam/South East Asia, and those service members who were unaccounted for (Missing In Action) during the War.
Don Bouchard Mar 2014
Hiro, the Kamikaze,
Happily lives just over the hill,
Sleeps every night quite calmly,
So proud of his never a ****...

Hiro, the Kamikaze,
Veteran flyer is he,
Flew back from 33 missions,
Dropped his payloads in the sea.

----------------------------
(I know the bombs were mounted permanently on the Zeros that men like Hiro flew, and that returning or jettisoning were impossible, but still I have been thinking what peaceful men might do.... Perhaps a peaceful Taliban, or drone-flying American...might learn a lesson from Hiro...and do what he can.... Teach us peace.)
Seán Mac Falls Jan 2014
By the dawn's early light,
Casual ties of warring pride,
Who wear the fit of uniforms,
Creasing down the seamy streets,
Who once in his sights were called to order,
By arrow clutching eagles, sandbagged
By the rivers heart of darkness, *****-
Trapped by bootstraps pulled, torn apart
In tiger eyeing fields that lied
In wait while choppers dived, delivering
Payloads of giant dragon flied fire
And this unction was to be their balm
And the swordless Dons were spit out
Of skull hunting windmills, Jonah
Beached to thy kingdom cong.

And over their heads cried the phantom
Jets, bat out of helmet, to the straw
Pulling hairs and these heroes, we
Abandoned without bonds nor blindfold
And lashed them to the flagging pole
With guns saluting while the sirens
Wailed, no wonder they should crack,
Our green jaded Gods, our Greek
Journeymen, due south of lotus land,
No wonder they should break on the China
Seas in that cold, ******* land.
O say can you see, that it is we,
The people, in anger and in shame
Who have no mettle, to give, but tarnish
Foisted on the brave and they
Are worn, like trinkets to dishonor.

And over the deep non-ending sank
Our heroes, betrayed by ism's, discharged
By ghosts in the machining guns,
Unspirited by a corporeal world,
Bamboozled in the muddy thickets
And dropped to the fray on ****** wings,
To foreign soil, where children are lost
In the man eating groves and they
Were thus dutifully numbered by their own
****** arms and all were made
Guilty cold in that sliver of uncivil
And polar eyed land, O say can you see,
The burning of twilights last gleaming?
And, we sutured a wall for the trigger-
Happy dead, we dammed the bleeding,
But can there be no bridges?

And further from those chilling fields
They are casting us letters, address
Unknown and mid adrift are messages
In drowning bottles by the waysides,
They are swimming to our doors,
Where, we the people, have built a wall,
Made of stone, black and shiny, it will
Not smear— and we are polishing off
Our dead, say the cold blooded
Behind that face and in front runs a red
River running down the vane, glorious sun,
Yet, this humble partition, in stories and tears,
Is deconstructing grave white heads,
Quartered in pride and darts to the ground,
That warring bird, crowned to his vacant
Lots.  O— say can you see, the turning
Of twilight's last gleaming?
Poem written in honor of all fallen soldiers and commemorating the 'Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall' in Washington, D.C.

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial is a national memorial in Washington, D.C. It honors U.S. service members of the U.S. armed forces who fought in the Vietnam War, service members who died in service in Vietnam/South East Asia, and those service members who were unaccounted for (Missing In Action) during the War.
I blow a spliff before I jump off of my rainbow

And lately IV been searching for payloads of  pasios to take home so witness the paper chase I guess that's that why my father stays gone  and somebody gotta get it just for the lights can stay on

and mama has a job but we pulling up on the lawn for a car she can sortta pay on and teis no longer there cahrri can only play on that's why I gotta make  songs so untilI make my portion I have no mattress to lay on all I want is the green and ill take it without the crayons so mama we're gonna make it I put that on what I skate on
Hay man ******* if your a grammer **** and don't judge this or try to fix my English or punctuate **** I wrote it how I wanted to spaced it how I wanted to and I'm going to post and leave it how I want to

Thank you
Man Feb 2021
far off
the jets are being gassed up
preping for launch

far off
the infantry train
in anticipation, for the battle sure to come

far off
the navy men scan the seas
waiting for a blip on the radar

far off
a marine is receiving shock training
and practicing what it is to be dead

far off
icbms with nuclear payloads are capped
their ignition sources itching for flight

far off
but not so much
Seán Mac Falls Sep 2012
By the dawn's early light,
Casual ties of warring pride,
Who wear the fit of uniforms,
Creasing down the seamy streets,
Who once in his sights were called to order,
By arrow clutching eagles, sandbagged
By the rivers heart of darkness, *****-
Trapped by bootstraps pulled, torn apart
In tiger eyeing fields that lied
In wait while choppers dived, delivering
Payloads of giant dragon flied fire
And this unction was to be their balm
And the swordless Dons were spit out
Of skull hunting windmills, Jonah
Beached to thy kingdom cong.

And over their heads cried the phantom
Jets, bat out of helmet, to the straw
Pulling hairs and these heroes, we
Abandoned without bonds nor blindfold
And lashed them to the flagging pole
With guns saluting while the sirens
Wailed, no wonder they should crack,
Our green jaded Gods, our Greek
Journeymen, due south of lotus land,
No wonder they should break on the China
Seas in that cold, ******* land.
O say can you see, that it is we,
The people, in anger and in shame
Who have no mettle, to give, but tarnish
Foisted on the brave and they
Are worn, like trinkets to dishonor.

And over the deep non-ending sank
Our heroes, betrayed by ism's, discharged
By ghosts in the machining guns,
Unspirited by a corporeal world,
Bamboozled in the muddy thickets
And dropped to the fray on ****** wings,
To foreign soil, where children are lost
In the man eating groves and they
Were thus dutifully numbered by their own
****** arms and all were made
Guilty cold in that sliver of uncivil
And polar eyed land, O say can you see,
The burning of twilights last gleaming?
And, we sutured a wall for the trigger-
Happy dead, we dammed the bleeding,
But can there be no bridges?

And further from those chilling fields
They are casting us letters, address
Unknown and mid adrift are messages
In drowning bottles by the waysides,
They are swimming to our doors,
Where, we the people, have built a wall,
Made of stone, black and shiny, it will
Not smear— and we are polishing off
Our dead, say the cold blooded
Behind that face and in front runs a red
River running down the vane, glorious sun,
Yet, this humble partition, in stories and tears,
Is deconstructing grave white heads,
Quartered in pride and darts to the ground,
That warring bird, crowned to his vacant
Lots.  O— say can you see, the turning
Of twilight's last gleaming?
Poem written in honor of all fallen soldiers and commemorating the 'Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall' in Washington, D.C.

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial is a national memorial in Washington, D.C. It honors U.S. service members of the U.S. armed forces who fought in the Vietnam War, service members who died in service in Vietnam/South East Asia, and those service members who were unaccounted for (Missing In Action) during the War.
the military industrial complex
are making a killing
the arms trade
is a profitable business
billions are harvested
by the grey suited men
the war machine
supplies deadly payloads
collateral damage
always yields such a tidy sum
why interrupt or put paid
to a great earner
the balance sheet
must be in the black
production lines
busy filling orders
each day
the bullet
the bomb
the drone
sold to effectively obliterate
and take lives away
in corporate offices
the arms dealers
rub their hands
with glee
as they amass a bounty
from their lethal armories
Seán Mac Falls Jul 2013
By the dawn's early light,
Casual ties of warring pride,
Who wear the fit of uniforms,
Creasing down the seamy streets,
Who once in his sights were called to order,
By arrow clutching eagles, sandbagged
By the rivers heart of darkness, *****-
Trapped by bootstraps pulled, torn apart
In tiger eyeing fields that lied
In wait while choppers dived, delivering
Payloads of giant dragon flied fire
And this unction was to be their balm
And the swordless Dons were spit out
Of skull hunting windmills, Jonah
Beached to thy kingdom cong.

And over their heads cried the phantom
Jets, bat out of helmet, to the straw
Pulling hairs and these heroes, we
Abandoned without bonds nor blindfold
And lashed them to the flagging pole
With guns saluting while the sirens
Wailed, no wonder they should crack,
Our green jaded Gods, our Greek
Journeymen, due south of lotus land,
No wonder they should break on the China
Seas in that cold, ******* land.
O say can you see, that it is we,
The people, in anger and in shame
Who have no mettle, to give, but tarnish
Foisted on the brave and they
Are worn, like trinkets to dishonor.

And over the deep non-ending sank
Our heroes, betrayed by ism's, discharged
By ghosts in the machining guns,
Unspirited by a corporeal world,
Bamboozled in the muddy thickets
And dropped to the fray on ****** wings,
To foreign soil, where children are lost
In the man eating groves and they
Were thus dutifully numbered by their own
****** arms and all were made
Guilty cold in that sliver of uncivil
And polar eyed land, O say can you see,
The burning of twilights last gleaming?
And, we sutured a wall for the trigger-
Happy dead, we dammed the bleeding,
But can there be no bridges?

And further from those chilling fields
They are casting us letters, address
Unknown and mid adrift are messages
In drowning bottles by the waysides,
They are swimming to our doors,
Where, we the people, have built a wall,
Made of stone, black and shiny, it will
Not smear— and we are polishing off
Our dead, say the cold blooded
Behind that face and in front runs a red
River running down the vane, glorious sun,
Yet, this humble partition, in stories and tears,
Is deconstructing grave white heads,
Quartered in pride and darts to the ground,
That warring bird, crowned to his vacant
Lots.  O— say can you see, the turning
Of twilight's last gleaming?
Poem written in honor of all fallen soldiers and commemorating the 'Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall' in Washington, D.C.

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial is a national memorial in Washington, D.C. It honors U.S. service members of the U.S. armed forces who fought in the Vietnam War, service members who died in service in Vietnam/South East Asia, and those service members who were unaccounted for (Missing In Action) during the War.
Ken Pepiton Jul 2021
If Dexter's Parents had not divorced and he had not moved away with his mother,
Who was beautiful as I recall, today would have played out or worked out or turned out
Differently. Very differently, considering that little twist in my six-degrees of separation base pattern
Hapt seventy-years ago, or so,
----
Watch starlings, if you have starlings, or watch congregations of kippers on Netflix.
Their steering is on auto. Do you agree? Then we are in Agreement, which is an odd place to find one's self in the midst of so great a cloud of witnesses.
-----
'e goes a gain a ginning, grinning all the while
Aye, and radioman turned on just
Now listen -Radio Mumbai

I meant, you and I agree schools of sardines and flocks of gulls are all on auto-pilot-propulsion-maintenance programs,
Right?
I thought so. The code in a gnat must be so much more elegant than the vast terabytes of programming in the GPS constrained self-drivers evolving on earth. Gnats never collide and are nearly impossible to hit, unless you have bat tools, which you don't. Nobody wrote that gnat code, right?
Of course not, evidence of programming only appears to be programming, evidence of design only looks like design it's not design. Right? So says Carl Sagan, Richard Dawkins, and all the people so called to win the battle for the minds of **** Sapiens Augmentatious, lest, as the confusion of Babel subsides, those minds should begin to reason together more clearly in light left after the lies standing on men's minds are revealed inferior to what our senses sensationally acknowledge. Whew. Long thought.

I meander, but you do as well. That is how things flow.
Not over immovable objections, around.

One life that was connected to mine in boyhood friendship was severed about half-way through my sixteenth year.
He died. I don't remember how. Alcohol-related, I can imagine. I did not attend the funeral, though some acquaintances did; one of whom was later my lover. She is dead now as well, too late to tell me anything. She had a baby less than a year after I returned from Vietnam, more than nine months later. That is a heavy thought, but not one I think does much good now.

So little of history is noted. So few lives function to trigger generational unctions that devolve into wars against imbalance, iniquity, slavery and death.
Fraternity, Egality, ******* *** the mob all riled-up, burn , baby, burn.
Whole people die in history's whims,
If whims they were.

Rebellions…

Watch the starlings steer through 4-d patterns eternally random,
fueled by bugs they convert to food for the soil itself.
Their life is their work and they do it beautifully. As one.

Can Boeing-Raytheon-L3 et al build a self-propelled, self-refueling drone that can fly at top-speed, maneuvering millimeters in each direction from other self-propelled, self-refueling drones while dropping their payloads without a single friendly-fire crash, ever?

Starlings don't **** on each other.

If war-profiteers could build such things, would you watch such things perform and wonder at the minds that built them, or deny such minds played any role from concept to creation, and ask who authorized development and deployment of such an expensive fertilizer distribution system that fertilizes wild weeds as well as gentled weeds?
Which would you say: "Wow, how did those get made, who paid?" or "Wow, look what billions of years and energy alone can do against absolutely insurmountable odds and impossible physics, with chaos and corruption always on the job?" Holy entropic bad moon.

Are ye not more precious than starlings, or sardines, or gnats. Would a sense pertaining to immediate locational proximity, evident in birds and fish and bugs, not be apparent in Adamkind, at least as a metaphor regarding benefits gained in knowing where you are relative to your own environment, regardless of any sense of personal purpose?

I can see it in the fact that we can agree, for good or ill.

As generations mature and regenerate, might there be patterns in the tumbling of the powerful and the powerless populations. Patterns depicting group or herd preservation by fully mentally equipped populations of mature and maturing Adamkind are detectable. Facts now overflow the cup of knowns. These are those days when knowledge is increasing and increasing and increasing to the point of being a destructive force in tightly closed minds.

Name dropping, rather than restating, Helen Arendt, "The Origins of Totalitarianism"(1966), Bertrand Russell, "The Problems with Philosophy"(1912), Pankaj Mishra, "The Age of Anger"(2017).

These three books and some browsing of names and titles the authors drop, have spurred me over the top of a rise I had not seen coming. My path had become gradually uphill without my noticing. I was interested in other things and ignoring notices from my body that oxygen stores were being depleted more rapidly than current inventory of red blood cells and nurse lymphocyte-bots can recycle the quadra-monthly disassembly turnover, H2O stores for sweat heat-dispersal systems and plasma regeneration and digestion of what little remains to be digested are now at "caution, think about stopping" levels. But I saw that from the top I might see to the top of the next rise before I chose the downhill part of my path. The down hill path determines the uphill path.
In the desert, you can see trails marked in many ways, mosses grow in least-heat zones created by angular location relationships with the sun. Breezes whisper into shade puddles by ever slow slight temperature inequilibria shifting some heat to the triggering of my sweat system.

If you were compelled to reason about every step you take in life as if it were your responsibility to regulate and control every function of your flesh vehicle in which you abide in relationship to all around you that you could harm or that could harm you, you would be mad. {mad?} illusion of reality

assumes reality is friendly here. I'm okeh
with that improbability aside,

implied as self explicatory and unfolding life…
examined,
for what its worth in words redeemed may be,
in the future, when this is what they thought,
you think, and I say know,
I thought this,
on a bet. Or an oath, depends on the fret.

Crazy mad, but angry auch. That would be unfair, because you don't know how to do what you are being compelled to do. Reports of persons who can control ****** functions not commonly consciously controlled are easily found. Such persons spend their time so countering the rolling rhythms beat by heart doors slamming shut and swooshing open in response to electricity, that, we, Adamkind, have yet to truly understand. We've no need, that which concerns us was
to be perfected, not by us.

If my use of Adamkind offends you, the reality of my benefits, wrought from my comprehension of my relation to Adam, will likely make me your enemy, in your own mind, not mine.
Ax'em, do they love po' o'hate rich?

Believe one chance in practically infinity of current evolutionary-nontheistic thought being the way things must be, then multiply the number of times you make that bet by the number of insects on earth or even by the number of mitochondria in your kidneys.

Ignoring life's delicate imbalances in light of what can be known today, breaks our minds's ability to agree perfectly. The social dichotomy that seems to arrange adamkind's affairs over eons and eras: rich and poor, have and have not, mean and meek, is ego-driven, self-benefit seeking and not part of the original program.

Contemplate the sweet influences of Pliades, silently questing the truth of hope and matter. There is more power in this stream.

Chapter end.
The future is in BASIC ATTENTION TOKENS. Mental fodder content creators can share in any ads that pay for the attention paid to your work. It is in a neotny of adaptive evolution -- if you pay attention it pays you back for letting AI know what helps more than hurts. Check it out, ats.
much money is to be made
it's a lucrative trade
this industry does quite well
its daily profits do swell

much sough after is the hardware
buyers seek it here and there
the deals for these goods
affect the world's many neighborhoods

hear the jets flying overhead
their payloads of bombs
the women and children dread

rifles killing people by the score
in all areas
of the Middle Eastern corridor

men in suits sit comfortably
they're selling vast amounts of weaponry
their kind of business deals
in all manner of fatalities

the military industrial complex
is cashing in on war
it is making billions of dollars
killing for revenue galore

each day death tolls
on our planet accrue
the arms sellers
gaining from the deadly slew
Seán Mac Falls Mar 2013
By the dawn's early light,
Casual ties of warring pride,
Who wear the fit of uniforms,
Creasing down the seamy streets,
Who once in his sights were called to order,
By arrow clutching eagles, sandbagged
By the rivers heart of darkness, *****-
Trapped by bootstraps pulled, torn apart
In tiger eyeing fields that lied
In wait while choppers dived, delivering
Payloads of giant dragon flied fire
And this unction was to be their balm
And the swordless Dons were spit out
Of skull hunting windmills, Jonah
Beached to thy kingdom cong.

And over their heads cried the phantom
Jets, bat out of helmet, to the straw
Pulling hairs and these heroes, we
Abandoned without bonds nor blindfold
And lashed them to the flagging pole
With guns saluting while the sirens
Wailed, no wonder they should crack,
Our green jaded Gods, our Greek
Journeymen, due south of lotus land,
No wonder they should break on the China
Seas in that cold, ******* land.
O say can you see, that it is we,
The people, in anger and in shame
Who have no mettle, to give, but tarnish
Foisted on the brave and they
Are worn, like trinkets to dishonor.

And over the deep non-ending sank
Our heroes, betrayed by ism's, discharged
By ghosts in the machining guns,
Unspirited by a corporeal world,
Bamboozled in the muddy thickets
And dropped to the fray on ****** wings,
To foreign soil, where children are lost
In the man eating groves and they
Were thus dutifully numbered by their own
****** arms and all were made
Guilty cold in that sliver of uncivil
And polar eyed land, O say can you see,
The burning of twilights last gleaming?
And, we sutured a wall for the trigger-
Happy dead, we dammed the bleeding,
But can there be no bridges?

And further from those chilling fields
They are casting us letters, address
Unknown and mid adrift are messages
In drowning bottles by the waysides,
They are swimming to our doors,
Where, we the people, have built a wall,
Made of stone, black and shiny, it will
Not smear— and we are polishing off
Our dead, say the cold blooded
Behind that face and in front runs a red
River running down the vane, glorious sun,
Yet, this humble partition, in stories and tears,
Is deconstructing grave white heads,
Quartered in pride and darts to the ground,
That warring bird, crowned to his vacant
Lots.  O— say can you see, the turning
Of twilight's last gleaming?
Poem written in honor of all fallen soldiers and commemorating the 'Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall' in Washington, D.C.

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial is a national memorial in Washington, D.C. It honors U.S. service members of the U.S. armed forces who fought in the Vietnam War, service members who died in service in Vietnam/South East Asia, and those service members who were unaccounted for (Missing In Action) during the War.
Seán Mac Falls May 2016
( in honour of Memorial Day )*

By the dawn's early light,
Casual ties of warring pride,
Who wear the fit of uniforms,
Creasing down the seamy streets,
Who once in his sights were called to order,
By arrow clutching eagles, sandbagged
By the rivers heart of darkness, *****-
Trapped by bootstraps pulled, torn apart
In tiger eyeing fields that lied
In wait while choppers dived, delivering
Payloads of giant dragon flied fire
And this unction was to be their balm
And the swordless Dons were spit out
Of skull hunting windmills, Jonah
Beached to thy kingdom cong.

And over their heads cried the phantom
Jets, bat out of helmet, to the straw
Pulling hairs and these heroes, we
Abandoned without bonds nor blindfold
And lashed them to the flagging pole
With guns saluting while the sirens
Wailed, no wonder they should crack,
Our green jaded Gods, our Greek
Journeymen, due south of lotus land,
No wonder they should break on the China
Seas in that cold, ******* land.
O say can you see, that it is we,
The people, in anger and in shame
Who have no mettle, to give, but tarnish
Foisted on the brave and they
Are worn, like trinkets to dishonor.

And over the deep non-ending sank
Our heroes, betrayed by ism's, discharged
By ghosts in the machining guns,
Unspirited by a corporeal world,
Bamboozled in the muddy thickets
And dropped to the fray on ****** wings,
To foreign soil, where children are lost
In the man eating groves and they
Were thus dutifully numbered by their own
****** arms and all were made
Guilty cold in that sliver of uncivil
And polar eyed land, O say can you see,
The burning of twilights last gleaming?
And, we sutured a wall for the trigger-
Happy dead, we dammed the bleeding,
But can there be no bridges?

And further from those chilling fields
They are casting us letters, address
Unknown and mid adrift are messages
In drowning bottles by the waysides,
They are swimming to our doors,
Where, we the people, have built a wall,
Made of stone, black and shiny, it will
Not smear— and we are polishing off
Our dead, say the cold blooded
Behind that face and in front runs a red
River running down the vane, glorious sun,
Yet, this humble partition, in stories and tears,
Is deconstructing grave white heads,
Quartered in pride and darts to the ground,
That warring bird, crowned to his vacant
Lots.  O— say can you see, the turning
Of twilight's last gleaming?
Poem written in honor of all fallen soldiers and commemorating the 'Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall' in Washington, D.C.

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial is a national memorial in Washington, D.C. It honors U.S. service members of the U.S. armed forces who fought in the Vietnam War, service members who died in service in Vietnam/South East Asia, and those service members who were unaccounted for (Missing In Action) during the War.
.
MV Blake Mar 2015
Legs like lead,

We trudge through Monday’s trenches,

Carrying a pack

I’m sure weighs too much.

We shoulder the weight

And push forward onto Tuesday,

Gritting our teeth,

Feet sore to the touch.

On Wednesday,

The time falls like shells,

Carrying payloads

That detonate hour by hour,

Until Thursday,

When the guns are spent,

Cooling their muzzles

As they nurse their power.

Friday comes round,

And finds us alive in the trench,

And we’re ordered home

To replenish in peace.

Of this war we keep fighting

We prepare in retreat;

The glorious charge

For the generals gold fleece.
Seán Mac Falls Sep 2014
By the dawn's early light,
Casual ties of warring pride,
Who wear the fit of uniforms,
Creasing down the seamy streets,
Who once in his sights were called to order,
By arrow clutching eagles, sandbagged
By the rivers heart of darkness, *****-
Trapped by bootstraps pulled, torn apart
In tiger eyeing fields that lied
In wait while choppers dived, delivering
Payloads of giant dragon flied fire
And this unction was to be their balm
And the swordless Dons were spit out
Of skull hunting windmills, Jonah
Beached to thy kingdom cong.

And over their heads cried the phantom
Jets, bat out of helmet, to the straw
Pulling hairs and these heroes, we
Abandoned without bonds nor blindfold
And lashed them to the flagging pole
With guns saluting while the sirens
Wailed, no wonder they should crack,
Our green jaded Gods, our Greek
Journeymen, due south of lotus land,
No wonder they should break on the China
Seas in that cold, ******* land.
O say can you see, that it is we,
The people, in anger and in shame
Who have no mettle, to give, but tarnish
Foisted on the brave and they
Are worn, like trinkets to dishonor.

And over the deep non-ending sank
Our heroes, betrayed by ism's, discharged
By ghosts in the machining guns,
Unspirited by a corporeal world,
Bamboozled in the muddy thickets
And dropped to the fray on ****** wings,
To foreign soil, where children are lost
In the man eating groves and they
Were thus dutifully numbered by their own
****** arms and all were made
Guilty cold in that sliver of uncivil
And polar eyed land, O say can you see,
The burning of twilights last gleaming?
And, we sutured a wall for the trigger-
Happy dead, we dammed the bleeding,
But can there be no bridges?

And further from those chilling fields
They are casting us letters, address
Unknown and mid adrift are messages
In drowning bottles by the waysides,
They are swimming to our doors,
Where, we the people, have built a wall,
Made of stone, black and shiny, it will
Not smear— and we are polishing off
Our dead, say the cold blooded
Behind that face and in front runs a red
River running down the vane, glorious sun,
Yet, this humble partition, in stories and tears,
Is deconstructing grave white heads,
Quartered in pride and darts to the ground,
That warring bird, crowned to his vacant
Lots.  O— say can you see, the turning
Of twilight's last gleaming?
Poem written in honor of all fallen soldiers and commemorating the 'Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall' in Washington, D.C.

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial is a national memorial in Washington, D.C. It honors U.S. service members of the U.S. armed forces who fought in the Vietnam War, service members who died in service in Vietnam/South East Asia, and those service members who were unaccounted for (Missing In Action) during the War.
JC Lucas Mar 2015
It's grey, but it's
warm
and the people almost all smile and
wave
as you pass, even the
kids.

Early afternoon,
and the street's still dry,
the clouds are too lazy to drop
their payloads down on your head.

It's a bad part of town,
or at least it looks that way.
*****,
a little worn-down
rubbed smooth about the edges
and rusting at the seams.
But you're an outsider,
you don't live here
and maybe this part of town isn't bad-
not worse than any other part anyway.

The clouds are grey overhead-
but it's warm-
and the people are nice-
and they almost always
smile and
wave
as you walk by.
Julian Jul 2022
How Does History Really Work?

The enantiodromia of parallax founded as a predicated fulmination of retrograde incident precluding accidental consequent is a natural referent of a bypassed bridge that through tip-lipped coercion resorts to the nature countenance and visage of the holiest creator of our majestic universe bolted to the linearity of patterns of trigonometric spelunkers seeking a sub-Pythagorean orbit of granular generativity that becomes its own amplivagant vessel and simultaneously ampitheater that is a fission of magnetized smog mobilized in ulterior provenances of heightened parlance for impavid labtebricole secrets marauding with visagists that cloak the heavens in the elective cardiac synergy of a saturnine swindle wandering listlessly with jive-talking smooth-walking creatures of cerebral habit jaunty with legacy but bounded by the strict cloffins of the lambent source of journeymen into the sojourn neither of regaled destiny nor whispered prophecy but more on the lines of a conflated flux dispersal of entropies competing in space time to wander endlessly through the diaspora of the living hallowed graves of the Potemkin Village of the silentium of the protectorate behind McCauley Culkin’s agoraphobia. History rotates upon a transdimensional supercalendrical access point beyond which there is  nothing but terminus even in the absence of pointed aberration because the milk of even the lactose inferior mettle of scurrilous witwanton bludgergrumbles of the wednongues is a hallowed wassail only to the degree the counterfeit becomes moribund by the rickety cringes of logical deceit becoming tinsellated surfeit that the stars appetize for but because they are installed with a degree of reticent amnesia it grafts a gridlock of paralysis from which the hostage situation humanity has prevailed through despite velivolant winds to the contrary is capable of plumbing abyssopelagic transportation only in the moments when the material world and the numinous intersection of the seminal ingeminations of orderly demarches in the folksy remedies which bandy their temptations on the borrowed bibliopolists who in gingerly Canada Dry secrecy burrow the furrows of the sulcate grooves of waxen miracles in the glabrous limelight of the gallywow diversion that earns leverage over the meager rather than spars with the promethean pataphysics of a time that is becoming so prolific with fulgurant streaks disguised by smog that even  the most well-paid firefighters can never stop the rampant conflagrations from infiltrating cantabank muses upon alighted destinies. We are at a centripetal point in time among many others but because we witness the transdimensional bypass with such geopolitical clarity it becomes an obvious zugzwang for those who try chryselephantine gambits and gimcracks in the ginnels of backwater boondoggles to enforce the hibernaculum of blackguard engraved in the literate apostasy of man from the true origins of the dynamos that all decided together to ensure the vitality of the syndicated enterprise of the very transgressions and felonious against the “Space Cops” to the extent their overflush of ostentation in their gingerly mannerisms becomes itself the guarantor of an ascertained future clouded by murky residual charnels in the nemorivagant chase for the shining beacons of the brains that siphon unprecedented influence in order to cleanse lavaderos of the ***** grime of egestuous obolary poverty of the pastorauling and the aspen groves that lurk with pernicious impertinence above sandapiles of sadly deceased souls journeying towards neither an eternal conflagration nor a vacancy of substance but rather that substantial determination of magnanimity. The myths that perplex humanity were clothed as a parvenu IQ test for the people who sizzled with the saute of keen acumen foisted upon a thought loop of lunatic subversion of ultraviolet genius beyond the detection of the lens of prismatic fortunes gained by reversing photons in time to regionalize the spectral reality into the elaborate alveolate ploy by the elite to assume not by arrogation but rather by thaumaturgy that all witnesses become contributors in the modern age and therefore this funnels the continuum and spectrum of a radiological race girded by the futtocks of jetsetting analysis to bifurcate planes of trajectory that at first diverge widely because of raconteurs grafted with numinous fictions of the facade of man in a Potemkin Village like Manhattan which saw its population decline by nearly four-hundred thousand people in three months (All of the Boroughs) to invest in enclaves where their furtive fruition would be recognized. The very invention of time travel is an epigenetic alien configuration of races that outlived us and sought sidereal mysteries in boosterism that granted us parceled notaries that spell doom for democracy but bonanzas for the autarky found in inalienable rights such as the pursuit of happiness most importantly configured into the realms of persuasion to become a meddlesome hypestorm that few tempestuous mercurial sailors would dare to journey beyond because the early grave is reserved froward in the momentary amnesia of videos of accidental leaps that frogmarch us into a more clever ascertained future micromanaged by a collective syndicate of outfoxed limiculous creations drowning in cesspool swamps of money to bury the bridewells alive because essentially we are now entering the pivotal crux of  history when one man’s barnstorm becomes a collectivized enterprise to radically reform the conditional antiquity inherent to time and to gouge funding for armadas fought by warriors that lapse between milliseconds in order to deliver calculated payloads with extremely precise mathematical precision. When someone patented the Theory of Relativity he postulated that the condensation of matter is fungible and flexible plasticity rather than a benumbed sopiter race of grumbling groaks that become costermongers for comatose sleeping pills and mandatory heart monitoring. There are a few moments in history capable of jump starting the generator not of myth but the progeny of priggish mathematical facts lurid in their prurience of permanence to ensure that neither mythomane nor sophist can clamber into an artificial alcove of the celestial paint of enhanced perception predominating over a century obsessed with perceptual enhancements of prosthetic invention emigrating from distal orbits among the lunisolar accord as well as around the regional taxes of Saturn and its cove of troves of bohemian impertinence. Analyzing history in the alpenglow of the donnism of hedonistic impetuous importance is a yield and cloveryield to an optimism of guarded shibboleths easily duplicated by laboratory investigations into the microbiological elements of the functioning human society upon which percolations of reality drawing ever near the icebergs of certainty that the ship will eventually sink in Africa and that sad welter should appall us all but because one person who owns the master of destiny cognomen capable of surpassing the largesse of the frissons of glamour becomes the swift parvenu of an anointed bludgergrumble extorted by powerful puns in this society of fashionable violence to enforce codes of silence by tampering with individualism and individual flavorks that demassify to preselect by artificial implements that the predestination they heard was a warbled echo of a now extinct future aborted as the time line converged upon the antipodes of fission and friction to exert filagersion in geotaxis to ensure that the sworn blatteroons of bloviation endowed with such great fiduciary importance that when exact events are hallowed in history movie dialogue memorializes those moments at the very second they are observed without being an underminnow of lip syncing. Some primary examples of pataphysical conundrums exorcised from time is how the whiskey bar aloft in the heights of the stratosphere could find direct knowledge of the future live on camera in movies like Twister to memorialize the thaumaturgy of sartorial shoes mixed up in time and how in Lost’s final episode of the first season the entire cast was elated by their renewal of knowledge or the introduction of the inseminated creed of the mysterious bottle that was kicked and then dematerialized. Physics is a funny science but the belabored tropes of game theory existentially altered the trajectory of humanity from a docile ploy of slot machine slaves into a society that engraves its superstitions upon pervious minds to the salubrious decorum of a whittled henpeck of privilege that whatever is broadcast automatically becomes preeminent because it is so widely spread even among piebald audience of sebastomania and lunacy can be cordial with poorly kept secrets secreting the jaundice of self-reference and milking dead organs of surgical pride for the stomached emasculation of the humane virility undergirding civilization. Right now and starting in early September 2020 and much before that if you study the Earthquakes created near Hawthorne, Nevada the meterologist suddenly becomes the kingpin because his Big Lebowski antics are a sardonic rift on the rafts of publicity to reprove the agentic force of a discarnate inanimate evil of a being that lacks sensory capacity so thereby seeks to disincarcerate its own obligatory tether to the vacuum of warbled tilts of information to domineer with a degree of captaincy catapulted by the future dominion of historicity compounded by the dearth of energized rebuke flabbergasted venom of deceitful charlatans of yobbery complicant   on contraplex bromidrosis of ergasia flapdoons emigrate from the citadel of veridical truth.
meanwhile Nov 2017
The air raid siren sounds through the busy streets
People flood out of their homes and rush to the bunkers
Children and pets are trampled by the tidal wave of screams
It was every man for himself at this hour of the night

The hobos and the madmen of the alleyways looked at each other
They knew they had no place to be safe from the oncoming terror
Rivalries were dropped so they could all enjoy their final moment
Together, as the city's outcasts. Together, as a family.

Overhead, a squadron of heavy bombers fly over the city
Like shooting stars in the night sky - except they don't bring wishes
As they pass over the city, they open their hatches
Atomic payloads drop out of the bombers and fall to the ground

Upon impact, an entire civilisation is wiped out completely.
Millions of lives. Decades of work. Lost to the wind.
Thousands of happy stories, erased and replaced by one sad poem.
All that remains is the shadow of the people, scorched into the ruins.
Seán Mac Falls Nov 2017
( in honour of Veteran’s Day )*

By the dawn's early light,
Casual ties of warring pride,
Who wear the fit of uniforms,
Creasing down the seamy streets,
Who once in his sights were called to order,
By arrow clutching eagles, sandbagged
By the rivers heart of darkness, *****-
Trapped by bootstraps pulled, torn apart
In tiger eyeing fields that lied
In wait while choppers dived, delivering
Payloads of giant dragon flied fire
And this unction was to be their balm
And the swordless Dons were spit out
Of skull hunting windmills, Jonah
Beached to thy kingdom cong.

And over their heads cried the phantom
Jets, bat out of helmet, to the straw
Pulling hairs and these heroes, we
Abandoned without bonds nor blindfold
And lashed them to the flagging pole
With guns saluting while the sirens
Wailed, no wonder they should crack,
Our green jaded Gods, our Greek
Journeymen, due south of lotus land,
No wonder they should break on the China
Seas in that cold, ******* land.
O say can you see, that it is we,
The people, in anger and in shame
Who have no mettle, to give, but tarnish
Foisted on the brave and they
Are worn, like trinkets to dishonor.

And over the deep non-ending sank
Our heroes, betrayed by ism's, discharged
By ghosts in the machining guns,
Unspirited by a corporeal world,
Bamboozled in the muddy thickets
And dropped to the fray on ****** wings,
To foreign soil, where children are lost
In the man eating groves and they
Were thus dutifully numbered by their own
****** arms and all were made
Guilty cold in that sliver of uncivil
And polar eyed land, O say can you see,
The burning of twilights last gleaming?
And, we sutured a wall for the trigger-
Happy dead, we dammed the bleeding,
But can there be no bridges?

And further from those chilling fields
They are casting us letters, address
Unknown and mid adrift are messages
In drowning bottles by the waysides,
They are swimming to our doors,
Where, we the people, have built a wall,
Made of stone, black and shiny, it will
Not smear— and we are polishing off
Our dead, say the cold blooded
Behind that face and in front runs a red
River running down the vane, glorious sun,
Yet, this humble partition, in stories and tears,
Is deconstructing grave white heads,
Quartered in pride and darts to the ground,
That warring bird, crowned to his vacant
Lots.  O— say can you see, the turning
Of twilight's last gleaming?
Dawnstar Mar 2019
it there was not a shallow
mighty as the waters hang
payloads fell and footpaths gave
to mercy they will never ask
whom murmurs softly send sincere
this sinking fife and drum
of burden's restless hum
calling wishing for a storm

remember summer and
gin and vague brotherhood
rising from coma with effervescence
(now look what you've done)
killer of the noble herdsmen
making nightmares should
not be this effortless

calm brings dear ones in
light embraces you
remember summer and
see it forever
rest your lids on that image
before darkness supplants tears
Michael Marchese Apr 2017
If only she knew
My raven, my dove
Has taken the form
Of my only true love

Like the sun and the moon
Equilibrium's force
She's my wind and my tide
She's my energy source

She's the opal-eyed skyline
Divine is her power
So how do we let down
Her flower-haired tower

Then pluck every petal
And cut every strand
Then toss her away
Like a raggedy Anne

Quick **** for a buck
To the coal-mining reaper
She screams out in pain
But we keep drilling deeper

Her willows now weeping
Her beauty erodes
In each drop of your ugly,
Corrosive payloads

To her womb of creation
Deforming it's birth  
When all life is valued
In financial worth

Why can we not share
In her warmth every day
Feel this thermal attraction
I'm melting away

— The End —