"peacetime" poems
[I accidentally deleted this, so now I'm reposting it]
This is not an attack, it is expression.
*This apparently isn't a very popular subject,
but then again, when has popularity changed anyone's mind..*
--
**** the 'Selective Service System'; the SSS.
It's neo-conscription.
FDR made us a deal we couldn't refuse
which included a stipulation
that about half of us still cannot refuse:
Selective Service
also known as
Peacetime Draft
But only for males. Only the males.
Not the females, though. Oh, no, not the females;
We need the Females
to bake the next batch of mindless soldiers/housewives/neoslaves.
We need the women to uphold the status-quo.
We need our women
to remain passive, docile, and beautiful ******* doormats
for our glorious and infallible western society.
We need our women
to be complaint, subservient, sex-starved, archaic-gender-role embodiments.
I see it as overtly 'cherry-picking' as well as misogyny both ways;
sexist, selfish, and prejudiced on both sides:
'Feminists' (read: Feminazis) claim to plea for true gender equality, but here is my plea:
If such is true, where then are their demands for mandatory selective service?
Why do they feel above reproach when it comes to the unsavory sides of society?
Why do they turn a blind eye to the ******* Draft if they ***** up such a storm about equality?
Why is it not a federal offense punishable by a $250,000 fine as well as up to 5 years in prison
for a female to not sign their life away to the military from when they turn 18 until at least 25?
How is that 'gender equality'?
Huh?
They, too, are cherry-picking.
-
Dec 1, 2014
Dec 1, 2014 at 5:22 PM UTC
Smoke tokes out of the monkey's head, embers embellish empathic light enlightening gypsy nymphs from miles around, a glowing lighthouse haven heaven in nirvana massages lavender bubbles upon pores restoring strength to warriors of the rainbow tribe."
Wind rustles with us...
Stay grounded, you're found before you're even lost. Some get tossed and turned by the sea, but a smooth one never created a skilled pirate with third-eye versatile switch-blade heartbeat ink scribed on blood-vessel maps, following the soul tattoos and taboo time scars along with the azurite lightning stars shooting in our brain.
Time stops sometimes...
*Seasons change DNA re-arranges as we grow goin' with our own flow down the subconscious ocean, sometimes watchin' sunsets into a haze of sweet *** sweat and green cigarette peacetime sufi twirling our conscious to the north star crown chakra.*
Love is. Always.
Mar 22, 2014
Mar 22, 2014 at 4:12 PM UTC
Fireworks were cool. Framed metal chairs with woven nylon Americana on watered lawns on the outskirts of the edge of Los Angeles. Hairy neighbors, Miller Drafts and dog **** Sally ****** Jim on the corner, and Jim drank, or started again and wouldn’t stop, but was good with a flat tire and chain adjustment. His kid had a glove like a vacuum. His daughter was a ***** Sally afforded a Mexican gardener.
Tim always had fireworks. He had gasoline and willed fireworks into his driveway. He had rope and a keg.
Schatzky keep her cool. She had to. She worked the 5th and taught everyone’s kids. She taught their parents too, 10 years ago.
Her son Donavan and her husband Keith lived for the 4th. Little pink houses and Jack and Diane kind of **** So they watched fireworks on flag hill while their neighbors ****** and got ********* and burnt their eyebrows. Donavan was ecstatic.
Each year the hill was gilded in gold for Donavan and Keith and and Schatzky, because each 4th brought fire and explosives in a way they could never afford.
Keith was more patriotic than most. He waited and enlisted and became a hero. Donavan watched on TV. Schatzky watched too. We won the first gulf war and everyone knew it: https://youtu.be/4gNhs2SRacs?t=1m10...
They celebrated the fourth in baseball stadiums. They celebrated life and heroism and purpose, and they celebrated with F16s and the best explosives the peacetime nation offered.
And Keith celebrated and embraced purpose. He even became a leader in the 2nd gulf war.
Sally stopped ******* Jim. Jim wasn’t married anymore. His kid lowered Tim’s basement and didn’t steal the copper.
Tim’s house was worth a fortune but it had a radon problem.
Schatsky was accused of drowning her dog, but she didn’t do it.
Jim still drinks; he’s smarter now.
They all meet on flag hill every 4th. The fireworks aren’t as good. A lot of build up for a finale that feels like an accident.
Water seeps through my jeans and no one can see my face as I limp home with a broken rubber sandal and a bucket of ice, a dog tied around my legs, and a kid face first on the grass, a wife whose friend drank our last beer an hour ago, a phone with two-percent battery left and my mom wants to show me what fireworks look like in California.
Jul 5, 2016
Jul 5, 2016 at 2:12 AM UTC
I was chicken
dropped only a half tab--a quarter before midnight
and hurried back to my apartment
before the day changed
from a Monday
to a ruby Tuesday
where my walls melted
and music smelled like sassafras;
the flickering flares of light from two fat candles
tasted like toasted almonds
every eternal hour, or minute,
or so, I would try to tiptoe down the hall
past the sleeping neighbors who were all dreaming
of me, skulking past their locked doors
but I never made it to the street
a feat that would have demanded
I stop giggling, and my heart stop thumping
for any pig or narc could have seen
my crimson machine pumping
ready to fly from my chest
dawn did finally come--I was
coming down, down from the floor
on which I had lain from the minute
a ferocious fly dive bombed me
somewhere around three
I walked to the corner grocery store
where I bought pan dulce, and was glad the clerk
spoke no English, for surely she would have asked me
to tell her how I survived such an aerial assault
in peacetime
Mar 27, 2016
Mar 27, 2016 at 10:31 PM UTC
If I had not met the red-haired boy whose father
had broken a leg parachuting into Provence
to join the resistance in the final stage of the war
and so had been killed there as the Germans were moving north
out of Italy and if the friend who was with him
as he was dying had not had an elder brother
who also died young quite differently in peacetime
leaving two children one of them with bad health
who had been kept out of school for a whole year by an illness
and if I had written anything else at the top
of the examination form where it said college
of your choice or if the questions that day had been
put differently and if a young woman in Kittanning
had not taught my father to drive at the age of twenty
so that he got the job with the pastor of the big church
in Pittsburgh where my mother was working and if
my mother had not lost both parents when she was a child
so that she had to go to her grandmother's in Pittsburgh
I would not have found myself on an iron cot
with my head by the fireplace of a stone farmhouse
that had stood empty since some time before I was born
I would not have traveled so far to lie shivering
with fever though I was wrapped in everything in the house
nor have watched the unctuous doctor hold up his needle
at the window in the rain light of October
I would not have seen through the cracked pane the darkening
valley and the river sliding past the amber mountains
nor have wakened hearing plums fall in the small hour
thinking I knew where I was as I heard them fall
1.8k
East reaches out its petaled fingertips
meeting West in the center of the garden.
If only we knew then what we know now.
Trust the generations.
We are here to breathe. And to love.
Apr 6, 2016
Apr 6, 2016 at 8:57 PM UTC
Cut into her skin to see what she’s made of
Her bones shake with noise
Her heart beats a rhythm
Her blood flows to a melody that escapes
with every slice of her vein
Though they say she’s beautiful
They don’t see the scars of battle
There is no peacetime in this war.
She’s tired.
They say “keep fighting”
but they don’t know
that she gave up long ago
You see, there is a monster that can’t be killed.
It will win in the end
No matter how much she puts in.
This is no fight.
It is a bloodbath
There is no coming back.
Capsules unload down her throat and her eyes close
She’s tired.
She swallows the poison with no hesitation
and lays on her bed
whiskey by her head.
She never knew the appeal of the drink
but figured it would do the trick.
All she ever wanted in life was the sleep when she was sick.
They told her she was born with illness in her mind
and too much compassion.
They said she should look out for herself
so she looked into her heart
She saw the exhaustion and knew what to do.
She fell asleep and will never come to.
Apr 16, 2013
Apr 16, 2013 at 11:16 PM UTC
Without reason, in peacetime state
There stands the enemy at the gate
And the gates are holding, iron-wrought
But arrows slip through the bars and rock
And with his army held but immortal still
The Lord of Babylon waits until
A weakened moment, the changing guard
To bring fire and doubt and idol gods
But in castle courtyard, stands a Shepard
Who in faithful watch serves duties two
On his blooded right: the arrows
And in the other hand is you.
It's unthinkable to a castle's king
That victory be in surrender
But never had the Shepard led astray
And was let through unhindered
And the army lacking death and reason
Drew back their ranks in fear
For here stood the Shepard, proven dead
By Longinus's spear.
And the clanging sound of sword and shield
Of armor, whip and chain
Fell for the first time ever, silent.
At king's crying of His Name.
Sep 20, 2015
Sep 20, 2015 at 6:26 AM UTC
Isn't there a better way?
O'er this snakeskin shedding,
Than this slow emotional death
Looking for cartharsis
Never to be?
Please, make me, me.
Release me from the birdcage,
And tell me where to dream.
Ah, I look for a tool of my own,
Somewhere buried in the dirt,
Because I am a plow without purpose,
A sword in peacetime.
Sheathed, but mostly lost.
Meaningless, but not wandering,
and so there is no journey,
no art.
Stagnation. Ah.
And a slow morose breath.
Just one long, inhale
For no greater cosmic purpose,
Than the exhale, fleeting.
What a beauty, she said in my agonizing reverie.
Smiling, turning, leaning,
Oyasumi, Good morning.
And the sun's lights ne'er did beam.
The morning stayed dark.
I died, there
heart still beating.
Jul 22, 2016
Jul 22, 2016 at 3:52 AM UTC
My friend Dale
complains constantly.
He's a millionaire,
but says he's
always broke.
He quit drugs, and
rubs it in everyone's
face.
He rages when the
world is at war,
and complains that
it's too quiet during
peacetime.
He talks horribly to
his friends, and he
smokes cheap cigars.
He doesn't like
art, and he's never
read a book.
Dale has a small
pond in the back
of his house where swans
listen to Mozart and
mate, while squirrels and
raccoons share pomegranates
and waltz all night
long under that big yellow
laughing moon.
Nov 11, 2023
Nov 11, 2023 at 10:06 AM UTC
beat poet
the lines, the times
they are a changin'
entropy of empathy
the anthem won't explain it
the world just keeps on turning
and warming up the globe
nations of hate hotter than warheads
hate ain't what they pay us for
be a boss but don't be bossy,
boxing in a corner lot
everyones a leader
leading no one
supply and demand spinning pulsar-fast
economies based on wars
collapsing under peacetime
without fires
the lobbies smothered fighters
beat poet
the lines, the times
they are a changin'
entropy of empathy
the anthem won't explain it
inflation cannot haul us up
here at the bottom of the heap
can't even afford the beep
beep that tells us what's wrong in our hearts
medical bills ticking higher numbers than volumes of get-well cards
we're under attack
our changing family pact
beat poet
the lines, the times
they are a changin'
entropy of empathy
the anthem won't explain it
spoken word, short form
bytes from sharpened canines
written word, formatted to the dimensions of our icons
glittering oh one around us in the haze
our might in roaming-charged clouds of war
you can burn the papers
ban the books
we weren't writing in your margins anyway
our beat is undrummed, uncensored by you
language we took, righteous and true
and the ideas we kept to hurl out
our aim would be true
shout now
aim for us, beat poets
beat poet the times they are a changin'
Apr 7, 2014
Apr 7, 2014 at 10:50 AM UTC
I’m glad to be home
But home doesn’t like me.
While I was gone
Home didn’t wait for me.
Some treat me like a criminal
And some are calling me traitor
For doing my patriotic duty
And following my legal orders.
If had done otherwise there
I would have been in prison.
I don’t know what this is about
Or from where it has risen.
I’m glad to be home
But home doesn’t like me.
While I was gone
Home didn’t wait for me.
Do people now go to work
And decide what they will do?
And if they want to do nothing
They loaf around? Is that true?
I know they do in Congress now
But has it taken the trickle down
And now following orders is
Above the average working clown?
I’m glad to be home
But home doesn’t like me.
While I was gone
Home didn’t wait for me.
During our tour of duty, we all heard
Some Americans had complained,
Thought we ought to not be there,
Hated us because we remained.
They lost control of our peacetime
Right here on our own home base.
Yet they wanted us to stop the war
No matter that we would be replaced.
I’m glad to be home
But home doesn’t like me.
While I was gone
Home didn’t wait for me.
I saw forties newsreels of ticker tape
Falling on huge marching parades
Celebrating our fighting military
And the sacrifices they had made.
Back home now many neighbors
Curse at me and look at me as scary
Instead of a recently returning hero
From their own country’s military.
I’m glad to be home
But home doesn’t like me.
While I was gone
Home didn’t wait for me.
And Congress voted down help
For those of us who are wounded.
The V.A. used to take care of us
Before the ‘One Percent’ fine-tuned it.
Now many of my brothers and sisters
Who did their duty suffer defeat
At the hands of their own country
And lay dying in our city streets.
I’m glad to be home
But home doesn’t like me.
While I was gone
Home didn’t wait for me.
Nov 25, 2015
Nov 25, 2015 at 5:09 AM UTC
I am a ballpark moth.
a buzzing light is made my home tonight
in time it dries my wings and takes my flight
but for now i live aloft a peacetime game all
shouts and metal.
If i could say,
i know i can’t,
Like a broken arm cast in sound aluminum,
Unmoveable
but highly mobile.
Soon enough you’ll hear a mother’s admiration,
pride by proxy someone taught me:
Aggression in sublimation.
What makes a mother fly i’ll never know.
I refuse to help mythmake America’s obsessions.
smoke or dirt or metal war
mythologize
and I’ll wait forever for these wings to dry.
Oct 4, 2018
Oct 4, 2018 at 12:15 AM UTC
What you wanted was war
Thundering and merciless
Wanted Armageddon to roll in
So you could follow every avenging angel
Brash with bloodlust
And feel righteous in the end
I felt the shift in the atmosphere
Heard the horsemen, saw the lightning
But I had long ago grown weary
Of desperate, clashing swords
You built trebuchets
So I built walls
Studying the stillness of stones
Observing the physics of load bearing and
Force balancing and
Standing unshaken as the sky itself shatters
The onslaught was calculated
Unyielding and arrogant
But of all the accusations lobbed over the ramparts
The only ones that drew blood
Were those fashioned after my own devices
Those festering things that grew out of my nightmares
Seeded with the secrets I'd once let fall in peacetime
You've called out endlessly for my head
But I won't bleed out for you here
I've been studying the patience of water
The salty tracks quietly working their way
Through all the hard places
Out to the sea
I won't bleed out for you here
I faced the red maw that would unmake me
I spun my own stitches out of ether
And lived
Oct 26, 2022
Oct 26, 2022 at 7:41 AM UTC
Entombing the scream
into my body to hide
the banshee
for the sake of guarding
this terra incognita;
the peacetime of ours.
Nov 4, 2017
Nov 4, 2017 at 4:13 PM UTC
It rained again last night
The flooded trenches alive with rats
Behind us pigs from destroyed farms
Feast on the bodies of French long dead
Shell fire ceaseless
Machine guns sing, men die
Yes men die
Just a mile away, a gentle slope
Leads to Pachendale ridge
Just a gentle walk in peacetime
With slow meandering streams
I am long since dead, destroyed by
Shot and shell
I gave my life for you my love
For you, for you not for my country that I fell
Out lads out and the whistles shrilled
Out lad out 'this your time to be killed
Robots of old, numbed, scrambled minds
We left the safety of this place
Into the holocaust of ****** hell
To be mangled and destroyed by burning
Shot and shell
Keep going boys, keep going
There's just a mile to cross
But a mile of mud and devils hell
And for every yard a man was lost
Cleanly killed by the bullets bite!!!!
If he was lucky yes
But more likely to drown in mud and blood
As the gory shell hole ****** him down
Ypres 1915
Feb 19, 2015
Feb 19, 2015 at 7:02 PM UTC
Developing a nicotine addiction
over the silk ambiguity
of a pleasure twitch.
Covering up those cyanide dreams,
stapled at the seams,
with obvious white Pickett fences
& regurgitation.
Her desires rattle
in a spilt tongue oscillation.
Contradicting,
foreign mumbles
spill out like crimson
viscosities;
my mind was a
pig slop maelstrom
amoung those
ancient seconds
Those words will clatter
together like a phantom
in my plasmatic ear
waxes
until
Peacetime:
"I love you."
No hesitation.
Solidified.
****** like an
Indiana Jones
classic.
Intoxicated remakes of that
time we started something:
An archive for death memories,
recollected long after
your exodus.
Asphyxiated.
Oct 20, 2014
Oct 20, 2014 at 10:47 PM UTC
war tax is generational
it never ends
eating into every peacetime.
Oct 12, 2023
Oct 12, 2023 at 8:19 AM UTC
toasting the cameo appearance of my twin sister, I admire the leg of two rather tipsy women. a soldier stands on a bar stool in such a way his non-soldier friends become sad. they shake the stool but not for long. the soldier chides them for giving up. the leg hops its way outside. ahead of schedule.
Mar 19, 2013
Mar 19, 2013 at 4:17 PM UTC
pi in the sky
numbers dwindle-
division, subtraction...
zero times anything equals a zero
BOOM BOOM BOOM!
with the rifle pointed skyward-
perfect the trifold
presented to the widow
peacetime pride, worn upon your chest...
("feel-good" print- she passed her final test)
banner waved, reduced to ash by flame
(pantywaist) intimidating fame
"Stolen Valor" shouted by young gun
sharpshooter saved your life again, my son
older, wiser, wartime conscription victim
against the volunteer, peacetime freeride
you, younger knowitall
who never faced it,
strutting like a cockerel full of pride
BOOM BOOM BOOM!
the fireworks you splay....
pride of your "sacrifice" on display
and your suckup ***** ***** your ego
blinded by distortion
bull's-eye bead drawn on the back...
did his death elevate your stance?
can you somberly raise your barrel skyward?
do you revel in your Victory Dance?
divide our numbers-
factor in subtraction.
bear witness to the emaciation of the faction
oh "King", did you come to find
the stolen glory within your midnight mind..?
or have the hearse's headlights left you blind?
DOOM DOOM DOOM
belief in you, abating....
the voices of those who bought it, fading...
Apr 19, 2019
Apr 19, 2019 at 1:05 AM UTC
Her words shot me like bullets, but the adrenaline forced me ignore it. Her eyes like daggers, her hands shaking violently, as she mercilessly watched me bleed out. The screaming bullets paralyzed me, and I stood for an eternity, watching her eyes fill with tears. Then there a was silence.
Was the war over?
Or had it only just begun?
What was her next move?
Should I stay?
Or should I tuck my tail and run?
She quietly pointed to the door, offering me a retreat. I stared blankly, my weapons empty on ammo. The only thing I had left were bandages, and an open wound.
She slid down, and screamed for a medic. I sat beside her. I patiently handed her a peace treaty, that boldly stated:
“Divorce”.
She signed it quietly.
I signed it quietly.
And the war for love, was done.
And now I notice that no matter peacetime or wartime, the battle scars will ache. The memories will creep up your spine and attack. Yet, no matter what, we are all mindless soldiers in a silly fight for love.
Feb 25, 2018
Feb 25, 2018 at 4:00 PM UTC
What are people doing?
What are people pursuing?
This senseless violence is sad.
I don’t give a **** if you’re mad.
I don’t care about your race
or if you’ve got a pretty face
I don’t care how much money you make,
because you could easily be fake.
You don’t have the right to oppress,
even if you’re dealing with a huge mess.
There is no reason to hurt someone
What if it was your loved one
Everyone has a duty,
to improve this innocent raw beauty.
Now trust me, it’s worth your time.
I can guarantee, it will improve your prime.
Doing some cause and affect.
You can see your method is incorrect
Just look at history, its not pretty
It’s like a scary deadly city
It’s despicable and gritty
Overpopulated with death and destruction
With no positive construction
Our society is now old
Our society should not be that cold
I'll tell you my goal
It’s to dig us out of this hole
During my lifetime
I want to begin a never ending peacetime
Where we concentrate on science and art
Where we all can have fun taking part
This is everyone's job.
Dec 16, 2015
Dec 16, 2015 at 11:21 AM UTC
Four Freedoms Under Siege Serialized
"In the future days which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms."
**The first is freedom of speech and expression-everywhere in the world.
The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way-everywhere in the world.
The third is freedom from want, which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants-everywhere in the world.
The fourth is freedom from fear, which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor-anywhere in the world.**
--Franklin Delano Roosevelt,
Annual Message to Congress,
January 6, 1941
Jun 12, 2014
Jun 12, 2014 at 6:25 PM UTC
It's sixty below & peacetime
& we gotta do what???
Start the ******* tracks
to warm up the oil,
'cause it's
standard operation procedure!!!
Tell the crazy General
& his staff to come
down here in this blizzard
to lick my metal shaft.
That'd give the boys a laugh!
Feb 2, 2014
Feb 2, 2014 at 11:09 AM UTC
In the summer before the world went mad
Einstein summered at Peconic bay.
He walked the beach in shorts and sandals,
He was quite bohemian in his way.
Soon he would write that letter to Roosevelt
And the atomic age will have begun.
But, for the moment, he was just
A middle aged man
enjoying his last peacetime Sun.
The stars are more numerous than
The grains of sand
And space more infinite
That the sea.
His best days were, by then, behind him,
But happier he would never be.
Apr 20, 2018
Apr 20, 2018 at 6:10 PM UTC