In the gloom of each day when it's dying
Standing to is the normal routine.
A time which I use for reflecting
On what we have done or we've seen.

It's the time, when my view blends with darkness;
And as daytime gives way to the night,
I review the way that we're working.
Are we doing this wrong or right?

Did Jim keep his distance from Stan at the creek?
Why Rod was stung by those bees.
And Frank, who found that crossing point
Despite its concealment by trees.

And the cache that we found on the high ground.
The call of a barking deer.
Searching that corpse before burying.
And asking why am I here?

Note:
Private Jim Kelly, national serviceman;
Private Eddy Stankowski, national serviceman;
Private Rod Menhennet, national serviceman;
Lance corporal Frank Chambers, national serviceman; and
Me.

As the morning sun cleared
the mist above the fields
harrowed with precision,
as cars hurried their servants
to serve,
as trains were running late,
and bakeries were busy,
a uniformed procession of capped men
and neatly trimmed women gathered
outside a tawny little church
in a sleepy little town
known for its irrelevance;
A serviceman expired here,
this last night of winter.
Whether from illness or old age,
gradually or
in a flash of chaos,
his mirror admits no more
the faces of those who shared his world,
and have now come to congress
and to remain
in the feasting sun of this first day of spring.
As blackbirds hush and tickle bush,
as more cars wiggle and park,
as naked trees pretend to still being naked,
crows flap around the tower that begins
a-belling,
and as pedestrians gaze after passing cars,
the mourners follow the bells into the church,
where they splash in thin silence
and scented air,
and stained glass admits the light of the world in,
as if through closed eyelids.

bumper-stickers of crosses
commemorating a Jewish hippie anarchist
are flanked by mantras of violence the hallmarks
of ambivalent compliance celebrating
barbarism the State’s chief contrivance

my fill-in-the-blank is an American serviceman
note here that it doesn’t matter if the individual in
question identifies as male female or non-conforming
they are a service man as if the
erasure of gendered complexities somehow
appeases the intricacies of humanity
beneath a blanket statement of hyper-masculinity but
i digress

my fill-in-the-blank is an American serviceman
reinforcing the spiritualization of militarization
in syncophantic intontations of
god bless our soldiers
and only ours
forget about all the other men and women
and children cursed by the pox of
foreign aggression and endless war
they are not our concern
on the contrary
they are just an obstacle in our path
a minor speed-bump we must summit by summoning
chauvinism and stepping on the throats of our enemies

dominance is our souls’ sole objective
we don’t have time for notions that might
challenge our hallowed perspectives or our
holy war in the most sacred spot in all
the world we cannot be deterred by the images of
broken bloodied babies on Mediterranean shores
‘cause the decimated dead with decapitated heads
only fan the flames of conquest
cultivated by the corrupt

i suppose i shouldn’t be so surprised
after all you did adopt an
instrument of torture to remember your
savior by when a dove of peace and
fraternity would’ve sufficed

your distinctly American Jesus stands shirtless
with a chiseled six-pack in camouflage cargo shorts
wielding a double-barreled sawed-off
shotgun in each hand he’s
white and rich and arrogant
as he trades blows with ISIS and
sits in consternate judgement over godless atheists
barking out damnation from the right-hand of
the lord our god the king of kings
salvation reserved for the predestined elect
necessarily limited to Americans his
chosen elite in their promised land

if only he could see you now
that same martyr you bless with one breath
before spewing vitriolic hatred with the next
what would the prince of peace
riding on a donkey
have to say to
bigots racists and homophobes

would he find the
stones you spew and shove
them back down your throat
the way i’d like to

no i somehow imagine that if your Christ returned
he’d interpose himself between you and the LGBTQ
and suffer the brunt of your bitterness
turning black and blue beneath the blows
willing to die for the least of these crying
abba father
why have you forsaken me

if the Nazarene came back he’d
overturn ballot-boxes in houses of worship
masquerading as venues for the 2016 election
he’d realize Sanders is no socialist
that Clinton is grotesquely hawkish and
i like to think he’d tell that fascist Trump
to *******

he would stand instead with the poor
and oppressed with men and women
of color at Black Lives Matter protests
smoke some quality kush with the dejected rejects
and comfort the back-alley addicts with
a soft word or warm hug to serve
as a reminder that the Kingdom of
Heaven is not above but is
built brick-by-brick in the day-to-day
interactions of compassion between ordinary
humans with an extraordinary capacity to
counteract the lethargy of apathy that
pacifies the populace and turns us into
cowed wage-slaves bowing in acquiescence

the rabbi would march to the gates
of the white house
and occupy the front lawn
to triumphant shouts that
rendered unto American Caesars
precisely what they deserve

a non-violent mass resistance of
leaderless and highly coordinated
civilly disobedient dissidents who
value dissent and populist movements to
voice their disillusionment at abject
apparatuses consolidating dominance
in order to remind the 99% that
in the words of one romantic

we will rise like lions after slumber
in unvanquishable number
we’ll shake our chains to earth like dew
for we are many and they are few

yet as much as i am loathe to admit it
Jesus of Nazareth was executed two
thousand some odd years ago
your god is dead and he cannot save us

if we intend to contend with the forces of
depravity that inculcate humanity with
putrescent fantasies of self-aggrandized zealotry
we cannot sit on our hands or
bury our heads in the sand and
wait for someone else to lead us to redemption

salvation keeps us looking down and shuffling
along suffering chained to our lack of imagination
rather than looking straight ahead
into the eyes of our taskmasters
and irrevocably declaring
we will lead ourselves

we have it in us to build a better world in
the shell of the old and raise a
culture of equality and liberty
provided we don’t buy into
all we’re told but
if such a dream could ever
triumph we must find the courage to
brave the cold winters of repression
that surely lay ahead and pour gasoline
on this ugly specter haunting our planet
before lighting the torch and tossing it
onto the detritus of misanthropy

watch it burn

come
huddle close now
gather ‘round
keep warm
if we stick together
we can brave the storm gathering
even now to purge our
peaceful non-compliance

as we carry the conflagration
to every nation to
each corner of the globe
we will overthrow the
ghost of governance

Lack of Judgement of those "Healing Kinds.."
A medical badge and a general's attitude.
Leaves the sick to drown in sorrow
From those intoxicated with power and bad attitudes.
They demand their payment or "Die at our feet."
Public, Hypothetical Oaths, and public serviceman
Forget why they had elected to be there.
As one questions their change of kindness
Into some form of non-human taste of spite
Many years later, they go insane from this "Flight."
A once respectable soul, taken by money's vultures, flying for the attack
On the patient from the disease of greed
and power lust
That disfigured him like "Gulim From Lord Of The Rings.."
"My Precious," as he scoops his wages up from the bank.
One begs for a middle ground, they are tossed out into the sea.
One more lost brain, licensed to heal, however damaging from blindness.
An insane person treating the insane.
In the end he shall be locked up tight.
Bankrupt in a straight jacket..The doctor is no more.
A victim of the system of medicine that lost it's way
He shall spend the rest of his retirement looking out a small
ward window.
A view of comfort for his last few days.

I had a star, my own a mark of who I was,
but it wasn't like the ones in the heavens,
                   never shining bright.

It was on my arm a symbol of who,
                        what I was classed as.

They never thought I was anything.
  I'd fell hard from the heavens,
and
                           now I was in hell..

   My Mother & Father were
smiling at me as if nothing was wrong
as if this was a new normal,
            even as we were separated.

They never cried, but smiled.
Taken to this room, there were a few
of them, I heard the screams,
   saw the smoke billowing from
upon high.

But they just smiled, motioning
silently with their mouths.

                       " We Love You,

I never saw them after that,
   young but not naive.
Hearing rumors before I'd
      been taken from my home.

Even as we left, or shall I say relocated.
Intruders moving in, laughing as we were
taken from our ancestral home.

Generations had grown up moved on,
it was a home of a hundred smiles.
    But now we were just shedding tears
as we  were torn from our foundations
our home.

I see the children lying in the snow,
laid bare, bodies like the bare branches...
  contorted silent.
But at least their tears are silent...
        their pain evaporated like their last breath.

Not like the new arrivals, there's not much space,
  Broken down to useful or not...
      I saw a parent lead away screaming,
     some even shot as the **** of their womb
is taken to the smoking house...

You hear tears, then the wails of why's...
then silence, a silence that makes you *****,
even though you haven't eaten in days,
you're sick to your stomach and cry dry tears...



Rest in peace, my friends....

I was exhausted, frail, and malnutrition
   eating away at me.. I was lead away,
  my friends just looked down as they
knew where I was going I was garbage
to abandoned and reduced to dust.

Hearing the wheels turn, I had laid bare
that this was time, others cried screamed
I just sat there.

   Dying with pride, without giving them
the satisfaction of my tears.
   As we started to burn,
explosions words unheard in a long time.

And the door swung open, melting silhouettes
ran then fell. I was lucky I was at the far end,
Lighty burnt I ran out naked and alone into the
arms of a serviceman who covered me with a
blanket.

His words still in my thoughts every day.

                            "Your safe now child,

Saw a comment
In this age of interwoven everything
Incensed that Bourdain's death
Receive more attention than those
Of many lost veterans

(My father a veteran
With yet a glint of hope
To live out his years
To their natural end

And my grandfather
A serviceman long ago
Carrying light betrayals
Of this said great nation

Great men both, and)
Great those who give their all
Yet what gave us Bourdain?

Just as much
In equal measure

A life
Hard lived
Worn and weary and truthfully
Desperate

All peoples feel
The terrible weight of their sins
Even,
At days end,
Those who profess no belief

Bourdain gave art
Bought with sweat and blood and
Costly time
(For all of us
Time is valuable beyond gold)

Art
And food
And good cheer
Spent in the late evenings
And long mornings
Surrounded by all manner of
Gripping yarn

A double life?
Not unlikely
A wounded wanderer?
Most assuredly
A value immeasurable?
Beyond doubt

And what would we all do?
Should we write, or read, or sing, or paint, or eat, or travel, or labor, or rest, or weep, or laugh, or cook, or question, or answer, or defend, or break?

Love,
And live.
Veterans of this warring world
Cooks of worthy creations