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brian mclaughlin Jul 2015
Vietnam

A terrible time for our country
The fear of what was called
the domino effect
Communism would be at our doorstep
if we did not stop the North Vietnamese

It was our own freedom
we were told that hung in the balance

We sent our young men
they fought
many died
others crippled and those who were fortunate enough
to simply make home
became the victims of a nation
that showed no support for the soldier

But the war was not about our freedom

It was about fear

Fear that traveled throughout our government
that we could be next

Of course history now shows
that was not the intent of the North
all they wanted was their country reunified

Our boys came home
the nation turned its back on them
many today still live in the streets
as do present day returnees from the middle east wars

It was the Vietnam veteran
who vowed
never to let another vet go unappreciated

The people have learned
but sadly
the government hasn't

The fear they have now
is the loss of profits
they continue to send
other peoples children
off to war that for these youg men
and now women
holds death and dismemberment
without giving those fortunate enough to return home
proper care and support

Today is so different from yesterday

Yesterday
the people spat upon the returning soldier

Today
it is the spittle of the government that they wear
David Mac Oct 2017
As Big Tom soaks up morning sun
Mathilda flirts with everyone
Miss Kitty likes her milk from May
While Sandra's Minnie 'gets her way'
Youg Archie: bound to cause a stir
And Hector: rarely did he purr
But Flashy - he's much like our Son
Big boy entrances everyone
So on this morn - as felines trod
Salute the cats of Westbank Quad!
Mateuš Conrad Dec 2019
draft enclosed below... prior to?

    whiskey, always with the whiskey...
                         there was, some, "pressing" matter,
to give me over to grief...
     a grief that was never going
to be a grief...
                  more, a, bewildering in situ...
something unavoidable...
                        like finding respectable
homosexuals akin to douglas murray...
             ah! that's what it was...
watching the premier of rammstein's song
ausländer? thoughts?
                 "teaching" colonialißation in reverse?
truly... france, england,
   perhaps even spain...
                              teaching...
good teachers...
                   they were always going
to be good teachers...
                     the only colonialißm
the germans ever ventured to address was
of their neighbours...
       ****** choice...
                   oh but i'm pretty sure
you would come back from Warsaw
with a homogeneity nausea sickness...
   i know i do...
         every single time,
   the homogeneous ethno-representation
is nauseating...
       even though, i'm stepping back
into a throng, of, "my own" people...
   i lived on the outskirts of loon'don for far
to long, i don't see an ivory beauty,
the pearls of Ghana,
      or some ***** and blue indian,
i start to "worry"...
                              i once traveled to
Cheltenham... and it, felt,
     like i was walking through Warsaw...
i don't even know whether i was surprised,
or whether i was experiencing the same
homogeneity nausea sickness...
                    each step of passing through
the city, i wanted to puke...
                         well not out an aversion
to being white among whites...
                        i guess i'm just the remains
of the globalist narration of so many
different people living in close proximity...
hub...
             as if revising a city akin to Rome...
when once in a year, gladiator slaves would
come for a month of festivity,
and the whole world was revelead
  with all its faces and hues...
                    but the germans know this...
inverted colonialißm -
         of being "colonialißed"...
                         i'm pretty sure the folk
in Warsaw are less understanding
     to the chocolatiers of Brussels...
                          because, as far as i am concerned...
Brexit, really, really came...
        when... the privileged status
of former British Empire citizens put to
question, a sudden surge in the floodgates
being opened for the former iron curtain countries,
you could have told these Pakistanis,
these Indians...
         don't worry... these people have come...
but... don't think they'll stay...
some will...
                   but most of them come
from an environment of homogeneity...
perfect example...
              a flight from Warsaw to Stansted...
talk about "racism",
     talk about "multiculturalism"...
i said jack ****, i just listened to the debate
behind me between a "racist" man
and a youg, impressionable young woman,
who cited the book why i don't talk
to white people about racism
...
            i came here aged 8...
            and as a first generation expatriate...
oh yes, i can use the term...
which is weird...
since if i really didn't sink into this tongue
i'd call myself an immigrant...
just like the english immigrants
to h'america or australia call themselves,
the alternative: expatriate...
               the "racist" cited an evolutionary
predisposition as to why same attracts same,
a contradiction of magnets,
but, then again, we're not talking magnets,
but people...
               i'm dissociated with my "fellow"
ethno-centered peoples...
       sure... memories of childhood friends,
digging holes and playing a game
of throwing marbles into them...
hide & seek at night...
   kicking each other in the ***...
                     my memory bank reaches
as far back as being aged 4...
so... yeah... i have a lot to work with...
   again... i woke about how else to describe
that supermarket cashier from yesterday,
how she wanted to become a paramedic...
how her perfect skin,
   without a bout of hay fever looked
radiant...
                            the words:
       like a lake of milk,
                                       illuminated by
a full moon in a night of frozen constellations
of stars, or perhaps only her love spots
   of moles.

    well... that's that... now i'm ready to cite
and translate some Horace...     

sunt quibus in satura videar nimis acer et
  ultra legem tendere opus; sine nervis altera
quidquid conpusui pars esse putat similsque
    meorum, mille die versus deduci posse.
Trebati, quid faciam? praescribe.
              <quiescas>
       <ne faciam, inquis, omnino versus?>
<aio.>
              <peream male, si non optimum
erat; verum nequeo dormire.>
    <ter uncti transnanto Tiberim,
            somno quibus est opus alto,
                   inriguumque mero sub noctem
corpus habento. aut si tantus amor
                             scribendi te rapit,
          aude Caesaris invicti res dicere,
multa laborum praemia laturus.>
   <cupidium, pater optime, vires
deficiunt; neque quivis horrentia pilis
agmina nec fracta pereuntis cupside Gallos
aut labentis equo describit volnera Parthi.>
<attamem et iustum poteras et scribere
fortem, Scipiadam ut sapiens Lucillius.>
      <haud mihi dero, *** res ipsa feret:
nisi dextro tempore Flacci verba per
attentam non ibunt Caesaris aurem:
      cui male si palpere, recalcitrat undique
tutus.>
<quanto recitus hoc quam tristi laedere
versus *** sibi quisque timet,
                           quamquam est intactus
        ed odit.>
                  <quid faciam?
      

i guess this would be the perfect time
to write a translation before disclosing the draft...
well... it's Horace...
          who did Dante take to walk him
through hell?           wasn't it Virgil?
only a naive-****-show of a man would
take with him a Greek poet akin to Homer,
or Sappho...
       well... not exactly...
not if poetry attracts poetry...
     James Joyce decided upon Homer,
but i'm not a James Joyce...
if Dante desired to take Virgil as his guide...
i've decided upon Horace...
  and here's the translation:

some say, that in the art of satire i am too acute,
that i go beyond established confines (of the art),
the others, that i write without talent and that
the poems i write in a simialr vein,
can be written into their thousands, every day.
Trebati (a serbian name, etymological
meaning: to need;
point of conjecture... well... if the medieval
world is to be made concise...
and the etymology of slav, implying slave...
it... only appears to hold true for the southern
slavs... the balkan region...
  as far as i am concerned,
the northern slavs... didn't exactly
make it to slave status,
the southern slavs might have been
of the roman empire...)
       Trebati: what do you counsel?
say something!
     stop writing!
            therefore throw my poems
into a corner?
           yes!
         to the executioner, that might be best,
  but then what do during the night,
when it's impossible to fall to sleep?
   rub your body with oil,
thrice swim the length of the Tiber,
in the evening drink some wine -
          you'll thus banish insomnia;
and if still, you have an irresistible desire
to write, then write for the sake of passing
  the victorious deeds of Caesar for posterity;
a generous reward you will receive.
   willingly, but my strengths are modest,
for me to sing about the death of the Gaul
javelin throwers with their broken spears,
or the wounded Parthian,
                      when he's dragged by a horse.
celebrate then, because of this,
   his bravery, his sense of justice, his wisdom,
just like...

  ****! another googlewhack!

                 lucyliusz w scypiadzie
       https://tinyurl.com/y5u7uelu

       just like... Lucius in Scythia.
           maybe i will not tempt, when the right
time comes. the time isn't right, Caesar's ear will
not succumb to the compliments whispered
by Flacci...
           do not stroke the steed in time,
    which will with its hoof kick.
better that than by reproach via a poem
      of these mediocrities,
     like the clown Pantolabus or the grandson
of Nomentano -
        who without blame, and even as
being untouched, hates.
                               and what of it?
        
hell: now the draft...

when all seems bleak upon the blank
plateau and the calm seas of
thought being voided -
    i tend to find scraps of language worth
keeping,
  odd bits of letters no written,
      interrupted narratives -
conversations never had - or pivoting
upon an alternative choice of words,
never mind...
    i acquired english and made myself
its father -
              audacious, i agree -
but psychopathic? i hardly think so.
              to out-speak a native means:
doubling down - standing ground -
digging trenches...
                 i have made english into
the equivalent of an armchair,
    sitting pretty, sitting cosy,
   in some shady part of an east london
pub: peering into the stage, attempting
to differentiate the actors from the props
and the props from an: authenticity.
trick is... well, i can't read in my native tongue
when in england...
  which is why i am extremely anticipating
the december hiatus impeding...
immersed in an environment filled with
the nativspreschen - notably from
devices such as the radio and the t.v. -
   i can digest a book in my nativspreschen
with as much ease as:
  spreading butter on a slice of bread...
        but that's because when in england:
i'm wholly dedicated to the language,
   perhaps not the culture which i mimic -
but i have allegiance to that ******* comfy
armchair that's the english language.
- i remember this one incident of being
thrown out from a local pub on the grounds
that i "launched a glass pint in rage across
the pub floor" - xenophobia tickle -
                 i spoke too much like oliver reed
to one schizophrenic and some other lost soul...
a few days later i tap the shoulder
    of one of the bar mistresses and ask her
if she's feeling o.k., if you want
a depiction of constipation, you should have
seen her, she has harbouring a hedgehog in
her *** by that point...
          a complete ******* of a pub anyway...
you see, even with an acquired accent,
if the question is asked: where you from,
and you say: not from around here,
   even if you've lived here pretty much
all of your life: you're not puritanical enough...
mind you... i'm the pedigree breed,
surrounded by mongrels...
                 i am, but a mongrel of the soul
nurturing an adopted tongue, while
   "trying" my hardest to forget my native tongue...
*******, i'm not going to turn into
a terrorist, which, by the way,
english society has bred...
                  polish is not omnipresent -
it's not the king-quack-**** sitting on
the throne of hippo-******* that's
the meridian - you have you dream,
taken from the spanish -
       die ***** von sonnezunge
ständig suchen  für die mond:
       die schlaflosigkeitreich -
the empire of (the) sun-tongue -
perpetually looking for the moon -
  insomniac empire.
      hell, have it, maybe by having it
you can have your, little elaborations
of the dream fabric...
             point being:
my native tongue is an equivalent of
the iron maiden by comparison...
       the merovingian was wrong:
you truly wipe your *** with silk
by speaking english...
                notably by introducing the
amputee R's worth of trill to sound old-school
and a knowledge of latin always helps...
but nothing quiet comes across
as speaking the native tongue better than
the natives...
        i think that's called ambition...
      or a heckling of some sort -
a heckling where no one is staged or is
telling a joke...
                   a bit like being generous
to the turk and his predicament...
  he owns a store, the local council comes
to him, he literally has a caravan outside the store...
and he's worrying about employing
lawyers to solve the matter, he doesn't
know what the problem is...
two bottles of wine and some coca cola
and i peer outside: ah!
         so i tell him: you're obstructing
an item of public property...
  the simple answer is that you have to
revise your makeshift caravan shanty and
expose that bench...
did i get a thank you, or a free bottle of
whiskey... turks... what do you expect,
  he thanked me by increasing the price of beer...
if people older than me have no
standards of etiquette - why even expect
any study of ethics? you first learn aesthetic,
then you learn etiquette,
    and then comes ethics...
         you think i bought anything from
him ever again? loser.
     - became a corporate ***** -
but then again at 16 quid a litre of ms. amber scot,
i can't complain.
                  - but come one,
you've been given free legal advice and
you can't even repay a debt of being given
advice... ah... i see...
it would have made the proprietor look
                     stupid, i.e.: d'uh! a bench!
funny you should ask (without even asking):
whenever i go back to poland i feel grounded...
nay, cushioned - after all i am not there
to visit my countrymen as such,
   more or less imbued with a sense of
proximity to my neighbours,
  the germans, the czechs, the white russians,
lithuanians and the ukrainians....
               and to read a book...
but mostly about feeling the vicinity of
the neighbours...
                      and inhale a breath of
authenticity, in historical terms...
                     because back in england -
  well i have a patriotism for the language:
but not the people -
                    the language i can cherish -
the people mean diddly-squat to me...
  after being barred from a pub on false accusation,
well... expect any different?
                if only i were black,
i could call that racism...
                        alas, i have the ****** luck
of the irish...
                 then again...
                                       none of this even matters
beyond a squabbling defaced impression
of a memory...
                              it still stands:
i'm comfortable writing, since i deem
english to be an armchair -
               but the nativspreschen i find
as an iron maiden...
            although when wholly immersed
in an environment when the only words
in english you hear are: weekend, etc. -
                     there's this aura of oddity that
surrounds me:
         either i'm a ghost among the living -
or i'm alive, immersed in ghost town...
i can never tell...
                           all in all:
continental air is so refreshing having spent
an entire year on an island...
   the almost complete lack of moisture,
the crispness of dry cool,
           the crackling of the foot on snow
in imitation of walking on egg shells -
  and the mere snow - notably falling crisply
during the night...
            islanders are a very strange people...
whether the british, the icelanders,
the maltese, the cypriots, the irish,
                        you name them...
                      islanders have this knack at
believing themselves to be superior
to kontinentalvolk -
       notably when it comes to the basic
etiquette of tourism...
                  in was in paris, twice...
each time i had the luck of a fellow tourist
who spoke french...
                                     once it was this
italian girl, another a canadian girl with
russian roots: a pole's luck, i guess.
Bella D'Alacio Apr 2019
Tell me the end. When you die, do you suddenly understand time? Do you find out what you were supposed to do? Or is everything you do, what you’re supposed to do? Is it naive of me to believe I can love one person for my entire life? Am I actually missing out if it makes me happy? What if I don’t want to search my whole life? I don’t want to make the mistake that I chose the wrong person, or let “the one” go. Or maybe, “the one” is on the other side of the globe, and I never knew, living my life with the person I thought I loved the most or made me the happiest, when the real “one” could be on another continent, not even speak my language? But these thoughts all feel wrong to me. I feel like I know the truth, although the entire world, and even you are telling me I’m wrong. I can be happy just loving you. My path is clear, and I am confident in who I am and who I will become… but I want you with me. It is both a blessing and a curse that we met so young. Youg love is tainted by time, and pulled apart by societal pressure. Why do we allow the opinions of so many others who don’t even care about us influence the way we love? The uncertainty of time has always put a distance between us, limited our love. When can we just love? Openly, with no fear? Will we ever get that chance? Is your ghost meant to live with me for the rest of my life? I can learn to live without you, but I can never learn how to not love you. So in the end, when my body perishes, and my soul flies free… will I know? Is it our bodies that prevent us from allowing our soul to love to our full capacity?
as I take it a bit further I'm talking about another Young G ******
the streets are uneasy the zone is too low bust up the beat to promote the tempo
he grew up in the gutter his momma was a ***** selling her junk from a trunk behind the liquor store...
Young G wandered the streets alone trying to find his home to roam
no one would help him they couldn't even help themselves
but Young G was out on a mission to soar to the highest heights
one night at 8th street station Young G was chillin but got in a confrontation
a thief wanted his gold necklace but Young G wouldn't part with it.
a gun was drawn and it wouldn't be long Young G was on the floor with a bullet hole in his head...

the killer made his way to Mexico a place he thought he should go
now it was over for Young G would suffer many polce arrived trying to revive Young G
but it was too late he was history at his funeral many came to hear his legacy
he was a street **** capper wanna be rapper but he  helped out the needy
on his mission he would be dishing out many of his C.D.'s you can listen at ease
Young G will be remembered as a heroic citizen trying so hard to fit in
See ya up in heaven Youg G making sweet history.
Krispin Lama Nov 2017
More u'll be compressed the more u'll do compromise.
Live youg live free.....
Cause here is hell and here is paradise.
vogue to let go many years ago sweat from my hand when to understand;
Churches with steeples minus the temper goes down better you can know
love in the impart of a strain agreement see its coil from within you see
pillows laced in eneregy forced for eternity let go of longevity see you squeeze
in the nearly barrern sod immediate soil renewed for al words we go
the tourist bound for the circus in God we trust to commit
Rremarkable tourist flood its circumstance

Black woods behind the old house,
In front a sloping field of oats;
Above a cloud curves in soft sky
like a silver ball, centered
against the cloud, beating with
Severe, painful clarity...,

The wing of the wounded swan
Below on the old wooden balcony
A youg man with white hair
his face the enigma of time

like a portrait in an old medallion
he narrows the oblique eyes
Warmed by the ;ight Wolcott sun
hammered by the heavy light sun

Hammered vy the storms
poet who writes the hearts dialogue
behind the house the woods grow into night
And wild oats by crazed in dream...

Unknown until this time,
He has become a knowledge of the heart

— The End —