We know no better...
A
soldier impales himself in a pit of bamboo spikes smeared with feces
A
government spends billions to build things meant only to destroy
Boys
are taught to kill like true professionals and to die honorably
together
Houses
are burned, children are orphaned and crops are not sown
Invisible
heroes rain drone destruction from thousands of miles away in safety
Improvised
explosive devices shatter tough young faces
Generations
of work is turned into rubble and leaders read stirring speeches well
Young
girls must learn prostitution instead of doing schoolwork
Grandmothers
sob dirty channels into their cheeks in rags, amid devastation
Now
the people have been committed and unquestioned support is required
All
our precious resources are poured into the creation of destruction
Soldiers
absorb lasting images of all kinds of death in quick, stray glances
Plants,
animals and ecosystems are senseless by-kill of the blinded carnage
The
opposition is demonized and the people whipped into a vengeful frenzy
Rape
and looting are, all too often, the first spoils of the victorious
Infrastructure
is destroyed to deny them water, food and warmth
As
he retreats the cunning opponent destroys everything in sight
The
wise conqueror also decrees a scorched earth policy as he advances
Many
years later simple farmers lose their legs to forgotten landmines
The
dead and unmoving become another part of the filth of mass
destruction
All
too often innocent victims plead and scream, asking merely why
God
is forsaken by those who realize that such folly knows no reason
And
as their insides mingle with the mud their eyes still search for
something
No
one can stop these things, they say, for it is simply human nature
Men
with grotesque wounds have not the sense to remain quite still
The
enemy shouts in a harsh foreign tongue filled with evil overtones
Jesus
gains more followers praying for his mercy as their brothers fall
beside them
We
must destroy the enemy homeland that is also part of our own one and
only blue earth
A
soldier spots a child’s doll, face down and crushed beneath a tank
tread
Grimly
marching on, he briefly loses track of his duty at the sight
The
children do not go to school or eat enough to grow up strong and
smart
Refugees
stumble exhaustedly onward in a daze that began unimaginably long ago
Fresh screams again pierce the silence which follows yet
another huge explosion
Birds no
longer nest and soldiers crouch to piss and shit in deathly fear
The helpless and the evil are destroyed right along with the
innocent and the wicked
And all those
who remain must ask why it is they, themselves, who are still alive
Soldiers grow ill in winter, always marching with frozen
feet and hands
Their blood
freezes, mixing with dirt and snot upon their uniforms
Women sleep in barns as the society they knew crumbles all
around them
They are
raped and beaten in revenge for the horrible acts of other men
Dehydrated, hungry mothers try to nurse the sickly wartime
sons of rape
Dogs and
horses are shot and eaten whenever they are seen
Wise generals may spare cathedrals in praise of the god who
lets this happen
Noble leaders
will spread any lies required to maintain the mass psychosis
Families and economies and universities and minorities be
fully damned
Everyone must
pull together in the glorious and holy name of this destruction
The enemy would eat our children alive and our leader rides
a great white horse
Every soldier
would rather be at home in peace, but yet, they will always fight
As the next young recruit loses consciousness, finally just
asking why
Far away one
more child is orphaned and another mother gets a flag
Minerals and capital are expended at even more profligate
and wasteful rates
The ravenous
machines of death and ruin must be fed once again
Toothless grandfathers are merely clubbed aside with heavy
rifle butts
Brave pilots
vaporize milk factories with the blessings of their nation
Exhausted and confused in a hostile land, marine shoots a
begging woman
Official
press releases unwaveringly show the progress of our side
Military leaders study and practice conquering and killing
their whole lives
War is always
the last option but is always the first placed upon the table
Generals are trained not to concern themselves with the
reasons for their orders
Politicians
demand solutions and, of course, the military can always produce a plan
Kill, poison and lay waste in the name of freedom, peace and
security
It is our
monstrous creation arising from science, religion and politics
Leave the doddering priests and lying politicians to
rationalize and explain
They shall
vilely call upon the people for patriotism and faith in god’s unknowable will
Enshrine a tradition of killing and dying with even heavier
funding, every year
Ennoble
painful death in dirty, far-off lands for the common man cannon fodder
Teach the little boys to fight and to hate and of the glory
that is war
Strip the
young man’s identity until he gladly dies as part of a killing unit
Always promote some bogeyman who would soon destroy their
families
Sanitize,
censor and spin the news from the far-off front
Take the gas from your farmers and have the tanks burn enemy
crops
Secretly
monitor your own good citizens and throw the foreigners into camps
Poison and destroy the good green earth that we swear to god
we are fighting for
Spare no
treasures to ensure that the hated enemy be vanquished
Honor the crippled veterans once a year and let no one
question their noble sacrifice
Spy upon your
allies and be always researching potential war scenarios
Take the dregs and give them guns, build up their pride and
send them off
Teach the
officers how to let them die as lamentable but disposable parts of a larger
plan
Tell the boys that they can become men through death and
destruction
Leave behind
land mines and defoliants and hated bastard spawn
Ignore the baby wrapped comfortably in the dried blood of
her mother
Burn any
vegetation that might hide an enemy or shelter little birds
Use prayer as a weapon and a shield and be far too sure of
your own one true faith
View the
world with a very simple moral clarity and act as god’s vengeful sword
Let any other pressing issues slide but never permit the war
fever to grow cool
Let the poor
go off and die but keep your sons safely home in business school
Foto-Op for ten minutes the friendly wounded in some
convenient hospital
Lobby for
ever more spending to protect our brave boys overseas
Take the election contributions from the stouthearted
defense industry
Push fat,
no-bid, cost-plus, multiyear contracts back their way
Arouse fears of terrorism to enable the removal of cherished
civil rights
Characterize
the brutal, harsh wartime as the country’s finest hour
Maintain a strict, rigid and centralized chain of military
command
But let
leaders deny knowledge of atrocities and war crimes committed in the field
Whisper that god is love yet call on him to deliver his
divine retribution upon the enemy
Divert
trillions from society only for developing better ways to kill and maim and
poison
Have the best engineers use all their cleverness to create
machines built only to destroy
Appropriate
the crops to keep the army marching under state control
Publicize rumored atrocities and fabricate unconfirmed
reports to leak
Press the
generals for body counts and reclassify your own wounded
Break the enemy’s spirits by destroying the symbols which
sustain him
Dangle
beautiful, unreachable women before the rabid, dirty troops in the field
Release touching stories of children born to fathers killed
in combat
Regretfully
cut survivors benefits while reducing corporate taxes
Increase domestic surveillance and call for greater
sacrifices for our freedom
Glorify the
people’s struggle while callously killing them off like insects
Employ the most gifted advertising firms to produce slick
propaganda
Under-report
your casualties and inflate the enemy dead
Be ever on the lookout for homeland treachery and, in the
end, trust no one
Continue
sacrificing even in certain defeat merely to satisfy your brutal egos
Make sure the citizens know it is truly black or white,
everyone must be for us or against us
Hide away
your millions while demanding ever more from the people
Call the farmers from the fields and send the women to the
factories
Send the
priests to the front and let the old men guard the prisoners
Shame and silence the critics who would question our
morality and motivation
Damn the
brave suffering of the common man with trite and faintest praise
Wink and nod around the brutal tactics never mentioned to
the public
In the field,
do what it takes to stay alive, then lie awake in the night
Smear the mud from your wounds as the morphine starts to
take effect
Try and catch
up with jesus jogging with his cross somewhere far ahead
Fall down and do not rise as the enemy comes with bayonets
Light the
bodies soaked with gasoline and get warm by the bonfire
The old soldier sheds a tear as the young man prepares
joyfully for his war
Many years
later there is still pain from a foot no longer there
Women cannot grasp why sons they so carefully raised hurry
off to kill and die
I fled with
nothing when they came with hatchets and machine guns
They raped my sister and now she and her bastard son are
both hated as outsiders
They are
simply animals and it our duty to slaughter every one
The only lesson is that someday strange men will come and
burn down your homes
Try to live
in peace but sacrifice the occasional son to a distant war
War is always the last resort but is always the most
important option
Those who
would live in peace are but easy targets for potential tyrants
Even when not fighting we ravage this good earth, but with
war we do it so much better
One simple
lesson every generation learns is that we love to kill anything which moves
Sometimes we fight for generations and successive brutal
monarchs
The very
young can easily be warped and drugged into killing without mercy or regret
Families save their entire frugal lifetimes but gladly waste
their offspring
The best we
can hope to achieve is an expensive armed neutrality and eternal vigilance
Then men write stirring books about the great wisdom to be
found in the fog of war
Mothers, it
seems, raise their sons only to kill and die fighting for trumped up causes
The soldiers took our chickens and gave us cigarettes while
our father hid
Their muddy
boot tracks remained for days, out there by the barn
A small child does not understand the higher purpose that
cost him a hand
Picking through
the rubble of their former home, desolation overtakes them
Food is rationed, materials commandeered and the people’s
dreams must be cast aside
These epic
struggles demand heroic sacrifices, time and time again
Villagers grew tired of years of war but their wise leader
stayed the course
When it
finally ended their economy was reduced to bartering for trash
Father never talked about those things despite the books and
movies
There screams
inside the church lasted for 20 minutes when it was burned to the ground
All along the road, lifeless corpses lay, posed in a variety
of symbolic gestures
I took his
shoes and these photos soon after he writhed to death
The defoliant changed the meadow and the calves are not the
same
Many children
are dreadfully deformed but the authorities still refuse to see
Father left long ago, men took away our mother, now we
forage all alone
Grandfather
had his teeth kicked out and now he sits in silence
In late December we huddle with the remaining livestock in
the barn
We haven’t
bathed in months and our clothes are filthy rags
We surprised a soldier as we hid and he shot my brother in
the face
He swore
loudly at us for a moment and then broke into grimy tears
I was ten and given drugs and guns and learned to kill as a
game
The patriotic
pilots flew all night to level our village from far above
We provide the finest medical care for those we send off to
be blown apart
They can
barely wait until their guts are sewn up rejoin their brothers in the killing
Grandma starved to death in silence, we kept her in the
cellar until March
My little
brother got no mother’s milk but licked the gas off of the grass
When uncle lost an arm we all got headbands made from his
extra shirtsleeves
We thank god
every day for the courage and wisdom of our leaders
Everywhere the boy saw patterned bullet holes and imagined
their targets
A steady
stream of refugees was beaten, robbed and bombed
The prison camp nearby was filled with vile vermin who
looked very normal
We threw
stones at them and traded sawdust flour bread for their gold
The earliest memory of my youngest sister is during the gang
rape of my mother
She says the
carcass of our cow bloated in the yard for many weeks
I got some fever in late November and coughed right on
through the spring
We became
proficient at making sandals from the tires of blown-up jeeps
We walked two hours one way to carry drinking water in red
plastic gas cans
A jagged
piece of metal gashed her arm and a bad infection spread and took her
Limping home shell-shocked years later, he found his wife
married to a merchant
His children
did not know him and he had no property or benefits
The jungle grew quiet after the villagers hunted down and
ate everything that moved
Skulls stared
in wide-eyed bewilderment, awakened from their mass grave by a bulldozer
Fighting for peace the enemies found strength in different,
but equally vicious, one true saviors
Cars sat
burned and abandoned as propaganda leaflets rained from the sky
Count their blessings out loud for them and ration the flour
and the sugar
Triage the
terribly wounded and let the merely sick remain untreated
Blame the enemy for the shortages but drink wine and enjoy
fine cheeses
Call upon god
to bless the country and be content while gazing in the mirror
Pay no attention to a tiny voice that cries as you empty
your sweet weapon
Drink heavily
and engage in loving fist fights during your short combat leaves
Store up so many quick memories that must return at night
for many years
Watch the
crows gather in nearby trees when the helicopters leave
Find no peace at home and wonder why there is no one you can
talk to
Remember how
they nobly shit their pants as they lay dying in the dirt
Try and escape the look you saw just before the fire bombs
went off
Ask again
what you learned as his brain spattered out upon your shirt
Feel the horrid guilt inside because all of them raped you
again and again
Stroke the
hair of the son of you and one of those nameless criminals
Ignore the rubble of your home in the utter numbness of your
random survival
Stand in line
for hours on the rumor of any sort of relief supplies
Walk for weeks with nothing, in foreign lands, with hatred
all around you
See finally
that spring has returned and wonder how and why
Take back no lessons that might prevent this horror from
returning
Resolve to
put an end to war - after rebuilding your own great army
Return to what you fought for and find that you are an
unwanted stranger
Dose yourself
with drugs and alcohol to forget that you are still alive
Earn huge salaries from the airlines after bombing peasants
back to a new stone age
Beat your
wife and children, lose bad jobs and keep loaded guns within reach at home
Make noble sacrifices of other boys though your life was
never on the line
Testify in
that wide-eyed silence of rags and dirty battered feet
Be called a foolish child for asking why the world cannot
learn to live in peace
Wonder why
the women or the children never started any wars
Make war an institution but leave peace in some fuzzy
happily-ever-after
Smite the
heathen foe in the name of your loving and merciful god
Sanction torture of the captured enemy using high tech and
evil cunning
Desecrate the
opponent’s beliefs to humble and demoralize him
Feel good about the destruction of schools, homes, factories
and farms
Report with
satisfaction on cutting off electricity and water supplies to other families
Do not stop short of using poison, chemicals or diseases as
valued weapons
Shoot
whatever moves in an angry fear over shadowy guerilla tactics
Maintain order through that absolute paranoia of all
successful dictators
Pay lavishly
for enemy intelligence from agents that you will never trust
Film military parades and joyful family reunions but keep
the coffins hidden
Perish
without a purpose as simple collateral damage from their friendly fire
Find simple relief in the end of war and embrace merest
grinding poverty
Publish books
in praise of heroes though they, themselves, have nothing to say at all
Be sure the young boys grow up fighting but not thinking
very critically
Leave the
hard questions unasked until way too many years have passed
Piece together new lives with different families in
makeshift neighborhoods
Dream of the
dead and mutilated and try to forget the awful noise
Catch malaria from the mosquitoes bred in the potholes left
by the bombs
Sell rusting
tank parts for scrap metal without apparent emotion
Get trained, go off and kill anyone who opposes you without
a shred of reason for several years
Then,
overnight go home and become a good husband, loving father and patient citizen
Consume even more precious resources rebuilding from the
latest wanton destruction
Give thanks
to god for victory but never ask why he could ever let it happen
Race to rebuild armies and military hardware while
disavowing violence
Sell weapons
as capitalist commodities with a blind eye to their use
Feel the weight of human suffering but be tempered by a
false righteousness
Let the old
ever sentence the young to foolish wars in endless cycles
Let the population grow, the weapons proliferate and the
resources dwindle
Use diversity
of languages and customs to foster hatred among them
Pull the teachers from the schools and the students from the
universities
Let them
experience for themselves the lessons that cannot be taught
Do not seek methods that might end wars but find ways to
make them worse
Never let it
disappear and always ensure that yet another looms
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