The Tao Of Righteous Destruction And Glorious Slaughter

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

A Manifest Destiny...Of Mass Destruction

There were these great hardwood and evergreen forests standing undisturbed for millennia

We invented clear-cutting efficiency and the gasoline-powered chain saw

The land we found was full of life and a thousand kind of plants

We created lawns of over-watered, chemically treated, heavily fertilized bluegrass

The rivers teemed with spawning salmon on both wild and lonely coasts

We built dams and cut down the trees that sheltered their tiny fry, and they disappeared

The buffalo, grizzly, wolf and elk roamed the plains in uncounted numbers

We devised agribusiness to monocrop and to hold our livestock as deathcamp prisoners

The land held great wealth in silver, gold, oil, iron and coal

We gave the greedy and shortsighted free rein to gouge it out and walk away for 7 cents an acre

Snow fell white and pure and lay undisturbed all Winter in the mountain valleys

We turned it black with exhausts and the oil spilled on our great roads

Aquifers deep within the earth stored up clean water for a million years

We pumped it out in a heartbeat to irrigate subsidized crops for cows & snack foods

Sometimes the smoke from great unchecked fires blanketed the land for weeks

Now every day we belch out more toxic, climate-changing gases in unimaginable volumes

Songbirds in their millions greeted each and all the spring mornings

There are many now who have never heard them and so, cannot ever miss them

The skies were darkened by flights of uncountable passenger pigeons over billions of acres

We wiped out these so-called free goods as a cheap and easy to obtain food source

Men lived in tiny bands whose small household messes soon healed over as they moved on

Now billions squat in their own wastes under thick, toxic clouds of their own making

A group could strike out on its own to lands where no one had ever lived

We installed roads leading to identical strip malls from sea to shining sea

Every spring the gentle showers would slowly wake the land from a long winter

During such rains now, a bolus of coal-fired acid rain poisons the lakes and stunts the trees

A myriad of frogs croaked from a million scattered wetland patches

Today a tiny fraction still linger, many sporting exotic deformations

Grasses, flowers, field mice and hawks lived in many meadows

Weeds, broken glass, rats and cockroaches share empty lots with drunks, prostitutes & addicts

The great cats padded along in their mystical silence throughout the world

Now we require the use of the entire habitat that once sustained them

The cetaceans with their huge brains flourished in the oceans for a million years

Fifty thousand dolphins are sacrificed as our factory fishing bycatch, every season

Orangutans spent untold generations adapting to their remote jungle habitat

Today we just cut the trees down right out from underneath them in their so-called preserves

In the past the wolves would howl and the loons would cry out in the stillness

Now we roar on by in our loud trucks with 150 decibel music blasting, tossing out burger wrappers

It used to be that our numbers made sense in terms of what the earth could bear

Now the researchers say our population will stabilize at around 10-12 billion immortal souls

Every parent could believe his child’s life might be better than those who came before

More and more grow up condemned to mine garbage and carry water in dirty plastic buckets

The sun was cool in spring and one could count upon a dark freezeup every November

Now each year is right up among the very hottest that man has ever witnessed, but we don’t care

There was a time before plastics when we already had electricity and running water

Today there are electronic chips implanted in our beloved pets and spyware on our phones

Just a little while ago my own grandmother rode in a horse-drawn wagon

Now you can make a reservation to travel as a tourist into space

As children we rode three across hating the back seat of that hot old sedan

Now our kids must have varied snacks, video games, DVDs and personal air conditioning

Man witnessed the parade of the charismatic late Pleistocene megafauna

Now we are told that we are responsible for the latest in earth’s great mass extinctions

The lakes were filled with fish and there was always a chance of hooking an even bigger one

The government now warns against their consumption due to the pollution of our waters

The great eastern forest stretched from New York to Chicago

Now the trees and wildlife survive there merely at our decorative pleasure

Man and the bonobo evolved together sharing 98% of their DNA and homelands

Today we eat them even as we destroy their remaining jungle habitat

Giant bluefin tuna raced with warm blood throughout the worlds oceans

Now, even as we catch the last of them, their market price just keeps on going up

Old growth forests sheltered complete ecosystems for ten thousand years

Our technology replaced them with sterile single species tree farms

Galileo was absolved by the church for his heretical notions regarding the universe

Our evangelical zealots engage in a religious debate over evolution, without science

Oral traditions and rights of passage guided young men to adulthood in the tribe

Our fatherless youth must invent a directionless but violent culture on their own

Children learned the phases of the moon, the constellations and the useful plants

Now they clamor for fast food and the latest in couch-based electronic entertainment

Just yesterday one-income families with children could afford a small summer cottage

At this time speculators from far-away cities have driven up all the prices

In the old days family farms dotted the plains for hundreds of miles

Modern agribusiness has consolidated its holdings for industrial efficiency

We paddled the lakes in rowboats and canoes, murmuring and laughing

Now jetskis and speedboats whine and smoke from late morning right through the long twilights

Previously there existed a social contract between workers and their company

Today the corporation discards people as quickly as their useless and polluting byproducts

In the past the New World was filled with natural mysteries and untapped potential

We have successfully built an unbroken network of convenience stores and fast food outlets

The old folks helped stitch the children into the tapestry of their families

Now the elderly are seen as useless, drooling fools to be ignored, swindled and locked up

We minded our own business until called upon in times of great world crises

We protect our freedom and democracy thru preemptively defensive wars of liberation

Left alone, rivers meandered, sheltered fish, birds and frogs and left rich farming sediment

Now channelized, they provide no shelter for anything but trash and their runoff fouls the sea

The grasses, swamps and woodlands caught and held the precious rainwater

Acres of concrete now drain their oily burdens straight into vile but pathetic creeks

Every small town had its own hardware, grocery, pharmacy and feed stores

Merged and downsized corporations provide for our every modern need, straight from China

Bakers, butchers and small marketplace vendors were part of our everyday lives

Super stores stock shrink-wrapped factory feedlot steaks shipped inside dirty semi-trailers

Polar bears and seals shared the dance of life for thousands of generations

As we melt the ice, the bears must disappear right along with their prey

Tigers stalked for eons in the shadows of the volcanoes on the cold Kamchatka peninsula

The last of their penises are downed in expensive oriental soups as a purported aphrodisiac

Humans thrived while covered by a multiplicity of microfauna

Now household sanitizers speed the evolution of disease organisms & autoimmune disorders

For uncounted lifetimes worms, bacteria, plant detritus and silt tended to the soil

Pesticides, fertilizers, pivot sprinklers and massive machinery are now its uncaring stewards

For eons the earth and its atmosphere danced out their many graceful, interlocking cycles

In a hundred years we have altered the CO2 balance, along with the entire climate

Men took creatures as guiding spirits and thanked them for their sacrifices

We assume a dominion which permits atrocities on any and all animals, with our god’s blessing

In a delicate choreograph, chicks hatched just as their insect food appeared

With spring arriving earlier every year, the insects have gone and baby birds must starve

For centuries tropical mountain glaciers have served as natural reservoirs for the people below

With their melting people will go thirsty during the long and hot dry seasons

Coral reefs sheltered ecosystems for millions of underwater generations

Dynamite, cyanide, high temperature and UV rays have devastated them

Fetid swamps were known to reek with highly poisonous, miasmatic vapors

The cities built in their drained places fill infants brains with mercury and lead

Man was viewed as the measure of all things during the Age of Reason

We now rely upon faith-based initiatives to light our paranoid and superstitious way

Astronomers have mapped the universe and can see 14 billion years into the past

11% of our population cannot find our country on a globe of the earth

Our forefathers were amazed at the teeming schools of cod in the Atlantic

experts wonder if there yet remains even a viable breeding population

The mighty Colorado crossed the desert and fertilized the diversity of its delta

Now it is sucked dry in the desert, leaving behind only salt, chemicals and fertilizer

The Grand Canyon offered awe-inspiring, crystal clear, panoramic vistas

Nearby coal-fired generation plants now obscure the view on a quite regular basis

For centuries the Anasazi lived in cliff dwellings and grew enough food to live

Now the water is all spoken for and the great droughts that doomed them have returned for us

The Kwakiutl people competed to give away more than their neighbors at their potlatches

Our government subsidies the poor, enabling them to care for the needs of the rich for very little

The orcas and cetaceans have longer histories and brains as large as our own

Studies have shown that we have contaminated their blubber and their milk with our toxics

The Plains Indians were marvelously transformed all too briefly by Spanish horses

Electricity, running hot water and the automobile have also only briefly been part of our lives

We conquered, tamed, surveyed, cleared, settled and developed the New World

But, we lecture the Third World on their sacred duty to preserve their precious natural heritage

The press as the fifth estate was admired for its ever-vigilant role in democracy

The government and the press now produce ‘news’ stories that are shown without attribution

Scientists spoke slowly and carefully, always admitting to a measured uncertainty

Now pundits urge a small leap of faith to the literal truth of scripture and their fake news

We created the worlds first national park, the clean air act and banned DDT

We disavow global warming, drill in all wilderness areas and ignore coal-fired mercury and lead

30 million or 99% of native peoples perished in a brave conquest of the Americas

Yet all of our recrimination is targeted at shaming the Europeans over the Holocaust

Great storms came in off the pacific for millennia and gentle trade winds kissed the Caribbean

Presently, smog from china and sandstorms off Africa sullies their cars and lungs

Over thousands of generations the indigenous discovered medicinal plants

Big Pharma patents these as profitable drugs and keeps all the profits as the forests disappear

During a process of millions of years organic material was converted into fossil fuels

Every day we litter a blizzard of petroleum-based packaging and walk away without a thought

The bible provides rich examples of a broad and humane philosophical wisdom

We pick and choose our quotes to justify our venal and self-serving philosophy

A myriad of species from mammals to bacteria intertwined in the wondrous web of life

A leveraged corporate oligarchy of producers and suppliers greedily noses us all into poverty

Humans spoke with thousands of languages each supporting a different culture

Advertisers and politicians use Spanish as a sales tool and we all text in a pidgin English