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

Sad Prophet We Most Righteously Despise

Sad prophet, with that long and dreary face

Dressed in castoff clothes with those big, old heavy work shoes

Bad hair and a messy beard, big ears and bloodshot eyes

Sad prophet, with old hands, too rough for the polite handshake

Not a decent candidate for any kind of public office

Far too thin and wrinkled and with no credit score at all!

Sad prophet, crunching broken glass meditatively underfoot

Past the burned-out building and the homeless, talking in their sleep

Fearfully sheltering the flickering flame of the joy he takes in life

Sad prophet, seen walking the streets and thinking - In the daytime

Not up to snuff for business meetings or potential campaign donors

Usually ignored by the dope fiends and the petty thieves

Sad prophet, tracing a battered bible with a dirty index finger

Covered by the dark residues from all our blameless passings

Listening to the dumbed-down children shooting bottles in the weeds

Sad prophet, mumbling to no one as others blather on their cell phones

Untreated lesions from so much work in the sun all over his face and arms

Finding incomplete clues to his mysteries on shredded paper dropped in the alley

Sad prophet, sickening from the lead in our public drinking water

Standing by the giant vent inhaling the essence of McDonald’s

Gazing at a yellow sliver of horizon beyond a gray winter’s pall

Sad prophet, at the thrift store working diligently for a change of clothes

Listening to different preachers, he ponders their tax-free treasures

Traveling with another old dog cast off by someone else for personal reasons

Sad prophet, sets each BigBox display TV to a different channel

Pulls forth a pair of broken glasses to read his blood test results

Framed briefly in a streaky bus window, posing unasked questions

Sad prophet, forsaken by all his jobs and long education

Sits on a bench for hours watching the zen apple blossoms open

Frightening to curious old women and invisible to hurried businessmen

Sad prophet, given a prescription for a psychoactive drug

Filling plates for the homeless at some other shelter every week

Got off course so many years ago and is left with no way back

Sad prophet, sentenced to appear in snatches as we drift off to guiltless sleep

Passing by a single mother outside the welfare agency, he smiles

Far shorter on real faith than on simple money

Sad prophet, cooking potatoes over cast-off 2x4s

Slipping into the restroom as you are leaving with the key

What is that he’s reading in your public library for days and days on end?

Sad prophet, with coarse pubic-like hair protruding from his ears and nose

His mutely-screamed testimony casually rebuffed by our apathy and self-absorption

His scruffy presence always deemed improper in the long voting lines

Sad prophet, pacing by a rusty dumpster in the cold November rain

Philophisizing with the winos on broken couches in the street

Dreaming with the crack whores staring blankly out of shattered windows

Sad prophet, hears the child wheezing from diesel fume induced asthma

Trembling with anticipation over a dawn atop an overpass that’s closed

Pedaling a rusty bicycle with no brakes and broken gears

Sad prophet, mails his last will in on the back of a factory rebate form

Watching as the men of God try to prey upon the hopeless and the dying

Splashed by passing cars and laughed at directly into his horse-like face

Sad prophet, mumbling nonsense that even he finds simply foolish, given circumstances

Standing in the filthy runoff stream from another Wal*Mart parking lot

Mutually excluded from the mainstream but too strong to simply curl up and die

Sad prophet, whose very appearance is an affront to our unquestioned beliefs

Marginalized and ignored, photographed in secret, quoted without citation

Barred from pacing through the malls and asked to leave the shelters

Sad prophet, whose yellow teeth and wild eyebrows contaminate his message

Striding dirty streets with such a powerful useless purpose that it makes us laugh

Examined by the judges and found to be unfit for either prisons or asylums

Sad prophet, a carpenter in cardboard with the addicts, homeless vets and illegales

Horny, twisted fingers tapping too rapidly on a public access computer

Absorbed in thick books that nobody else ever bothers to read anymore

Sad prophet, with dirty tape on the thick glasses with their broken & scratched up lenses

Wearing the worn out clothes of various tradesmen with a flashy used blue sport coat

Possessed of opinions incompatible with those you would suppose from his appearance

Sad prophet, quite aware he is lost, alone and incorrect in thought and action

Beaten up out of boredom, robbed just for practice, arrested for simply being human litter

Denied by parents, abandoned by siblings and an embarrassment to any offspring

Sad prophet, whose reflection we might catch upon avoiding a dirty mud puddle

Filling out discarded customer surveys with beautiful and touching fiction

Validating our middle class lives for us every day as we pass him by without acknowlegement

Sad prophet, another piece of the litter that only a newly-arrived stranger might even see

Working on the donation trucks, carrying away battered furniture from your driveways

Knowing too many unrelated facts and thinking about them far too often

Sad prophet, face down in the things he has earned and he deserves

Standing on the bridge, outlined briefly, again and again by harsh, uncaring headlights

Afraid of what he has become, but prohibited by our imaginations from ever changing

Sad prophet, disappearing quickly into sidewalk crowds, without a backward glace

Burdened by a knowledge of no use to himself or anyone else

Watching the oily reflections of city lights on all the trash always bobbing in the river

Sad prophet, not driven towards a better future or sustained by any rich past

Slowed dramatically by the weight of our omnipresent rejection

Continually forced to reaffirm the validity of a lifestyle that we condemn

Sad prophet, whose existence we demand - That we might always be able to ignore him

No Longer The Man I Only Thought I Was

Gave up on the road rage since I now drive a real teeny little car

Don’t smash my beer bottles in the street as I just suck a little herb at home

Now spending as much time in church as watching football, that is, none at all

Lost the fantasy-macho fat that was bloating my face and neck

Always wear a tee-shirt over the spikey tattoo on my shrunken bicep

Quit proving myself on ATVs, snowmobiles, jetskis and dirtbikes

Got off the Meth when my teeth rotted and all my hair fell out

No longer can ignore the hemorrhoids and back pain from driving the big Cats

Don’t bother with the horn and just get out of the way without any obscene gestures

The Harley got repoed and sometimes I still wish that I missed it a little more

Don’t waste my time telling off loudmouthed women anymore

Took off my loud mufflers so I could listen to the news

Sold my NASCAR jacket on eBay and gave up on chewing Copenhagen

Stopped dropping my garbage off in front of overfilled apartment dumpsters

Got rid of the huge speakers cause now I just wear my headphones

No longer keep that loaded handgun just underneath the driver’s seat

Only beat up the wife or the kids once in a while, anymore

Noticed I quit swerving at cats that are walking across the road

Probably won’t move to Vegas to make my living playing blackjack

Went soft and quit hunting but still keep the rifle in the closet

Finally saw myself as just another injured, former would-be athlete

Stopped driving up real close behind slow vehicles driving in the left lane

Somehow don’t live on donuts and double cheeseburgers, like I used to

Lately heeding the lessons of all the drunk whippings that I’ve taken

No longer bother the Boss man with dry sarcasm and pointed questions

Can’t seem to get so righteously angry if I have to wait for too damn long

Don’t find as much pleasure ridiculing the queers and the geeks

Sometimes I just don’t charge shit I don’t really need and actually can’t afford

Started to notice that the toilet was dirty and the floor needed vacuumed

Slowly lost interest in pitching, batting and salary statistics

Couldn’t figure out why I always talked about those violent movies so much, all the time

Just tried to stay alive until I could drop my weapon and get back home again

Set there and wondered why I was wearing work boots to sit in a tiny cubicle

Lost pleasure in finding ways to stop other guys from passing me out on the 8-lane

No longer flick my lit butts out the window at my tailgating enemies

Stopped thinking about my Budweiser from about noon on, every day

Finally figured out I shouldn’t violate the wife’s court restraining orders

Wanted to get to know the kids I never supported and hadn’t seen for years

Started to question the strength I thought I had learned during my time in jail

Quit smashing up cheap furniture while screaming drunken vulgarities

Got tired of angrily denying the guilt after every stupid outburst

One day finally noticed the hurt look in everybody else’s eyes

Decided it might be almost time to start giving an unknown something back

No longer floor the pickup so often just before stopping at that next red light

Cant get excited about buying another new vehicle the way that I used to

Stopped waking up in the night to lose sleep over some nonsense at work

Don’t get so concerned if another woman won’t bother to look at me

Quit laughing at and teasing guys who sit there reading books

Guess I should maybe even start going for walks though I still just can’t quite do it

Don’t find myself half-drunk and angrily shopping at Wal*Mart, late on Christmas eve

Almost stopped to push a broke down carload of illegales off the road

Finally realized it was stupid to load groceries in the backseat of an empty pickup

Started wishing I could have listened if someone had just tried to talk to me

Had just an inkling of regret over all the years of hurried, drunken blurs

Noticed I wasn’t quite as sure of all the answers I had once blurted out so quickly

Found I could actually experience the remorse and regret that I had always laughed at

No longer find it so enjoyable to see a man pounded into unconsciousness

Finally had to admit I really hadn’t wanted my boy to be better than I was

Quit going to work with hangovers and blaming it on hating Mondays

No longer the tough hombre I always vaguely imaged myself as becoming

Stopped trying to invent another way to tell the liberals that I just don’t give a f*k

No longer the man who was only imagining that I was really growing up to be