Let all the war hawks
And war hungry
World leaders
Be conscripted
To stand on the front lines
To satisfy their souls
Thirst for war
In straight
Regimental lines
As the world
Hears their whines
(C)
Copyright John Duffy
Foundation of the piece.
Would the thirst for war have a different narrative, if those advocating for it, served on the front lines?
.
How like Eliot it is in tone.
Even the landscape has the grime
of London in each line. I must have been
no more than nineteen when I wrote
the poem caught in the spell of his hypnotic
rhythm and rhymes.
The bright, clean air of my home
was seen through the filter
of a foreign fog, his soulful exhaustion
washed a gray tide across my youth.
He stood as a monument in whose shadow
nothing could grow.
Prufrock haunted the back alleys
of my mind, a rebel almost in the guise
of a comic. He was hardly me
in a world of pub rock and cold beers
on lazy, sun drenched Aussie afternoons -
no rolled up trousers but instead,
reefers, flared pants and mini skirts
and a future balanced on the whim
of a conscription ballot
hanging over my head.
I was one of the cool set,
navy blue duffle coat, scarf around
my neck, seated at a table
in Pepe's Coffee Lounge
discussing Baudelaire
and T.S. Eliot and the demise
of the political elites.
The conscription ballot hung
over our heads helmeted
in a flowering of uncombed hair
in the winter of 1966.
We thought the world was about
to tip, that the old regime
was coughing its last
on Craven A and Camel cigarettes.
Booze was cheap and jobs
chased us down the street.
In a hundred buried silos,
annihilation was just a push
of a button away.
We partied hard beneath
the threat of that mushroom cloud.
We're old now, sit under the cloud
of our own thoughts, replaying
scratchy, worn out tracks
retrieved from the sleeves
of our neural LP's.
What we tore down back then
has been replaced with more
sinister demons that eat away
at the collective soul.
In the end, everything
is just reabsorbed.
Some of us still frequent
coffee shops and discuss
Baudelaire and T.S. Eliot,
still write poetry,
shed a tear
at the melancholic beauty
of a setting sun.
The arrogance
of conscription
the blasphemy
of denial
Abraham
shouting high above
to dam
the bloody Nile
We speak with words
deceptive
to try and steal
the peace
As blasphemy
that self destructs
in arrogance
— repeats
(The New Room: March, 2024)
Is madness a gift?
Can we use it to shift through life's rifts
Unbeknownst to the moment that lifts
Us to our highest yearnings that in time we'll witness it burning
Our favored moments to cinder within our lifetime we remember?
a moment lost to the flow of continuous progression
Our recession impression
Relieved believed to be there all along
Prolonged by my own perception
Fates conception
It will concur our moment with ease
And draft us into its conscription
A better liar will know the truth
And quicken the desire to see it through.
First Love
I love you
like
the first time
I tasted peanut butter,
the first time
someone
scratched my back.
I love you
like my first
pull on a Winston
dizzy with awe
that such a thing
was legal.
I love you like
the reflex
of pain
when it
gives up
from a fall,
the unforgiving
conscription
of physics
and biology
like
a padlock's
combination
right turn
to the click
and only choice but
opening
I am a long way down
this road of mine,
and
You may not
recognize me now
but I am
your own
first love
same waif
always
in your eyes.
Chug-a-lug, Chug-a-lug –
no matter the fly in our
President's mug, the bug in
his thinking...my reflecting on
his ailing brain, and it's obvious
volume shrinking:
Those mindless, confusing rants,
Bidden juices-up; Psaki, drinking
without blinking – regurgitating
at deceptive White House briefings –
propaganda validated by shameless,
would-be reporters, were it not for
their obvious conscription – their
sacrificial genuflecting, having
sold their souls to the Golden Calf
of Soros wealth and tyrannical
influence –
For Progressive compliance – securing
her high place of worship in a Marxist,
Totalitarian Kingdom – Pelosi suggesting
free ice-cream be given to all, in place
of Tried-And-True, Good Old, American
Freedom –
Is consciousness different than having a soul,
reflection unhallowed—eternity trolled
Does the magic within us begin and then end,
finite conscription—one lifetime to spend
And if unrelated, then what lies between
what we feel and we ponder—perchance then to dream
Till that final unveiling where death at last shows
the truth of the matter—that nobody knows
(Villanova University: October, 2020)
Religion in practice…
arms length from God
Close enough to see,
never to touch
Single lens focus,
vision for sale
Dogma as deity
—conscription at birth
(Villanova Pennsylvania: January, 2020)
Democracy is messy,
thank God that it’s not
Tyranny once embedded,
all freedom is lost
No liberty for the indentured,
conscription for thought
Free speech for the patriots
—no matter the cost
(Villanova Pennsylvania: November, 2016)
Divinity lives beyond description
Alone, a weary heart cries from its pain
Desire eager for its conscription
Might truth and love turn this way again?
Sweet mysteries, this life, in dreams of thee
Yield fantasy's passion I dare to share
Walk from this muse, I pray to live in me
Conceding this, my love, unto your care
On lifeless shadows, cast your glowing light
Bring a blessed presence to this peace I seek
Rest too this solemn shade, this endless night
With angelic verse, but you could only speak
For seeking dreams to dream from up above
I cast my will and fate to seek your love
The coarse green fatigues
etches away at me, cracking
and burning my skin.
The hands I once so warmly held
are replaced with the cold sternness
of pistol grips.
Every shot of my gun whips
me into form, chipping away
the soft ends of me. They hammer hard
as the army sculptures another soldier.
I've forgotten the lift of careless laughter
as these muscles tense and freeze.
As we march and our boots thump
against hard mud in this dark jungle,
I feel this cold settle in and wonder
if this is the passing of boyhood.
The coarse green fatigues
etches away at me, cracking
and burning my skin.
The hands I once so warmly held
are replaced with the cold sternness
of pistol grips.
Every shot of my gun whips
me into form, chipping away
the soft ends of me. They hammer hard
as the army sculptures another soldier.
I've forgotten the lift of careless laughter
as these muscles tense and freeze.
As we march and our boots thump
against hard mud in this dark jungle,
I feel this cold settle in and wonder
if this is the passing of boyhood.
Villanelle: The Dilemma of the Non-Violent – 6
Should the State legitimate entity be
To make the use of force It generates valid
True father protects for life his progeny
Change helmsmen and change its personality
The State’s a will o’ the wisp under tight lid
Should the State legitimate entity be
The State is as human as errors can be
Should It excuse seek or new elections bid
True father protects for life his progeny
No citizen conscription thwarts and breathes free
Abjure violence to be made invalid
Should the State legitimate entity be
Since consensus derives from majority
Who made the individual a Candide
True father protects for life his progeny
Overlook crush even one nonentity
What right have men to govern any breed
Should the State legitimate entity be
True father protects for life his progeny
© T. Wignesan – Paris, 2015
If we are a breed of beings,
Species of like doings-
In the Milky Way
Why not be that today?
Have I turn a bat
Lost my light of the frat
Or a Braconid
To my kind?
Why the abrupt repellency
To the unfolding literacy
How will I feed my stance
Upon the extinct of other hands?
Why the weighed loathsome
The infinite gruesome
Of my phylum-
Within my kingdom?
What's with the conscription,
The circumscprition-
Of liberty
Stamping it in entirety?
What's with the thirst of a fuehrer,
The ***** conceit of the other-
To weightily parti pris
And indulge in an hostility spree?
Can I not be mindful of the Scythrops,
Make of their trait crops,
That will acculturate
Rather than berate?
Can I not be for the domain,
My essence extended to the terrain,
Express compassion without pain
And adore for no gain?
Instead, I lushed
To hike mass agitative state,
That deludes the mind
Of my kind-
To prey on their own.
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