#586. Life & Theft Sunday: A Grunt

recently i was thinking
about war again

durm und strang
and bang and blame

i think the people
who hate war the most
are the ones who can't
keep their own horrors
out of their eyes

war is a terrible thing
don't get me wrong
but there are a lot of bad things
that happen all around us
all the time and war
has its worst effects in the mind
where most war is pitched
every single day

far from the battlefield

or at least any
that will ever be
commemorated

so what is it
about war and people
getting blown to bits
because that's
what they set out to do?

we find it a horror
because we can't imagine
how anyone could volunteer
for such a fete

yet we've been a volunteer army
for decades now
and the strange thing is
i wish we still had the draft

i wish we still had the draft
because it prevents all the typical bullshit
it prevents assholes from telling you
that you can't fight for your country
because once you go volunteer
you can be rejected
and i know all about that now

when there's a draft
they'll take anyone
and you're all in it for the same reasons

when you volunteer you can be screened away
like it's a good thing to reject the willing
on technicalities while those who slipped in
can be as bad as they want to be
like all the assholes behind a wheel
on the battlefields of the road

volunteers come into a regimented culture
but it's an artificial one that's just as phony
as anywhere else
the drafted were always forced into conformity
because there was no telling where they came from

the drafted could bitch about the horrors with justification
volunteers have no one to blame but themselves
and damned if no one still knows the difference

war in a volunteer state is a tacit approval
and a true dichotomy of the culture
even after all that culture revolution
there are still people who believe in war
and ain't that a bitch?

until the other day i thought the iraq war
was less stupid than the popular opinion suggested
a hangover of the vietnam years that we still cling to
like dependents on the drugs that helped make it possible
you all said bush was an idiot
burning in his own folly
you still claim that it made no sense
and yet it made all the sense in the world
the only problem is that we lost the stomach for resolve
and instead just wanted to believe in absent hope

hope in the middle of climate change
is like a winter that doesn't want to go away
snow in the middle of spring
and spring in the middle of winter
when the levies broke we all saw monsters
a hushpuppy in a bathtub

well maybe it was an obsession
that wasn't so healthy after all
but in a lot of ways it really was inevitable
a mess we had to clean up if we ever wanted
to look at ourselves in the mirror again
and in the 21st century mirrors are no longer miracles
but more of our patented nightmares
they're on the walls and nowhere in the landscape
and there is no fairest of them all
just another warrior attempting to find their grail
in a childrens crusade to a holy land
stuck in a quagmire of conflicting faith
all derived from the same source
but speaking a different language

someone is making the argument
that all of this makes sense
and that the only explanation is that
black is still black and white is still white
but black isn't a color and neither is white
these are absences and they are the abyss
and we are all staring at it
never once realizing that it is indeed
staring back at us

we moonwalk toward Golgotha
and there's not a Cyrenian in sight
and we look upon the grim works of
Ozymandias and tremble because we no longer know
how to look at history with any perspective
perhaps because all those books of Alexander's
were lost and really i was recently reminded
that 97% of human history was left off the annals
so what do we really know except what we tell ourselves?

drafted into this world and volunteered to fight a war
i try to blend all the disparate conflicting impulses
that float around me and the life and the theft of it
are just things that happen before it all ends

so tell me again why i should be outraged
or why i shouldn't be outraged
every single day

i respond with a grunt

#580. Life & Theft Sunday

a small bowl of cereal
without milk
is a large bowl

a small bowl of cereal
with milk
is a small bowl

#574. Life & Theft Sunday

some of us know what we are

some of us know
the character of humanity

some of us know
how little we're separate
from the rest of the animal kingdom

some of us know
that in that kingdom
we are indeed king
but this is not something
to brag about

some of us know
how beastly in our instincts
how base and selfish
and small and pathetic
and rude we all are
not with words but our actions

some of us know
it's not in our words
that we expose ourselves
but how we behave
not in our anger but
in our contempt for each other
how we treat those we pretend
don't exist or we consider
lower than ourselves

some of us know
how we are surrounded by wonders
and to embrace them is to
know ourselves in all the ways
we could be if we just
knew ourselves

#562. Life & Theft Sunday: Runners of the Boston Marathon

They gathered as they do every year,
these runners of the Boston Marathon,
a day of celebration for patriots.

It was just another day in Beantown
and the Sox had already won.

The starting pistol sounded
and the runners of the Boston Marathon
got ready to fulfill their dreams.

Sean Collier was sitting,
waiting inside a car,
stationary as a ghost.

Tamerlan and Dzhokhar,
these runners from the Boston Marathon,
planted their packages and ran, too.

They ran away while
the runners of the Boston Marathon
were cheered.

Tamerlan dodged and weaved;
float like a butterfly sting like a bee.
His brother trailed behind him.

Sean Collier was sitting,
waiting inside a car,
stationary as a ghost.

The explosion ripped through the air
and it silenced and then blew up
all those around it.

Those who were finishing,
runners of the Boston Marathon,
stumbled the last few feet.

Tamerlan and Dzhokhar,
these runners from the Boston Marathon,
they kept running.

Beantown began to rally
as the smoke billowed and swirled.

Sean Collier was sitting,
waiting inside a car,
stationary as a ghost.

The manhunt and lockdown
reverberated far louder
than these runners from the Boston Marathon.

Tamerlan and Dzhokhar,
they struggled to escape,
and they fought like the devil.

Sean Collier was sitting,
waiting inside a car,
stationary as a ghost.

The nation had transformed itself
into runners of the Boston Marathon.

Tamerlan shot it out
and found himself shot dead,
cooling on a slab on a Thursday night.

Friday morning his brother almost joined him,
finally catching up,
these runners from the Boston Marathon.

It was Big Papi
who said on Saturday,
 "All right.  All right, Boston."

#554. Life & Theft Sunday

would you trade 

a happy future

you COULD have

for a miserable 

present you DO have?

#544. Life & Theft Sunday

stories have always
fascinated me

they offer a portal
into the unknown

what I mean by "unknown"
is total control

for instance
you can dominate

you can also choose
to be humble

it's a lot like life
actually

the difference
is a matter of control

in stories you have
a better sense of control

you can decide
whatever you want

in life they say you can
and in a sense that's so

yet I've never known
it to be so simple

in stories
you can make a difference

it's exhilarating
and frightening

what if
you get it wrong?

it's worse
when you have control

it's a matter
of life & theft

Life & Theft Sunday (#535)

rise and rise again
or so the story goes

once is never enough
you need to say and say it again

every moment is stolen
from the past or the future

you only know where you got it
in hindsight which is the same

the story goes on
and becomes a memory

it ripples through history
back and there again

Life & Theft Sunday (#530)

I'm always one step away
from declaring myself
a misanthrope

filling my days
with how miserably
we treat each other

the casual dismissals
and petty assumptions
of social interactions

sometimes I'm guilty
and I rationalize
that they earned it

but there's always
a chance
that I was wrong

how do you know
when to tell
the difference?

when is a decision
unforgivable
and not forgettable?

life is answered
not best by death
but theft

it's the moments
we take and believe
we can get away with

do you know
the effect you have
on other people?

this is what
it's all about
so get used to it