world war 2 wrecked the world

[mnaz]

foolish exuberance of life.
photographs barely keep up with the war.
melted leather draped over skull and helmet.
cataclysm set in and set out to end it, time passed.
in the beginning, the beginning kills.
let us submit to consensual suicide.
the prophets know the place.

[stilltrucking]

The good war
no doubt


hell of a poem

[mnaz]

after centuries of hardening psychosis, humankind made it official... we must institutionalize darkness. we must forever ignore and pervert the lessons contained in self-inflicted mass suffering, hijack science, steal our own sustaining energy, murder peacemakers in cold blood and make them into barbaric, honorable religions-- never let them rest. not a moment's rest. it was a megaton proverb to piss on. seems the beginning of the end. and i was born so neatly into its manic, filthy wake that i hardly noticed...

Ah yes... good morning!!

[mnaz]

wow...

where did that come from?
not in a good space right now, it seems...

[mnaz]

funny thing about it, the unspeakable physical atrocity never quite does justice to diseased consciousness, in its rippling wake, or just before. maybe that's what i was kicking at. see, the thing about war ... it was deliberate. planned. we may be made of violent genes, but that has little to do with a world war.

i met an 82-year old world war survivor in a horrible tavern in the middle of nowhere. i swear i met him there. he said he nearly perished in the battle for saipan, said they overran most of his regiment and he barely made it out. he was so quiet in that little flash of hell bar, polite, respectful. the jukebox blared some hair band blasphemy. i remember it a little too well..

[mnaz]

after centuries of hardening psychosis, humankind made it official... we must institutionalize darkness. we must forever ignore and pervert the lessons contained in self-inflicted mass suffering, hijack science, steal our own sustaining energy, murder peacemakers in cold blood and make them into barbaric, honorable religions-- never let them rest. not a moment's rest. it was a megaton proverb to piss on. seems the beginning of the end. and i was born so neatly into its manic, filthy wake that i hardly noticed...

oh wait. i guess the romans already went there, long before the good war, the just one. but then, they never had the bomb. am i thinking out load again? sorry about that.

[stilltrucking]

Human Smoke

A Debunker on the Road to World War II

He added: “Over and over again I would take out the five most important books on X subject, and then I’d go back to The New York Times, and by God, the story that was written the day after was by far the best source. Those reporters were writing with everything in the right perspective. Sometimes I think historians are a little like sauté chefs: they cook everything up and soften the edges.”



A Debunker on the Road to World War II

To research his new book, “Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization,” which comes out next week from Simon & Schuster, Mr. Baker read old newspapers online and on microfilm, and he also borrowed hundreds of books from the library at the University of New Hampshire

“I came to the Second World War with a typically inadequate American education.” Mr. Baker said, “and I was surprised to discover that Churchill had this crazy, late-night side. He was obviously thrilled to be in the midst of this escalating war. This is a man who wanted Europe to starve — he wanted to starve it into a state of revolt.”

He added: “I’ve always had pacifist leanings, and so one of the things I wanted to learn was how do you react to the Second World War if you’re a pacifist. That war is always held up as the great counterexample, the one that was justified. And I got hungrier and hungrier to answer the question: Did the Allies’ response to Hitler really help anyone who needed help? One of the things I discovered, for example, was that the most impressive opponents of the war were also the people most actively arguing that we had to help the refugees. There was a complete overlap.”

Talking about starvation in the Warsaw Ghetto during the British blockade, Mr. Baker became so worked up that he had to pause, take off his rimless glasses and rub his eyes, and then he went on: “What are you going to do when Europe is threatened by Hitler, this paranoid, dangerous person? My feelings about the war change every day. But I also feel that there is a way of looking at the war and the Holocaust that is truer and sadder and stranger than the received version.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/04/books ... ted=1&_r=1

Word makers of war


One hour after the Dance of Death

I lay in the abyss, where twisting squeezing
The lowest form of life pushed itself peristaltically.
Where slippery and slimy worm and eel entwined,
I was a worm myself, overwhelmed with exhaustion.

The crazy fundamentalist christians believe that the earth was created on a thursday afternoon in October in the year of 5012 B.C.

And americans believe the war started on December 7, 1941.

[Doreen Peri]

man that link stretches this window so big i have to scroll from right to left!

whew...

lol

i might code it for ya

[Doreen Peri]

fixed it

[stilltrucking]

please
I am sick
sick of the fucking intellectualization of good wars and bad wars
I sick of looking into my own heart
and seeing the worm at the core of my consiousness

mnaz are you in a bad place?
welcome
to my home state of despair
I live there.

I don't want a pickle
let me ride my motor sickle

[stilltrucking]

thank you doreen

mnaz thank you
you polish your words so well
I hardly feel them slice in to me
please do not let my insanity
un encourage you
strip away my scabs
promote healing

head out on the highway
got my motor running

[mnaz]

no problem, jack.
these are things one just has to work through.
and thanks for listening.

[stilltrucking]

ah shit
my eyes are tearing up again

[mnaz]

I suppose this really isn't poetry... more like an unfocused lament. My apologies. I remember that godawful desert bar... not far from that gold mine i lived at for awhile. I drank there a couple times, met some of the regulars... some guy with wild eyes named 'the rooster', or something like that, who liked to answer questions with questions, and that soft-spoken world war vet, a small fellow, maybe 5-5 or so, who quietly, even serenely told me about the harrowing destruction he participated in... chilled right to the core. So it goes. An unguarded moment, I suppose. I should toughen up.

[hester_prynne]

No! Don't toughen up! Stay OUTRAGED. You speak for many of us.....and so well.
We need you.....!

H