Poem:"i love the 4F hippy C.O."

[jimboloco]

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The Poem and Info You Submitted:
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Title: i love the 4F hippy C.O.
Poem Language: English

Poem:"i love the 4F hippy C.O."

i love the 4F hippy C.O.
and unabashedly so/

i went to nam flying
cargo planes
the cargo(grunts)
got off
formed up
marched off
i watched
their canteens
bouncing single file
into the jungle

my friend bob told me
one time in nam
he forgot his
canteen
and ran back to get it
coming back from
patrol

street medic
on a mission still
tending the wounded
including me


just be real
in what you're saying
what i said in a
conscientious objector
information assembly
put on by
American Friends Service
Committee
when the buildup for
Desert Storm One
was happening.
One kid asked how to
present himself
to the draft board
should it all come back again
should he act strange
dress strange or what?
i got to say to him
just be real

a conscienrious objector to war
is not a wimp,
(not necessarily a pacifist)
just being conscientious
objectively.

i'd never wear a vietnam veteran cap
without qualifying definitions
against the war

love them rambles
zero heroes
proud of ya!

you too can submit your anti-war poem to Poets agin da War matchine, man, at

http://poetsagainstthewar.org/submitpoem.asp

[stilltrucking]

I been hearing a lot of news about abortions lately, Roe V Wade.
puts me in a somber mood. Are words contagious, I been thinking about somber notes all morning, I met a man who said he was a vetran, I suppose he could have been, I mean he had the hat. But the few men it has been my honor to truck with, former pardners in crime that I have had the ones who had realy been in it, for those guys when things went wrong they seemed to get more cheerful, they could always see the humor, but this bad boy was bitching and moaning about being homeless for the night because a dispatcher didn't book him a room, I gave him forty bucks for a room. Then I heard Garrison Keilor's writer's notebook today,

Happy birthday [u]Solier[/u]


The weightless mosquito touches
her tiny shadow on the stone,
and with how like, how infinite
a lightness, man and shadow meet.
They fuse. A shadow is a man
when the mosquito death approaches.

Keith Douglas

a conscienrious objector to war
is not a wimp,
(not necessarily a pacifist)
just being conscientious
objectively.

http://website.lineone.net/~nusquam/howtkill.htm



http://www.britac.ac.uk/pubs/review/_pd ... endall.pdf

'an accurate idea of the appearance of things'
That is how I feel about your work.

___________________________________________________
Some kind of classical music playing as I type this, no idea what it is. I just like the noise it makes, matches my somber mood, a lot of stuff about Roe V Wade in the news todays

[jimboloco]

excuse me, it is NOT my work, but my play, unless you want to redefine work as prattle, in which case it should be praized!

later dude on sabbatical THURS,. Uncle Tex.

[stilltrucking]

ten four on the fact that work is play, play is work, tea/no tea
A=b and A not B, a lot of space between 0 and 1



enjoy your sabbat,

speaking of
prattle,
I cut out a bit about a st christopher's medal encrusted with blood, seemed to macabre, I been prattling a lot lately, must be the herbage and verbage. Fuzzy Thinking, The New Science Of Fuzzy Logic I just picked it up today, exciting, like the best of the west and east, all about The Buddha and Aristotle.
" Into every tidy scheme for arranging the pattern of human life, it is necessary to inject a certan dose of anarchism" Bertrand Russell

I only kinow about Keith because it was his birthday today, forever twenty four. I been thinking about the meaningless gestures I make in my life, maybe they matter, become a C.O. after I declared 4f, celibacy when I am too old for it. If I can't get a motorcycle I think I am going to die, well let me rephrase that, I just want to have some fun before I do die. I don't want a pickle...

[jimboloco]

become a C.O. after I declared 4f, celibacy when I am too old for it.

fat lady dying confused i tossed her back into bed
threw the rails up
slapped on her oxygen mask
but i repositioned the strap below her ears
cuz she said it was hurting her eyes

became a slacker after i worked

[stilltrucking]

No moe Buddhist writers." Firesign
I think there was a long string on litkicks about week ends, about play and work. I had to many anthropogy courses I had all that forty hour work schedule that I can, now I am sucking up the life savings of all those twenty five year old hard working americans, and I can get by on twenty hours a week, those anthropology courses about some people living in paradise somewhere on an Island where the people only need to spend about sixteen hours a week to meet their needs, the rest of the time they made art.

I think I got one of the first litkick accademy awards for a new slacker religion

I talked to the fat lady last night
I work for the Rosewater Foundation
Hello, my name is jackadiah, may I help you?
She was calling about the insurance add, the prepaid burial plan, I said I would be happy to help her with that. But then she couldn't remember her zip code, she got worried and I said, "isn't it embarassing" and she laughed. After that as she remembered all the other details of life here in the fast lane, with each bit of her memory falling into place she sound happier, more confident, and then I had her info and we said good night so sweetly.

[jimboloco]

what the bardo is this string about
are ya happy?
i love
kindness and
freeflow


the surrealists
bunueal

[stilltrucking]

what the bardo is this string about

play and work.

excuse me, it is NOT my work, but my play

their canteens
bouncing single file
into the jungle

sorry about the confusion jimboloco,


I was thinking of how children play,
work is adult play, or it should be, like playing a game with everthing you got, too the max.

but little boys love to play war games too,
so one must be objective about your conscience,
the military is really hounding high school kids, the parents are starting to bitch, in his more desperate hours my nephew talks of joining the army, back in the fifties my friends used to call the Coast Guard the Jewish Navy.

I hope that made it clear as mud
am I happy, yes sometimes, like when I am writing

sometimes when I get off the phone with someone who was born in 1917, someone who has just cheered me up tremendously, an instant mentor, yep I am pretty happy,
Freud in his cheerfull pessimism said the best would could do in this world was happiness in work and love. my nephew wants to go back to school to be a nurse, he spent thousands of dollars to take a course for M.A. the job was a bitch, the doctors treated them like shit, low pay, he quit and makes three times the money as a server, but he is getting tired of the strippers that come in late at night and grab his crotch. there must be some kind of hippocrates gene in my family, so many doctors and nurses. me I am the black sheep

"Big brother went to college,
And became a doctor man.
I guess he makes about a million dollars a year,
Off of folks' home insurance plans.
He's got a big long Mercedes Benz,
And a house overlooking the town.
He sits in his jacuzzi,
And he watches the sun go down.
And he feels real sorry for me:
I'm the black sheep of the family.

Yeah, I drive me a big ol' semi-truck,
I'm making payments on a two-room shack,
My wife she waits on tables,
And at night she rubs my back.
And I tell her what my Papa said to my Momma,
When he got off a high-ball train:
"Wake me up early, be good to my dogs,
"And teach my children to pray."

[Michael]

Well, of course the following verse could find its way into the annals of historic poetry.

a conscienrious objector to war
is not a wimp,
(not necessarily a pacifist)
just being conscientious
objectively.

It’s moving and uses words like a hockey player uses skates. This is meant as a compliment – no thought, just heart. Of course, you thought about what your heart was telling you, didn’t you?

i watched
their canteens
bouncing single file
into the jungle

The above isn’t a half bad quote, either. It really takes the humanity out of war which, of course, is what war is supposed to do anyway.

This is good enough for me to like – a lot!!

[jimboloco]

i watched
their canteens
bouncing single file
into the jungle

The above isn’t a half bad quote, either. It really takes the humanity out of war which, of course, is what war is supposed to do anyway.

It was a run that was mostly airline -like....we picked em up at Xuan Loc, flew 'em to Bieh Hoa for the start of their R&R, then another group was waiting, we flew them to Vung Tau for R&R and as we dropped them off we goa a load back to Xuan Loc, which we left off, a complete round trip, trippy, cause they were off and marching away off the runway and into the woods before we could say jack rabbitt! I looked back just as we were getting ready for takeoff an they were outa there. All's ya could see was them marching away, canteens bouncing, seemed like a troop of boy scouts on a hike, except they split real fast and so did we.

Years later I had a medic in my vietnam vets therapy group, then a pharmacist, who had been a medic in the army out of xuan loc. He was one of the scornful ones,had rode or flowed in one of our C-7's, knew the trip, was scornful because of the difference in experiences we had, said maybe my problems at the time were justified because of my antiwar record.....said it right out loud talking at the counselor while i just sat there dumfounded. The guy saw his colonel get his head blowed off. What could ya say?
But I stopped into his pharmacy,later, on a sunday afternoon, a nice retail chain, and he was smiling, guess that was what mattered.

My friend Bob told me that one time whilst coming back from patrol, he realised he had forgot his canteen and went running back for it, something a only a marine would do, but he turned out kind, also antiwar and makes birdhouses, sells 'em by the road on sunday afternoons out in the counrty.

So canteens are a metaphor for
thirst.

[Michael]

Like I said, not a bad metaphor for thirst.

[jimboloco]

also the canteens for travel
life
camping
not-war
bouncing.

and i was not into the war. not at all.

[Michael]

I had a 2S. I went to school and fucked off for a while.

Sex and drugs and rock n’ roll!

Then I almost got killed in a car accident and they changed me to a 4F.

Not much sex and rock n’ roll and they gave me the drugs.

You and a lot of people were brave to go. I didn’t agree with the war, but I’ll take nothing away from the bravery of the “pawns” (c’mon, you think the old bastards who started the war were going to go?).

Without the 2S and 4F, I still wouldn’t have gone. It would have been Canada, jail or some other sovereign place.

Is "jail" really more sovereign than Iraq or Vietnam? The old bastards have never attacked “jail” have they and there’s all kinds of bad guys in “jail”. Like people who’ve smoked weed – the really dangerous kind. Or am I getting that wrong? Are they the kind who forget to be dangerous?

[surfermike]

slightly off your own topic man. Jail (or prison)
is full of men who have done much worse than
smoked weed. I've counselled many men from
prison, although I've never been a prisioner
myself. I was drafted into the Army in 1969. I
certainly didn't want to go, but with the other
choices available I did go. They cut off my long
blond surfers hair and filled me full of what it took
to survive a tour in Vietnam. Here I am 35 years
later living in Canada. No guilt or shame anymore.
Just passing the message of peace. And, peace to
you brah.