Up and At’em!

Yesterday, I ate breakfast. I put on my shoes. I made my second cup of coffee. I read a newspaper, well not really a newspaper. It was a local “penny pincher” that arrives each Wednesday in the mail. Today is Friday, I usually don’t read it immediately. It does have a small amount of community news that may be interesting to read mixed among the used car lot sales and grocery store coupons. But it is a real paper newspaper that you can actually and yes, “literally”, touch, feel and read without squinting into a brightly lit “device”. You know …… the device.

This all brought back other mornings, years ago, when breakfast, shoes and reading or just glancing through a four or five section newspaper was the early morning routine before going to work. At my house it was called “the rut”, the “time to make the doughnuts” regiment. Many working stiffs performed this each working day. While I was working, this performance eventually evolved into pouring the cereal and milk, wake up the iPhone or tablet , pull on the socks , have breakfast all while standing over the kitchen sink. This of course depended on whether I was lucky enough to not be working “out of town” that week.

But jeez; a real newspaper, something you can read outdoors on the back porch or patio if the wind isn’t blowing too hard.

I’m subscribing again, today!

Such is the life of John

Another Place

I have found myself in another place
another time another space
Miles from home and human race
That is all I know.

Awoke one morning unfamiliar sun
unknown hills, friends – not one
Alone again and mind undone
Among the quiet.

Dogs that smiled, cats that prayed
Clouds all burst of bright sun-rays
homes of sticks and builder’s clay
Wooden doors sealed shut.

Pipes that smoke, barrels that blast
Trees cut down, branches cast
plowed red dirt, burnt wasteland vast
Cloudy waters burn.

On my knees, I face the sky
Hear mothers and widows tear-less cry.
Their children lost, no reason why
Gone behind the moon.

I kick and pound the jungle dirt
I rip the labels from my shirt
Are we truly the ones unhurt?
That, We may never learn.

DSS

 

The Foulness

The foulness that proceeds us,
the stench, the smoke, the half life
the static noise of mistuned radios and burnt out street lights
blown out streets and broken water mains.

lost shoes line the paths
bent and burnt cars with missing hoods and cracked blocks
children playing with discarded green cans
and competing for food from skinny dogs

The foulness that proceeds us,
the wailing mothers and lost brothers
uncles and aunts now without nephews or nieces
no walls or roofs for their dirt floor gated homes

their minds without freedom left in them
without bread, meal or ovens to bake.
just to be left alone to make the new shoes and robes
and to pound tools from their new found scrap metal.

The foulness that proceeds us,
the despair and unleashed sorrow
and cautious walk of digital camo soldiers without cause or blame
only yearning to get home to a land more understood.

As the wind blown sand settles into drifts
across arched doorways and blocked rutted roads
we hear distant sounds of flying war iron always overhead
we hear the sounds of lost hope, life and future
the sound of the sad foulness that proceeds us.

OC

(This is rewind week, just blowing off the stench too many times, John) 

 

Casual Heroes

Here we go again. The casual heroes are watching their 30000 foot drone views of the Middle East. They are collecting their pornographic troop pictures and war love stories. Loosening their mental belts and zippered mind flies. Preparing for the mental masturbation of imagined motorboats and fireworks.
Every two years or so they most have their violent but satisfying mental cum. Another old man arousal and circle jerk.

This was published first in 2003.

Casual Heroes

Old men feeling the foreplay of the sensuous tug of war
Old men that have forgotten or have never known the smell of the smoke of death
But with blustering words from their arm chairs and their long tables
they easily speak of sending the young Armies
who believe the words shouted from the podiums of these old casual heroes.
Casual heroes that now voyeur from hovering satellite views
and the green starlit 20,000 foot cameras of robot planes.
Old casual heroes with hard-ons and loose belts, craving their pornography of war.

DSS.

(Let’s keep our eyes on the ball, soon there could be a lot of unusual things happening outside of the U.S. to distract us from a lot of unusual things that will soon be revealed right here at home.)

The Searcher

In my time of the search for peace
no bitten lip have I
I care not how I’m looked upon
against a fading sky

As the stronger breezes blow
I sway a clinging leaf
No jetted jaw tightens my grasp
no words to give relief

For those that say they care for me
please hold your caring tongue
Do not despair your loving souls
my search has just begun

As I climb please remember this
I toil not just for me
For on the day my quest is found
you too our peace will be

So throw away your ugly frown
come climb away with me
We will end this horrid search
And free the peace we see

We will fight the unmovable force
We will swing our axes well
Killing evil ways and backward thoughts
Ending their imagined hell

We will replace disturbing lies with truth
their misread facts with steel
Will open the dark skies with light
Remove shadows from what’s concealed

DSS

Working It Man

Reposted from 2014 with a new note:

I feel that from the time that the earth was no more than a smoking swirling ball of hot mud my course was set.

Oh I do different things each day and make decisions whether to turn right or left eat high fiber low-fat or suck up liters of caffeine rich watered down CO2 induced sirup while deciding to say Hi how are ya brother or just fuck you but my course is set from the time I wake up from my miserable sleep at 3 am until I pull off my shirt pants and socks and crash into the tight sheets of that motel room mattress all the time trying to believe life is comfortable the food is good and I will live forever. A middle class chump working my 10 hours each day pulling together a living trying to impress the man just earning that lucky dollar I wish I could stuff into every birthday card I keep telling myself I will send each year. Just waiting for the day I will take my last breath crap my pants and be carried out feet first just to go up into a blast of white smoke and poured into a brass urn with a screwed on lid. The final screw.
What else do we do?

E

A few words now in 2019.

E wrote this a few years ago when the daily grind seemed it would go on forever. Guess what….. things have changed. We aren’t feeling that way anymore .  We are now retired. Yes Baby! The man has no hand here, anymore. We be free!

But E’s words still have relevance, maybe the sentences will be a little shorter but there is still truth somewhere in them. Now all we have to do is get rid of all the thoughts of that “Last screw” .

Such is the life of John