Ancient and Modern History
As long as there are riches, then rich men will host wars.
“What’s mine is mine” does not insinuate that “Yours is yours.”
Ancient and Modern History
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Tag Archives: poem about war
Camouflage
Please click on the title above so WP will reformat the poem into its intended shape. For some reason The Reader always left margin justifies and this poem needs to be centered.
Camouflage
A man is bending his wife—
melding their shadows with the green forest.
They do not listen
to the nearby cannon’s roar––
will not imagine
that their life together,
so new,
might
not
stretch
into
the
future.
When he looks at his pocket watch,
someday children
ringing a well-stocked table
vanish in
her imagination.
He lifts his musket to his shoulder,
trying to believe
in a future
and in it,
this memory:
two shadows
joined as one,
invisible against
the forest wall.
Prompt words today are green, bend, shadow, cannon and memories.
No Peaceful Kingdom
No Peaceful Kingdom
The dogs are in the backyard where they don’t molest the cats.
The cats are in the front yard where they monitor the bats
but do not dine on birds because the birds have given up
and all moved to the back yard where the young cats never sup.
The younger cats stay outside and the old cat lives within
and should the outside cats ever escape from where they’ve been,
when they’re inside, they’re bullies and steal her food and tease her.
Although, since I can’t find a type of cat food that will please her,
it’s no problem for the old cat, yet those cats are getting fat
while every day there seems to be less of the older cat.
True, the older cat is crabby and swats the young cats first,
so it’s hard for me determining which cat is the worst.
I’m tired of these war zones. I wish they’d coexist,
and I wish that I could simply tell them to desist.
Yet with man and other animals, more often you will find
they can’t exist in harmony with those who aren’t their kind.
Annie the crabby cat woke me up before Ragtag was online today, so they get their own individually prompted poem. Their prompt was “harmony.” Here’ their link if you want to play along: https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/12/23/rdp-sundayharmony/
Balance
Balance
It is so very easy to trap wonder in a box
and to view the world around you as a sort of pox
festering and viral like a plague about to burst,
to only see the suffering, to just take in the worst.
Our news is geared to tell us the most spectacular ills.
They profit from the awfulness. It’s we who pay the bills.
It’s true we need to know about the evil that men do,
but once the right shoe drops, we need to see the left foot, too.
What beauties lie within our world like pods about to flower?
What are the kindnesses performed hour after hour?
Christmas will have Scrooges and each glory its detractor,
but as we view the acts of man, grace is also a factor.
We need to stem the violence, the cruelty and greed,
but to view the selfless acts of man is just as strong a need.
Listen to wind’s harmonies. Note tall grass’s swaying.
Find the things in life that make living worth the staying.
“Civilization is a stream with banks. The stream is sometimes filled with blood from people killing, stealing, shouting and doing things historians usually record; while on the banks, unnoticed, people build homes, make love, raise children, sing songs, write poetry and even whittle statues. The story of civilization is the story of what happened on the banks. Historians are pessimists because they ignore the banks of the river.” ―
The prompt words today are pod, easy, wonder and Scrooge. Here are the links:
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/12/20/rdp-thursday-pod/
https://fivedotoh.com/2018/12/20/fowc-with-fandango-easy/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/12/20/wonder/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2018/12/20/your-daily-word-prompt-scrooge-December-20-2018/
Homosapiens and other Misnomers
Homosapiens and other Misnomers
Man was always venturesome. He wanted to be free
to examine that next hilltop, to sail upon the sea.
Adventure was his target for game or other food.
Always his first priority to feed his growing brood.
But he fared more poorly in trying to connect
with a brand new culture or with a different sect.
He too often made a target of what might have been a friend.
We have evolved from all of this and warheads are the end
of this long long story, for it has been always so.
Conquering is swift and understanding is too slow.
Though we are Homo sapiens, both root words are misnomers,
for we aren’t exactly sapient and for sure we aren’t stay-homers!
Words of the day are connect, target, venturesome and sapient. Here are links:
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/12/11/rdp-tuesday-connect/
https://fivedotoh.com/2018/12/11/fowc-with-fandango-target/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/12/11/venturesome/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2018/12/11/your-daily-word-prompt-sapient-December-11-2018/
In the Blood (Entertainment?)
In the Blood!!!
Don’t you just love football—the running and the tackling?
The sounds of hamstrings pulling and the crunch of femurs crackling?
We sit up in the bleachers eating hot dogs, drinking beer,
comfortably viewing blood sport—the kind we hold so dear.
Aren’t dogfights lovely–the growling and the whining?
Too bad they aren’t more elite, so we could watch while dining.
So amusing watching canines being dished their due.
Dying is so entertaining when it isn’t you!
Better still are bullfights, though they’re few and far between.
The bull so lithe and dangerous, the matador so lean.
The best part of the sport is that the dying is so slow.
I feel its thrill suffuse me from my head down to my toe.
We adore big game hunting in such exotic lands–
our chance to prove our manliness with our own two hands–
handing over money to those trackers in the know
who guarantee an easy kill with rifle or with bow.
Easy on the hunter, but not the animal,
for just because he’s hit the prey’s not guaranteed to fall.
We get more for our money if he’s hard to track,
and war games are more pleasant when one’s foe doesn’t shoot back!
All these minor titillations just a prelude to
the main event and the most major way of counting coup.
Once all the good old boys are finding life is just a bore,
they round up all the younger men and send them off to war.
See how the valiant struggle, see their stripes and purple hearts–
apt pay for missing arms and legs and other blown off parts.
Lucky to be home at last and lucky to be living–
the products of that blood sport that just somehow keeps on giving
Repost of a poem from 3 1/2 years ago. Crocodile photo new! More to follow. The prompt today is entertain.
Blind Misfortune
Mixed Media collage “Macho” by Judy Dykstra-Brown, jdbphoto
Blind Misfortune
What you blindly get into
in youth can be the end of you.
Those days of passion, counting coup
are never risked when days are few.
The shorter our remaining years,
the greater seem to be our fears.
Thus, old men send the young to war,
forgetting what life’s really for.
They forget love’s throb and ache
and living just for living’s sake––
that need to feel adventure’s thrust––
the drive to do what’s fair and just.
Once passion ebbs, the quest for gold
drives these men turned crass and old.
They give libido other names
as they turn to other games.
Warheads coming now erect,
it seems a waste not to connect
them to their targets, so far away.
It’s only strangers who will pay.
All those enemies of mind,
with no thought of age or kind:
mothers and children meet their ends
and old men never make amends.
They send their own youth off to war
because this is what they’re for.
And young men taught by fantasy
on football field or on TV
are fodder for the greed of those
billionaires in evening clothes.
So the young men blindly go
for reasons that they barely know.
The WordPress prompt word today is blindly.
Millions
jdb photo
Arms “Race”
Millions of planets go spinning around
out of our sight and making no sound.
Because we don’t see them, are they not there?
And if we do not see them, have we a care
of what lies upon them or what it’s all for?
Is the rest of the universe simply a snore?
We are so taken by the mess of our world
that we keep forgetting that we’re merely curled
like a fist of small planets thoughtlessly cast
into a corner of a system so vast
that we’re barely noticed in the scale of it all.
It is not so important, our spinning blue ball
as we all make it out to be, fussing and feuding,
warring and hating and bombing and shooting.
Like fleas on an elephant, thinking their bite
reveals such a showing of power and might,
our planet could vanish like that, in a puff,
and truly, the world would have planets enough.
Like millions of tiny balls spinning in space,
we’re in no competition. It’s really no race.
It’s nobody’s loss and nobody’s win.
We always return to the place we begin.
So put away guns and machetes and knives
and let’s simply live out our miniature lives.
The prompt word today is “Millions.”
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 