The Surge

Now grit your teeth -
the grit won't grind.
Sandstorm's gonna blow

Don't hold your breath
but use your sleeve -
your brother's gotta go

A mountain crag
holds forty men,
but no one really knows

a Kabul street
could call us out
if one guy's backpack blows

the wind is hard
the sand wears down
the bottom of our soles

they're holding tribes
to melt 'em down -
that country's full of holes

and it could cost you
daughters, sons
and all their future goals

with all the soldiers
you bring in
to please a million fools

A Purpose-Driven War

A billboard on the street tells us who we are:
"God, guns, guts & glory" - and what man could want more?
On another street, the signs are just as clear:
Stake your lives for Allah in the mighty path of war.


It's war that gives men purpose.
War fulfills men's dreams.
Wars force the idle hands at play
to work life & death schemes.

War defends the women
against the warring men.
War kills for the children
so they'll be safe again.

Peace breeds easy living
that spoils our hearts and souls.
Peace brings corrupting happiness
in simple, low-life goals.

Peace welcomes in a garden
and fruit-trees and old women,
their stories' gentle wisdom,
philosophy of old men.

War is always in a rush
to burn its path much higher;
its words a fever-eloquence,
fodder for the fire.

There's men inside the planning rooms
and men who shed their blood
and women's blood dismissed as tears
and women plowing mud.

I'm sure the night is inside out
the moment sky turns day.
I'm sure the rabbit nibbles grass
until his heart's the prey.
I'm sure there is a purpose here
that we're all living for:
To live, to breed, to contemplate,
Then kill ourselves in war.

The Torturer

The Torturer

He holds no whip (too lifelike!), wears no mustache.
His inner monotone drones in the cellar
where wines marked "love" are stored among the ash
of those unburied deaths that found no killer.
His heart has 16 chambers full of secrets
on styrofoam to insulate dry ice.
He screws human pain up to its apex,
excruciating horror, yet precise.
Administered with total dedication,
no screams or static, no thoughts interfere
until success! The soul lost its connection:
He drove the mind out, ear to abjuect ear.
And if the torturer is our security,
Why wouldn't we then emulate his purity?

© 2009 OMYMA

Blood Poisoning

(This is about how one man changed after fighting a brutal war.)


When war got in your blood,
young & eager, you found the enemy,
and the world aligned its poles.
You trained your soul for slaughter,
eating snakes in the desert,
naked flesh and sand
and sun baking the universe -
men must avoid becoming leaves.

You trust your eyes and nose.
A woman soldier laughs
in her enemy tent with comrades.
The poles must align,
so you reverse that inner empathy,
disembowel her among them,

like a snake burned on a stick
so enemies will fear you
and people still fear you
long after the poles shifted
and new sand buried the old
and your fellow warriors slipped between
like fluids in a stiff backbone

that still holds the same war
high on a stick, terrifying
enemies in your eyes

© 2009 OMYMA