A poem for the U.S. servicemen/women
« on: 2006-11-18 15:42:13 »
Christmas will be coming soon and some credit is due to our U.S.service men and women for our being able to celebrate these festivities. Let's try in this small way to pay a tiny bit of what we owe. Make people stop and think of our heroes, living and dead, who sacrificed themselves for us.
I didn't write this, and it has many sources which can easily be found from google by typing in some of the text here, so since I don't know who to give credit to on this I'll just leave it out and prsent it here in honor of the U.S servicemen and woman who do us so much.
The embers glowed softly, and in their dim light, I gazed round the room and I cherished the sight. My wife was asleep, her head on my chest, My daughter beside me, angelic in rest. Outside the snow fell, a blanket of white, Transforming the yard to a winter delight. The sparkling lights in the tree I believe, Completed the magic that was Christmas Eve. My eyelids were heavy, my breathing was deep, Secure and surrounded by love I would sleep. In perfect contentment, or so it would seem, So I slumbered, perhaps I started to dream.
The sound wasn't loud, and it wasn't too near, But I opened my eyes when it tickled my ear. Perhaps just a cough, I didn't quite know, Then the sure sound of footsteps outside in the snow. My soul gave a tremble, I struggled to hear, And I crept to the door just to see who was near. Standing out in the cold and the dark of the night, A lone figure stood, his face weary and tight.
A soldier, I puzzled, some twenty years old, Perhaps a Marine, huddled here in the cold. Alone in the dark, he looked up and smiled, Standing watch over me, and my wife and my child. "What are you doing?" I asked without fear, "Come in this moment, it's freezing out here! Put down your pack, brush the snow from your sleeve, You should be at home on a cold Christmas Eve!"
For barely a moment I saw his eyes shift, Away from the cold and the snow blown in drifts.. To the window that danced with a warm fire's light Then he sighed and he said "Its really all right, I'm out here by choice. I'm here every night." "It's my duty to stand at the front of the line, That separates you from the darkest of times. No one had to ask or beg or implore me, I'm proud to stand here like my fathers before me. My Gramps died at 'Pearl on a day in December," Then he sighed, "That's a Christmas 'Gram always remembers." My dad stood his watch in the jungles of 'Nam', And now it is my turn and so, here I am. I've not seen my own son in more than a while, But my wife sends me pictures, he's sure got her smile.
Then he bent and he carefully pulled from his bag, The red, white, and blue... an American flag. I can live through the cold and the being alone, Away from my family, my house and my home. I can stand at my post through the rain and the sleet, I can sleep in a foxhole with little to eat. I can carry the weight of killing another, Or lay down my life with my sister and brother.. Who stand at the front against any and all, To ensure for all time that this flag will not fall."
"So go back inside," he said, "harbor no fright, Your family is waiting and I'll be all right." "But isn't there something I can do, at the least, "Give you money," I asked, "or prepare you a feast? It seems all too little for all that you've done, For being away from your wife and your son." Then his eye welled a tear that held no regret, "Just tell us you love us, and never forget. To fight for our rights back at home while we're gone, To stand your own watch, no matter how long. For when we come home, either standing or dead, To know you remember we fought and we bled. Is payment enough, and with that we will trust, That we mattered to you as you mattered to us."
Re:A poem for the U.S. servicemen/women
« Reply #2 on: 2006-11-30 21:24:28 »
Heh, Lucifer. You beat me to it. The original was so toe-curlingly awful that I was too revolted even to attempt to snap off a parody (and beside I didn't want to make Bass unhappy). This time around I didn't entirely resist, but a combination of time challenges and the difficulty of topping the first verse means it will probably never go further. For which the world will undoubtedly be grateful. I wish the original author had been as considerate.
Caveat. The following poem is meant to be as disgusting and offensive as I found the original in the context of what Our Dear Misleader's US has done to the people of Iraq. Neocons are strongly disinvited to read it.
Kindest Regards
Hermit.
Scroll down only if you have a strong stomach and do not mind being offended.
Sgt Drippy's Song of the Relief of Fallujah
The embers of Fallujah glowed and in their pale phosphorescent light I gazed round the room, and my trousers stretched tight For there was a dead "insurgent", who had now found rest, And the blast that had killed her had blown off her dress. Outside there was blood, guts, pools of shite But her thirteen year body, just promised delight I ripped off my trousers, swapped rifle for gun Even before I got into her, I'd started to cum The sparkling cumdrops on her near hairless snatch Were achingly pretty, my breath started to catch My balls were quite heavy, my dick went in deep Ripping tissues aside, satisfaction came cheap And leaving the bitch in a pool of my cream Pulled my trousers back on and returned to my team.
(C) Hermit 2006 - All Rights Reserved
I did warn you. Bear in mind that the reality is apparently often worse. At least this fictional girl was already dead.
With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
What passing-bells2 for these who die as cattle? Only the monstrous anger of the guns. Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle Can patter out3 their hasty orisons.4 No mockeries5 now for them; no prayers nor bells; Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, – The shrill, demented6 choirs of wailing shells; And bugles7 calling for them from sad shires.8 What candles9 may be held to speed them all? Not in the hands of boys but in their eyes Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes. The pallor10 of girls' brows shall be their pall; Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds, And each slow dusk11 a drawing-down of blinds.12 A
Notes for students 1 Anthem - perhaps best known in the expression "The National Anthem;" also, an important religious song (often expressing joy); here, perhaps, a solemn song of celebration 2 passing-bells - a bell tolled after someone's death to announce the death to the world 3 patter out - rapidly speak 4 orisons - prayers, here funeral prayers 5 mockeries - ceremonies which are insults. Here Owen seems to be suggesting that the Christian religion, with its loving God, can have nothing to do with the deaths of so many thousands of men 6 demented - raving mad 7 bugles - a bugle is played at military funerals (sounding the last post) 8 shires - English counties and countryside from which so many of the soldiers came 9 candles - church candles, or the candles lit in the room where a body lies in a coffin 10 pallor - paleness 11 dusk has a symbolic significance here 12 drawing-down of blinds - normally a preparation for night, but also, here, the tradition of drawing the blinds in a room where a dead person lies, as a sign to the world and as a mark of respect. The coming of night is like the drawing down of blinds.
Re:A poem for the U.S. servicemen/women
« Reply #5 on: 2006-12-03 19:46:45 »
Thank-you for the reminder Blunderov.
It is far too easy to forget or never to learn about the "War of '14-18". Even reading this poetry, few people can have the slightest idea of how awful it must have been. The First World War, The Great War, The War to End All Wars. Which unfortunately didn't. Nothing before or after has come close in scale to what we did to each other in that dreadful war. A war where we first introduced large scale chemical warfare; poison gasses that still caused pain to its victims at the turn of the next century. Pain and suffering so terrible that we outlawed its use, except against "heathens" - as Churchill did against the Kurds and Iraqi and Mussolini did against the Ethiopians. A war where men shot at each other while standing in stagnant water in which corpses floated, until their feet rotted off. A war where artillery turned the ground liquid and men drowned en mass in flowing earth. A war where entire forests were turned into splinters, where three generations were effectively obliterated, along with the industrial capacity of a continent.
Statistics can't convey the true horror of it. But let me try. At the Somme, the English took 54 000 casualties in the first day's fighting, of whom over 19 000 were killed. A further 40,000 were to die in the first two days of battle. At Lens the Canadians lost 10,000. At Passchendaele they lost 16,000. At Delville Woods an entire South African Infantry Brigade took 20,000 shells an hour over an area of 2,500 m2 or one shell every 4 m2 and was eventually reduced to 120 survivors. To no military effect. At Verdun, in 10 months of 1916, in a single endless bloody fight, upon a single battlefield, only 18 km by 10km in extent, nearly one-and-a-half million French and German soldiers died or were permanently maimed. On the first day of that futile battle, the Germans fired over a million artillery shells. If they were equally distributed, that would have been 5,500 shells per km2. On two days in early June, over 100,000 poison gas shells were fired on the French positions. French units stayed in position until they had taken 60% casualties, before being exchanged out. In this one battle the Germans lost 400,000 men and the French a million, nearly one-and-a-half times the casualties taken by the Americans during all of WW II. At Chemin des Dames, the French lost 120,000 men in one day of battle. When, after this, some French troops mutinied, about 50,000 of them were executed by their own side, when they were surrounded with field guns and slaughtered, pour encourager les autres.
I was honored to know some of the survivors of these engagements, few of whom could talk coherently about what had happened or why; for reasons I found completely comprehensible. Perhaps the legacy of a generation of poets, largely obliterated in the mud of the trenches of Flanders, best conveys the snatches of images which possibly begin to communicate the horror of that kind of warfare. Wikipedia offers a collection of the Poets of WW I most of whose works - or at least a representative sample - are available on the Internet.
With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
Take a man and put him alone, Move him twelve thousand miles from home. Empty his heart of all but blood, Make him live in sand, in mud. This is the life I have to live, This the body for you I give. You have your parties and drink your beer, While young men are dying over here. You plant your signs on the White House lawn; They read "Lets get out of Iraq, Moron!". You look down you noses and have your fun, And then are too chicken to use a gun. There's nothing else you want to do? And I am supposed to die for you? There is one thing that you should know; And that's where I think you should go! I'm already here and it's too late. I've traded my love for all your hate. Now I'll hate you till the day I die. You made me hear my buddy cry. Then I saw his leg blown off and his blood shed, And I heard the medic say, "This one's dead". It was a large price for him to pay, To let you insult us another day. He had the guts to fight and die, To safeguard the freedoms you live by. By his dying, your life he buys, But who gives a fuck if a Soldier dies!
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