War Is In Us
Let us not forget a different kind of accumulation. Serious war propaganda has been ubiquitous in this country since WWI. For over 100 years, we’ve built mountains of misleading monuments, slanted textbooks, nullifying newsreels, ooh-ra movies, sexual terrorism, heightened hatreds, family indoctrination, co-opted athletics, peer-shaming pressure. We’ve allowed limiting definitions of patriotism, business, sexuality, masculinity, femininity, personhood, pride.
War mania misshapes what is best in us.
We’ve been driven away from our deepest and most potent emotions and sensibilities.
We’ve been led in self-annihilating directions.
And, while all of that transmuted violence assaults us from the outside, it ends up twisting around and manifesting from the inside out.
We are hosts now. War is in us.
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In the streets of my town
I felt unsettled
In the trees of my town
I felt unsettled
In the alleys of my town
I felt unsettled
In doorways, walkways and breezeways
I felt unsettled
In my yard, the neighbor’s yard and the town square
I was unsettled, jittery and glower-browed
In a charming park
On an earth-colored bench
I thought only of pissing on lamp-posts
and knocking them over with piss-force
or my head
A man sang softly to himself beside me
I almost had to sock him and ran away
I went to another town
walked another street with
other birds and other people
I visited the town square
looked at statues of war heroes
looked at the muskets and the moustaches of
death-maker so-and-so and death-maker so-and-so
and socked’em right in the mouth.
My knuckle-bones exposed and
seething in crimson
on a granite step
with my hand folded over
I tore apart every voice inside myself
Until every voice outside myself
was torn apart
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We have to find a way, a way that works for each of us, to transform, to transmute the war that’s been implanted in us. I am not a misanthrope. Only pieces of this implantation are intrinsic to us. We do not have to be killers and we do not have to be unconscious rabid hypnotized and we do not have to be damned. But the struggle, ultimately, is internal. I have mine. I extend my empathy to yours, if you choose to engage.
As always, thanks for reading.
