Love don’t do the dishes
Love won’t tie your shoes
Love didn’t cook your dinner
Love can’t change a fuse
Love will not protect us
Love cannot atone
Love don’t stop our leaders
From dropping all those drones
Love don’t bomb no babies
Love don’t start no wars
We do a trillion ugly things
Love ain’t keeping score
Love won’t fix the shower
Love can’t brush your hair
The only thing it’s good for
Is making people care
by Richard W. Bray
They wanna count you, classify you
Stamp a number on your head
Aggravate you, allocate you
Every day until you’re dead
They sanitize and organize you
Till you fit in the machine
Hypnotize you, terrorize you
Till you’re lonely scared and mean
Indoctrinate you, fill-with-hate you
And nourish you with lies
Calibrate you, automate you
And march you off to die
by Richard W. Bray
Strength is all
They understand
Be undaunted
Be a man
Be resolute
And stay the course
With muscular vigor
And robust force
Stout resolve
And rugged might
Are all you need
When you are right
Be diligent
And brave and strong
Send more guns
And drop more bombs
by Richard W. Bray
Sing a song of freedom
Sing a song of war
The happy, hearty hegemon
Hears the eagle roar
He will cheer to loose the hounds
But he simply can’t be found
With the boots that hit the ground
Sing of liberation
Sing a song of war
Intrepid chairborne ranger
Like a strapping rogue of yore
But he’ll never be around
When the guns and missiles pound
Razing village to the ground
Sing of credibility
Sing a song of war
Gallant think tank warrior
Is manly to the core
In pools of blood they drown
As he buys another round
With his dirty, ill-gained Crown
by Richard W. Bray
You can send a man to war
Make him watch his buddies die
Don’t even say what they died for
You can even make him cry
You can cut all his rations
Down to the nitty-gritty
But the last thing a man wants
Is pity
You can send his job away
Cut his salary in half
You can abuse him every day
You can have yourself a laugh
You can take away his home
And brutalize his city
But the last thing a man wants
Is pity
Take the country that he loves
And starve it half to death
You can give his heart a shove
You can steal his dying breath
You can trample on his pride
And make his whole world shitty
But the last thing a man wants
Is pity
by Richard W. Bray
We have what it takes to set you free
Money and bullets and boots and blood
We’re everything that you want to be
The model of modern society
Wash away fossils in crimson flood
We have what it takes to set you free
Inside you is a another form of me
We’re putting our values out to stud
We’re everything that you want to be
We’re the glory of all humanity
So embrace your liberation, Bud
We have what it takes to set you free
Steaming hot piles of Democracy
Fashioning our dominion of mud
We’re everything that you want to be
Bombs build dreams like factories
Shimmering cities on a hill of crud
We have what it takes to set you free
We’re everything that you want to be
by Richard W. Bray
Sorrow seems more general than it did, and not the estate of a few persons, since the war began; and if the anguish of others helped one with one’s own, now would be many medicines.
—Emily Dickinson
Suffer, squirm, and die
I hope your life is hell
Your hurt is my elixir
I’m doing pretty well
Your torment is my tonic
Your pain is my success
I pray for mass affliction
I feed on your distress
Your agony refreshes
And fills my world with joy
The cure for all that ails
Is to damage and destroy
Misery rejuvenates
It whitens every stain
All of my misfortune
Is abolished in your pain
by Richard W. Bray
War is money
Widows weep
Bombs and rockets
Don’t come cheap
War is money
Napalm glows
It also lights up
A portfolio
War is money
Children die
Oh, what comfort
Blood can buy
War is money
War is power
Should have listened
To Eisenhower
by Richard W. Bray
Freedom, honor, enterprise
Fatherhood and faith
The gallant shall not compromise
With heathens at the gate
Fear and hatred breed the guns
Inseminating wealth
Warfare yields the bloody ones
That signify our health
Indignation plants the seeds
That sanctify our culture
Corpses feed the swords of greed
And sate the Holy Vulture
by Richard W. Bray
So many now have joined the hapless dead
As though a contest—how many can we kill
By sending others’ children off to war
The health of the state is unchecked power
Which feeds on frustration and unmet desire
This lust for blood that we confuse with love
Catenations bind us by our love
In webs of hate that recollect our dead
Murder machine fulfills the group desire
To locate people God wants us to kill
In fear a people shall relinquish power
To cowards who will always answer: War
The terrified succumb to endless war
It’s easier than proffering our love
In times of doubt the people will trust power
No matter if million end up dead
If you look and sound like those who kill
Killing you is what our dead desire
Humans have a basic born desire
To eliminate our enemies with war
Enemies exist for us to kill
Who’s the Fool who said they must be loved?
Enemies are only good when dead
Enemies embrace in lust for power
Millions murdered in pursuit of power
Pelf and power propagate desire
Desires undeterred beget more dead
The dead are mere ingredients of war
Death is all the tyrant knows of love
And Thanatos consummates the kill
Words enliven hearts we send to kill
Empty words engender frightful power
Some died for freedom, others died for love
Zombies march in cadence of desire
When unleashed the platitudes of war
Sing a dreary song of walking dead
Among the ruins, love decries our kill
Dreamers of dead are quick to kill for power
Unchecked desire is the seed of war
Richard W. Bray
