Posts Tagged ‘War’

The Last Thing a Man Wants

May 28, 2014

detroit

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

Money and Bullets and Boots and Blood

May 25, 2014

Afghan men search for the bodies of people killed in a NATO airstrike in Logar province

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

Many Medicines: The Devil’s Delight

May 11, 2014

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.


Devil-307138.svg

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

October 13, 2013

war-money

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

Sate the Holy

August 4, 2013

vultures

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

The Dweebs of War

June 7, 2013

chickenhawks

Playing Risk in the dorm
Was their private Desert Storm
Never seen a soldier bleed
Yet they’re certain that we need
Lumps of hot, flying metal
To get our problems settled

They’re the tough-typing think-tankers
Sorry-ass war-wankers
They’re the last ones to get hurt
Hiding in their daughter’s skirt
Living in a world at peace
Losers can’t get no release

Richard W. Bray

Dreamers of Dead

March 4, 2013

love among ruin

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

Drones Don’t

January 11, 2013

Matt Sestow

Drones don’t think
And drones don’t pray
Once released
They don’t delay

Drones don’t feel
And drones won’t snap
When they are told
To double tap

Drones don’t doubt
They can’t be swayed
Drones don’t read
UCMJ

Drones don’t hate
And drones don’t love
They rain down murder
From above

Robot bombs
Are nothing new
Adolph Hitler
Used them too

Richard W. Bray

Slivers and Scraps

July 24, 2012

640px-Untitled_(First_Abstract_Watercolor)_by_Wassily_Kandinsky

Greed and murder,
Nations gone mad,
Oceans of ugly,
Mountains of sad

I try real hard
I make it my duty
To force my focus
On goodness and beauty

Threads of compassion,
Scraps of nice,
Slivers of contact
Must suffice

by Richard W. Bray

Righteous Retribution

June 14, 2012

What if life were simple
For all to understand?
What if we could settle things
By killing just one man?

What if crime and evil
Had a clear solution?
What if all it took were
Gallant executions?

Does he walk among us?
A man of grace and skill
Sent by God to tell us
Exactly whom to kill?

Deliver us from feeling
God grants us alone
Righteous retribution
Delivered on a drone.

by Richard W. Bray