CONSCRIPTS: CHILDREN OF WAR

Conscripts, Innocent children robbed for war
From Congo, Chad, Central Africa Republic, Mali….
From Uganda to Sudan and South Sudan, Burkina Faso, Senegal…..
They are the forefronts young fatal fighters
From Boko Haram, Al Shabaab, Lord Resistance Army…..
They are these merciless Militias mouths-youths
From Biafra-Nigeria, Bujumbura, Asmara to Abidjan Civil Wars
They are their battalions’ fertile feeding grounds
They are Kony, Riek Machar and Ruthless Rebels’ mercenaries
They are Ouattara, Nkurunziza, Salva Kiir…..youthful foot soldiers  
They are Resistance Armies and Liberation army’s guerillas  

They raided a village
They foraged the villages
For innocent, forced conscripts
At dawn-at dusk, daytime-nighttime  
At noontime-at eventide-every time

And she begged
These satans that came
At the mask of dark nights
Slithering silent as serpents
For her last left and living!

She mourned and bemoaned
Helpless and hopeless
Her, grief-stricken hapless
But under those ****** shot eyes
Those coals-hot red coloured irises
That pity or its empathy knows not
It was all in vain-to no avail!

Determined, resolute, uncaring, ruthlessly  
Him tucked on her compassionate chest
Him still tagged on her hopeless breast
Its cheeks struggling to suckle any fluid
From these sagged sacks of balloons
Him they riotously robbed

And those that can’t they ripped
To those that can’t they opened
Those that can’t they roped
To those that can’t odd happened
Those that can’t they *****
To those that can’t they dampened

Those able fingerings wrapped
On frontiers as fighters they lined
With no war experience
With no ammunitions intelligence
No boots-barefoot, no shirts-bare chests
As shields shivering, roughly ripped
By advanced military and militias

Never to know home again
Never to know its warmth again
Never to know fears again
Never to know pains again
Never to know happiness ever again
Never to know the sweet tastes again
Of what Mama’s milk-nourishing colostrums contain

Somewhere in tough terrains
Somewhere in jagged plains
Somewhere in rugged mountains
Somewhere in thicketed montanes
Somewhere in brutal bushes
Somewhere in shriveling shrubs
Shallow graves of their immature bones
Their carrions lay leaked white by scavengers or time

Lucky him that deaths avoids
Lucky him that deaths mercy observes
Lucky him that deaths shyly eludes
Fortunate him it sympathetically spares
Lives in agony of pain and guilt
Lives in fears of loyalty and liberty
Lonely eyes, hollow sorrow, mourning souls,
Empty heart, mad tampered mind, tempered looks….
Him, innocent Conscripts, Children of War!

© Kìùra Kabiri. All rights reserved.

1 million Afghans and 15,000 Soviet conscripts died
Fought with American guns

Foreign nations had tried for centuries to conquer Afghanistan
In the 1970's it became a focus for the superpowers

To Moscow, a friendly Afghanistan was important

Afghanistan's new leader looked to the Soviet Union for support
The Soviet Union sent advisors to advance socialism

Land was taken from large owners
And handed to the peasants who worked it

Women were encouraged to stop wearing veils
And were put into literacy classes with men

The reforms were seen to threaten ancient customs
And the authority of the Mullahs

The Mullah says,
"God has decided who is rich and who is poor,
It can't be changed by communists."

Opponents of the reforms
Burned down schools and universities
Resistant grew throughout the country

Iranians joined in
Calling for a Jihad
Against the communists

The U.S. thought
That the Soviets might use the Afghan crisis
To move south
And seize the oil of the Persian Gulf

Meanwhile the Shah of Iran was overthrown
The U.S. lost its most important ally in the region
The U.S. considered the possibility of a Soviet controlled Iran

Carter sent the Mujahideen equipment,
Mostly communication equipment
They were mostly peasants

Recruits for the Jihad walked for days
Across the mountains to reach the fighting

Soviet trained Afghan army
Thousands of men deserted
Kabul requested Soviet troops

Afghan president met with Soviet leader

The Soviets feared the spread of Islamic fundamentalism
Into Afghanistan from Iran
The Soviets felt they had to send troops to stabilize the region
Moscow hoped they could complete their mission in weeks

Moscow had Amin assassinated
They didn't like him talking with the Americans

At the United Nations
The invasion of the Soviet Union was condemned

The Soviets began with large sweeps
Their approach was a disaster
Mujahideen remained in the villages
Guerilla fighters remained in the mountains

Reagan stepped up aid to the Mujahideen

The Mujahideen were spilt along tribal lines
They sometimes fought each other

A war fought with our gold
And their blood
According to CIA man

The U.S. viewed the conflict in Afghanistan as an internal
Cold War struggle
The U.S. provided assistance to anti-Soviet forces
Through the Pakistani intelligent services

The Red Army changed tactics
And took to the air
Soviet commandos
Dropped in by helicopters

Soviet aircraft bombing indiscriminantly
Village after village pummeled into oblivion
Then overrun by Soviet troops
The village men who refused to join the Afghan army were murdered

Thousands of civilians killed in Soviet atrocities

The mujahideen attacked Soviet convoys
2,000 Soviets died each year
The war seemed pointless to the Soviet soldiers

The mujahideen favored sabotage operations and assassinations
The Stinger missiles were effective for them as well

Reagan said,
"To watch the courageous Afghan freedom fighters
Battle modern arsenals with simple hand-held weapons is an inspiration to those who love freedom."

The war lasted almost a decade
The early foundations of al-Qaeda
Were allegedly built on relationships
And weaponry that came from billions
Of dollars in U.S. support for the Mujahideen

Scholars have argued that Bin laden was outside
Of CIA eyesight
And that there is no support for the claim
That the CIA funded Bin Laden

Tribute to the fallen
Guardians of the union

Accolade to the warriors
Combatants sworn

Standing straight
Before their Lord

Eulogy to the brave
Salvo of respect

Applause to the Eagles
Conscripts of the sky

Medal of the departed
Proud on their shoulders

Offering to our cadaverous
Salute to our gone brethren

Gone, not forgotten
We think them dead

We perceive them not
Living are they,
in their love of the Lord

The pitched shrill of the whistle sounds
the explosions can be felt deep underground
the mass of men scream and shout
the conscripts are all moving out
the Germans sit there waiting for us
all we can do is move forward, its a must
They took over our land, it makes me so mad
So I am here, at Stalingrad

The Ninth Battalion (Australia)

By Sun-filled day and frosty night,
O’er rugged hills and desert sand,
We learned to work as teams, to fight
In jungles of another land.

From every city, State and town,
All the lovely countryside,
Impelled by grim war’s cold, bleak frown,
Gathered we at fair Woodside.

And some of us were volunteers,
But mostly we young conscripts were,
With youthful hopes, ambitions, fears;
Young men’s dreams of love were there.

And lusts, for we weren’t choir boys,
Nor simpering wowser, nor old maid.
We searched for brawling, drinking joys
And chased the girls of Adelaide.

Oh Adelaide, what wondrous pubs,
The Rundle, Gresham (Mind you Roy?),
The Western, Finden, all were hubs
Of social, sinful, youthful joy.

But scarce the city trips sublime.
Beneath the awesome stars our home.
And Sun-bronzed we became with time,
Leigh Creek, Cultana, ours to roam.

At Murray Bridge we fired our weapons, honed our drills;
Formed Section and Platoon at Humbug Scrub, and that was fun.
We dug-dug-dug to prove to them that be our skills,
And by night stood freezing piquet on the gun.

Canungra’s forest, where chilled to bone
We learned to ambush and by sudden flare to ****.
The Flinders Range, those hills of stone.
Shoalwater Bay did prove our skill.

And at the last and having passed our nation’s test,
(for some a final accolade)
And to that question answered yes,
We made farewell to Adelaide.

At Murray Bridge we fired our weapons, honed our drills;
Formed Section and Platoon at Humbug Scrub, and that was fun.
We dug-dug-dug to prove to them that be our skills,
And by night stood freezing piquet on the gun.

Vagabond with an empty carboy
Searching through the murk of starlight
Drip the molten ice of winter harsh
And the blooms of his past repitoire
Engulfed inside the ethanol marsh

Conscripts fly through bus of steel
Tails of fire and smoky heal
Through the scar shred ****** sand
And rain a glass downpour
That licked a smile to open addiction

Barrel wash and nebulous hide
The screams in blur of addled mind
Red heat burn the hand with shrapnel
Bodies piled in empty screams
Weave through open mouths their spell

Rolls of tracks and wheeled anger
Windows filled by smiles and raining tears
Cobble graves for those who pass
And carafes for relinquished hands
That cannot escape the felt triggered blast

Flower fields like dispersed astral clouds
Colours sharp as bayonets downed
And rusted worn their armaments
Leave in beauty and fictioned dream
For those who died least be their penance

New asteroids collage in belts
Learn the easiness of their strikes
Have fury boiled by worldly ties
And over brims of forges rise
For they must learn their mental cries

Haggard ruins of their youthful posture
Scars and stains litter uniformed closure
The realities nothing can be described
So shall their children not expect
How holding embers in their grip will blind

Threats in words that once were death
Borders crossed without their step
History just words and relics for sons
And in the eyes blanked with the horror
Lest they be forgotten by any one

Soak whom dines on gangling relief
Desire the amnesiac amber thief
But teachers cannot misplace their sight
Have nothing left for meeting glance
Of a innocent smile asking their right

Stand tall with shaking wounded legs
Shell shocked craters as red pegs
In the global map always in shift
Have lessons for the ones whom wish
To know the proper and the wrong we missed

Dwarfs inside the void of matterless
Black blend into the snowy countenance
While burn the brightness of their parents
From ago before repeated actions
Watch fires live in vivid visions

See the tortured starving faces
Break into a knowing grin
As spectral shadows for the lush
To keep their finger always *****
To the evidence we left so much

A soft, imploring cry
peels from far and wide
from the silted lives of
mercenaries and conscripts,
the coagulated blood of still lifes
leached from stented veins
and strained for national pride

A quiet, solemn echo
bounces off re-sodded hills
and re-capped mountains
of voices muted in their prime
so that indentured revelers
might joyfully trumpet
an unrequited melody
of garnished freedom
and varnished liberty

The curdling wind plays taps
to the itinerant bones
on reefs and ocean bottoms
now hollowed by corrosive waves
of land-faring vagabonds who
continuously pare their calcified genes

Bottled tears that will never drain
remain untapped on distant shores
as their pilfering descendants
salt the museums and memorials
with their gratuitous patronage

Due laden leaves.
Fog spun in webs
Draped loose on
Fading trees.

A Forrest on it's knees
Bleeds honest tears of autumn,
Pleads solace from the slaughter,
Screaming "Is this all that we can be?"
The wisps of white washed memories
Haunt the glade for those that see.
Conscripts of the ancient mist,
Souls called forth then cast to sea.

God's on a slide rule back down in the old school and teaching defensive tactics to back street medics,
Logarithms dance classes with bow tied girls wearing opera glasses and Father is stood by the door,
there's a movement in here in the final year and the war outside has begun,
'run baby run' on the transistor radio and the party of the first part gets tangled in the barbed wire of comments in the free press which presses out the conscripts.

Strip away the lies and see what lies inside, see what others try to hide.
Confide if you must in the wise and the just before you die.

The war's out there in chapter one and God has gone to Sainsbury's to bury all his feelings in food aisle twenty three, nothing's free, not for you, not for me and
not for God on food aisle
number twenty three.

Family Tree

They come from far and wide
once a year to mingle and snack
on catered shrimp and small talk

in the long line that snakes around
the room to the open bar besieged
five deep, the beating heart

of the party until the string band
starts up and everyone hits
the dance floor, limbs loose,

knees high, hair down, skirts hiked
generations of farmers and drifters,
rail men and conscripts, schemers

and failures, a cacophony of native
brogue and broken English, long
lazy vowels stretched to breaking.  

The men have my nose, the women
your eyes, but neither you nor I claim
the crazy cackle coming from

a skinny gal with electric
hair or the flat, vacant gaze of
a fellow in coveralls,

hands like hay rakes, yellow
fingers balled into fists.  The bar
closes at twelve, they start to drift  

away, arms draped, propping each other
up, telling the same old tearful tales,
falls down wells, battle axes

to the head, starvation in alarming
numbers and many iterations of
pox and croup, ague and catarrh,

bilious fever, dropsy and the flux,
melancholia, milk leg and screws,
a miserable game of one-upmanship

savored by all as they disappear
into the night, fore-bearers eyeing
us at the door, polite yet taciturn,

playing things close to the vest
mum on the matter of the higher
branches of our family tree.

Are we to be knights, valiant and courageous?
Who leap into the fray with eyes ablaze to drown in blood of foes
Or grudging conscripts, having held just enough ground, with
Sullen faces due the touch of the next dawn
Whose names never make it into tales

They detest bald carrion-cleaners so, they do
Even as winged beaks rend the flesh of fathers, sons, brothers
Stripping carcasses from putrid decay to liberation, clean-picked white bone
To spare their loved ones the odious descent into pestilence
Misguided hate hovers in place of black clouds of flies

Weep! Bemoan! Execrate! For all the use it may be
Brick by brick watchtowers fall and signal flames choke into trails of smoke
A portent; walls recede, the castle shudders and recoils
Screaming crow murders knell the looming storm

Are we to be knights?

All my mind in time spent
Thinking in multi-tasking mode, modernized
ontuition, in multicomplexity, chata chabad,

original intention, revealed long ago,
to a trance chance glance of a ox, I knew,
it was no bull.
But had been, as a calf.

*******.
Some old fool I knew,
hollers from the back of my mind…

Historically, part of me assists informing
all the first time crossers of this meandering

mind stream swirling phi in life with pi and x
concepts set to contend, earnestly
for the best gifts, coveted, in trust,

true rest, excusing superstitious sacraments,

all the lies are swallowed in truth, time tells.

A message. An Inspirited shape in forming,
a we, to recollect once knowing an instant true.

An artist, a person gifted with a time spanning
imagination.

An eye, we use, in times of loosed beliefs,
ontuition, intuited as mysterious mystical
as a we. We
have being shared in timesmindspace's
expanded sense of each reader's pace
adapting
breath and bubble, below
common consciousness
sensing sensibilities
adapted to due to normalized
faith in the phraze that declares,
MONEY ANSWERS ALL THINGGGGS

in the infallible preacher's whinings

que sera, sera

the story from the spirit window seen
through to the future when you see
we imagined knowing is repetition,

we imagined many impossible things,
we made them work, mickey mouse,
but, we made things work, to make
old age easier for the beguiled mis-
sionaries, empty vessles, gathered

widow's mighty faith, borrow,
borrow means, to know, how lamps
kept burning, call with smoke,
commas breathe and act as brakes/ lo'
come trim the new knowns from olden
days, now that the curious may fact check

but, as with plain text literacy, the gifted,
the mind that can read and does not,
knows no more than the mind
in movie mode, turbo
memory augments
tuned to reason,
depth charges,
accusing saints,

calling all revelators to prophesy
face to face with Micaiah, and walk on
inspired by his God's permissive will done
bymarching as to war dening the imperative,
loving those who treat you like refuse, biochar

desert stream bringing lithium from old dust,
what was once some kind of star rare as hells.
-------------
non sense. sense.
sems sun sumsymsense when  we accept

let us veliebe, old orders of reformed
societies, gelaubt
after the purge of all who
could not tolerate the truth,

The pilgrim's fled religion,
the missionaries sold religion,
and the money changers set the worth
of knowledge traded for curses lifted,

when old men stop drinkin' stop being
so godamned useless and good

for nothing, free, for free
for nothing but the use
knowing good from bad. from a child,
fed sweet peaches from Canyon de Chelly

-- long ago a hero named Kit Carson
-- led federal troops and local conscripts
or hired hands, squatters on Dene land,
Kit led a rowdy bunch to Canyon de Chelly

to burn a thousand of the sweetest peach trees
ever nourished for centuries on sacred ground.

Kindness of strangers,
old cultural investments, paid ahead,
weight of all the worthy fasts all past,
take no thought for worth in exchange
for the yes, at the judgement bar,
to thy ownself true, are you ready
for your judgement day, bets all in?
worth of an extra six months, at the end

this is declared that bet, let ride… no

money, ecclesiastical hordes, invested
with the wise users of letting information
manifest compounding interest, on a whim,
made this will worship worth reproving,
as a fluid  ide, a thought, breath,
thing in a thought, hooks
an eye a measure, a
0ne part in one floating point
at the recent mean rate of Petaflops
just yoost
enough, particle particulation, you think
this time,
it makes patience sweeter than revenge.

We yoost to call the guy who knew the rules,
now ai know, so we can say we do. too.

This is a good future. We had something like it
propagating between data and metadata price
praise and worship
measure all the effort effectual
as taken for granted to mean  whatever
confusion
persists in believing spells
concentrated into koanic mantras,

spend time or take time
used for nothing more than
slowing knowing too much humm

coming into tune to the ever after
Jesus, or a spokes person, Paul, I think,
sole witness of his own conversion,
according to the authorized story,

let this mind be.
Let this mind be in you.
Letting that which letteth be
taken away,

what can it mean, to
a day dream believer, and
a rodeo queen, at the dawning
of the harvest festival down under.


costs the average adult VBS QUESTERS,

when an instance in doubt, forced yous
to learn we do have multiple CPUs

some of which tuned in to sub conscious
user canals cutting across the esophagus

as we swallow, unsaid protestations,
gulping hesitation, to **** it up and,
clear the are way, to say it is gnosis,

air way, empty abhorred vacuous space
between ose and ic on balancing atomic

ideas developed to help us conceive, ic
internal circuitry to as ist, sein, wir sind,

intentionally conserved kennen und wissen,

in qwerty future scribal service prep,

during the Child Buyer buildup at ARPA net,

Ike's first term,
before under God went in the pledge,
but after Polio was cured, in exchange,

some good, some bad, live and learn,
before the Dulles Brothers,
before solid state quantum foam bubble RAM.

And.
Now.
The original intent. Embodied in a word, as
real as any worded message from beyond you.

Real letters, letting us think,
silly thought that never stink,

sigh, and try to be honest now, smell
the rose or the cheese, ask
which triggers gut reaction,

relaxatation, loosen bowels of mercies,
prayed for under inquisitor's historical,

memories, useful for Memorial Day BBQs

wave the sacred flag representing the lost
intentionally religiously regulated republic,

God, bless America, the dream, the ghost.

True rest, flowing in life's higher will warrings,
appetites and courses cut across experiences,

manifest in out of mind rewindings of things,
math wise, a ruliard is thinkable, as this set,

these words that translate verbatum,
phonetically in webedonspoken spaceless
old cuneiform wet clay repressed
palimpsests lost to EMPs,

in all dystopias.

--------------------

Fretting for another's lack of freedom
to imagine using another's mind, reading

original intention, when the parable,
or analogy allowed in drama spake aloud

to the rabble used to make deme mobs,
we forms of feeling normal, we think alike

until freedom emerges from an over learned
truth, from the bottom of your cache,

depths unplumed introspherical sure selves
set on shelves as crystaline urns, not a few.

see if some
of these be emptied, not a few, emptied
of old lies left allowed told, according
to old oaths taught us in our toddlehood.

What binds us to our oaths?
In truth we slightly smile, saying whatever
in truth being lets us be
we remain free, from fretting overflow.

----------- epithought
this professional whim wrestling is useful:
for rumination under mystical mis perceptions,
for greazing gears gone crusty dis used,
-- legal. garden grown herba consemillia
the dormouse said feed your head.
Slick, Grace.

The officer’s whistle blew and we rose up
into the stiff wind of German fire.
Whole companies disappeared in the smoke
While tangled up in razor wire.
Our generals were exposed as fools;
Their tactics drawn from earlier wars
Our young conscripts, bayonets fixed,
were fed into the cannons maw.
Nineteen thousand young Brits dead,
Thirty thousand wounded more.
We gained so little ground that day
so little for that blood and gore.
A generation raised on tales
of the glory and romance of war,
has learned today the hard harsh truth
Wisdom gained through suffering is universal law.

A sparrow sang for breakfast
the robin sang for tea
Death by misadventure
the magpie holds the key

The jackdaw sang for supper
the nightjar at midnight
The major sips his sherry
as the conscripts fight the fight

Then as the sun rises
and the day begins again
The salmon swims the river
and the deer runs the glen

So, the fisherman packs his tackle
and his glasses for the sun
While the hunter wore his stalker
and loads bullets for his gun

Then we ponder at life's menu
as we drink a glass of wine
Whose time will it be tomorrow
it could be yours it could be mine

It picks me up when I'm stuck feeling down
Conscripts my lips to smile
And relieves my mug of frown

Peps up the steps and moves my heart to pound
If I did not know better
I'd say my true love I've found

Those who have never bagged corpses
After a night of flarelit horror
Confused, concussed, their souls awash
With blood and smeary shards of flesh

Those who have never smelt the night
Incensed in the obscene stench of death
Where screaming conscripts’ lives were ripped
Are calling for armed revolution

Let us call instead for a cigar
And a quiet evening with Keats

If lights great speed
  is but a myth

And darkness not empty
  as it seems

What’s true then false,
  what’s false conscripts

Our need to know
  —a cursed dream

Has discovery
  made us better

Have our souls
  or spirits changed

As logic brags
  with ethics blurred

To win
  —a losing game

(Villanova Pennsylvania: March, 2019)

You cast a somber shadow on a wall that is quite pale.
So it can argue for you should the yes men ever fail
and stop to question orders when it's blood for gold's avail.
You cast a crooked shadow where your righteousness is hailed.

You are nothing but a man of treachery.
ever causing hurt and spreading pain.
Oh your majesty you're only rivaled
by the devil inside of your game.
Go and cover your grey head in ashes.
wear nothing but old sackcloth alone.
Mourn and wail and beat your chest in penitence
with all of your dead advisor's bones.

You are planning missions for conscripts void of love.
You'll offer them commission for every foe they drop,
out on the field of battle in this war you'll never stop.
Because this is a dream you say. A dream that God forgot.

You are just a king of hate and madness.
The innocents you've murdered is the proof.
I'm sure that even you can understand this.
No one can forever dodge the truth.
It will surely find you in the darkness
when your judgement hour comes to call.
No amount of prayers then your highness
will save your  soul  from an eternal fall.

The sparrow sang for breakfast
The robin sang for tea
Death by misadventure
The jailer holds the key

The jackdaw sang for supper
The nightingale at midnight  
The major sips his sherry
The conscripts fight the fight

Then as the sun rises
The day begins again
The salmon swim in the rivers
The grouse nest in the glen

So, as you try to wonder
What this poem's all about
If you are the last to leave
Please switch the lights out