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Michael Bauer Mar 2015
i lost everything and that’s when the war came
then they reinstated the draft and began mobilizing
with the hope of defeating tyranny once again
and preserving our freedom and securing our resources

a few years before the war i was in a tense mood
privileged to attend university and expand my mind into proto-intellectualism
reading Shakespeare and studying Postcolonial Literature and non-fiction writing
while stacking up a mountain of student loan debt and watching things unravel

i started smoking bales of **** with my medical marijuana prescription
and stuttered through a false start and a series of stalls
watching my life fall apart but enjoying the rollercoaster ride
and falling in love again with the night time like in my teenage years

the television started showing explosion after explosion on city streets
there were also talks about the weather changing wildly and some people were on edge
but then when the war came everything sort of became more focused yet fatalistic

i never thought i’d get drafted but when the Selective Service notice arrived i wasn’t going to fight it
i enlisted in the Navy the following week and once I stepped on that bus everything just sort of became automatic
as i was swallowed into the machine and molded into a soldier

the process of soldierization is a fascinating phenomenon
a desperate or controlling government picks through it’s citizens
finding those most suitable for combating its perceived enemies
and reprograms select individuals to become a part of the killing machine

i don’t know how they picked me
i figured i would’ve been viewed as a loose cannon
and been thrown into a file for the shredder
but despite my liberal dissident undertones i was dropped into the US armed forces

i was stationed on a missile cruiser for the first three years of the war against the Islamic State
i thought it would just be a lot of sitting around in my underwear
launching cruise missiles *****-nilly and having **** ***
but it was so much better than that

i was lucky to not be stationed in the Pacific when things really started heating up
but instead got to sit around in the Mediterranean sun
smoking Turkish cigarettes in the shade of the missile array
stoking the fires and setting the Middle East aflame

on the day Russia launched into the Baltic states i was on leave in Athens
it was still somewhat of a surprise although everyone was anticipating the change
i was summoned back aboard my ship the next day and converged like a phalanx
we waited off the coast of Troy then continued through the Bosporus

we fired a lot more missiles before they finally got a Mig through to sink us
put a nice little dent in the hull and we jumped off into the cool waters of the Black
we didn’t see any of our ships or helicopters after that
but we were near the coast and managed to get to land a few days after the emergency ration ran out


**originally posted on my blog at https://sublimeobscenities.wordpress.com/ on January 23, 2015
M Gordon Meier May 2013
I am issuing a postmodern offensive on the retrocultural routine

an exhalation of postindustrial and reinstallation of irreproachable

Intertextual, multivocalities of the avant-garde and postcolonial others

dealing a degendered-(King)sian discourse on equality


This is an attack on normal

a breath of fresh air

A war cry of weirdos

a dagger to the fair
Oladeji popoola Dec 2018
They left us a birth prize
We all believe to be gold
They glided to the front
They called it bronze
The city engulfed by ire.

We concluded again they left us silver
They called it stone
The city bewailed of inequity
Blood, blood....
The city unrest
The antagonists sacrificed.

"Either bronze or stone show us our birth prize" The voracious compatriots claims trickled to the negotiating corner.
In spite of all words,
Their actions betrayed our claims.

Again, the city soaked in dread,
Antagonists wanted,
Heedless, we protested
"Give us our birth prize"
Antagonists thundering voices
silenced with prototypes.
Shrewdly, they dance to the city
with drums and packages: lustrous education, fat salary, electricity, infrastructures, healthy economy, social amenities, health care...
They boast of frequent return of all only with the birth prize.
In their wit, we found relief, and
We drummed home to feed on
repercussion of a new dawn.

— The End —