The Eight Ronin Centurions; A Dream

Eight-hundred men were killed

Eight-hundred were sent to the war.

The emperor sent the eight-hundred Ronin

To the battlefield

So he could seize control of the citadels.

Their death would send an outcry

Throughout the kingdom.

Their death would be heroic,

A testimony of loyalty to their emperor.

The eight-hundred were slaughtered

Without much fight.

Swords clashed, iron flashed

Mounts hurdled over children.

In the towns children were slain

Elderly were thrown to the ground.

The 800 Ronin defended the village

From twenty-thousand mongols

Who landed their ships upon

The beaches of the Rising Sun.

The eight-hundred fought hard,

But in two hours were swept by the hordes of the Mongols.

They killed, among them, seventeen-hundred.

Each Ronin had killed two.

Three Hundred and Thirty two Ronin had killed three.

One Ronin had killed four.

The report got back to the country

As the Prince was in the citadel with his father

Who expected to be lauded a great hero

For the fame awarded by these Samurai’s loyalty.

Instead, the peoples held outside,

Never knowing the misdeed that was done.

They mourned the Ronin, but did not give honor to the king.

They did not even know that the king’s honor was why this act was done.

Therefore, the peoples wept for the Ronin.

But none knew it was the King who sent them into battle.

For his honor…

But none understood how it made the king honorable

So it did not bring him any honor,

Nor dishonor.

A Dream; Haiku

Last night Kobe had

Cracked my weary, burdened back.

Today, I feel light.

Apology

When I’ve worked so hard

And gotten very little…

When I’ve spent years studying

And the American Christians fiddle,

I am not good with them

Nor with the unbelievers.

There is a sort of person, however,

Who I can reach with my rivers.

I am sorry that I cannot

Snap my fingers and make everything good.

I am sorry that I cannot

Teach everybody what I should.

I am sorry that I worked so hard for nothing.

I am sorry that preachers preach for gain…

Yet, when I needed something

Everyone called me a human stain.

I am sorry that I have controversial thoughts on war.

That we ought not to go and fight,

It is what I say round about when I roar.

I am a lion who sounds like a kitten, right?

Every radical thought is given to me by God.

Even if you go to war, you do not wage it with kid’s gloves.

Because then when you do, something worse will come.

And when it does, no man, woman or child on earth will have fun.

Cabbage

There is a smell like cabbage

Wherever I go.

Like the smell in the Boy in the Striped Pajamas.

I ask about it, and nobody seems to smell it.

Like the potatoes in the freezer,

That weren’t there,

I was told, “There is no smell.”

They are lying, of course.

Everyone smells it.

It was at its worse in the County Jail.

Where immigrants lined in rows of hand cuffs,

Chained together. Under Obama’s administration.

I smell it more often under Trump.

It smells like cabbage.

But, of course, I’m crazy.

If I die, I die.

If I am lobotomized, I am lobotomized.

If I have sex with a beautiful red haired woman

Every day for the rest of my life

I have sex with a beautiful red haired woman

Every day for the rest of my life.

Regardless, I won’t second guess myself.

I would rather Christians stop praising this.

Let us end it by law.

Not with guns.

I Do not Want My Nation to Go to War with Iran

I do not want my nation to go to war with Iran.

Why? Because then everyone would suffer.

If I said I would destroy Iran,

It would only be a threat

Backed up by a promise.

I would, as it were,

First spend years to get you to see my side.

Not months.

Not hours.

Years.

I would slowly show you that if Iran gained nuclear weapons

And our whole world went to war, it would profit nothing.

Entire crops would die.

Entire populations would be destroyed.

Therefore, I would show you what war is.

I would spend the better part of my career,

As a general, showing you why you cannot have a World War.

Then, as a measure, I would tell you my stratagem.

It would be simple.

Any country that would start a World War

Swiftly, I would win over its allies,

And destroy that country, right down to the last man and child.

It would be swift.

It would be painless.

I would not torture.

I would take captives.

Those slaves I would treat as human beings…

They would work, eat and till my pastures

And be as much a part of my people as my people.

They would follow my laws.

They would live good lives

And eat, drink, marry,

And after several decades, they’d be allowed to return home,

Them and their children and their children

If they’d desire.

I am not Daniel.

No. I am not Jude.

I am not a Prophet, like Amos was not a prophet.

Rather, my wisdom is my prophesy.

I would not wage a war

Unless the citizens were corrupt

Of the country I invaded.

I would not wage a war

Unless it was punishment,

Exacted on that nation.

It would be swift and merciless.

I would not fight for territory.

It would be a rod.

But, before that, I would do everything in my power to keep China and Russia

Out of a conflict. And if diplomacy failed,

If they’d stubbornly hold onto Iran’s defense,

I would not fight. I would silently bow out and would not resist.

The reason why is that the trees are precious to me.

So are people.

War is a measure fought to punish a wicked nation

For its crimes.

Frankly, as a measure, I do not believe my nation is righteous enough

To punish yours, nor yours righteous enough to punish mine.

But, in my estimation, I would give everything, even my credibility

But not my soul,—never my soul, for such is more precious to me than the whole world—

But my credibility I would give to prevent such a war that would destroy everything good and lovely.

I love you.

Enough to understand why war is fought,

And that if I were killed by you, I would not be angry.

For war is the ugliest thing in Human Existence,

And if it’s fought, it needs to be fought.

No chemicals. No biologics. No nuclears.

Only because there would be other innocent countries that would suffer

Even more if they were used.

Frankly, I am disgusted.

I want Trump to not attack you.

I had envisioned a plan that would take years

To unfold, and I would work everything in my power

To prevent the whole Earth suffering for one country’s sins.

That was why my strategy was severe. Because I loved you

Enough to not want you or I to suffer World War III.

And there will not be a World War III,

Will there? I hope not.

Because my foreboding was to tell you

What war is. First. It is not humane.

Second, my foreboding was to broker peace;

Not to solve all of the Earth’s problems.

Men will kill each other in all places and all times.

It cannot be solved.

But, one nation does not have to make all men suffer.

My Thoughts on War

I said something controversial.

So, here are my thoughts on war.

Do not fight it.

But, if you do,

Do not spare the rod.

Do not wage it with kid’s gloves.

If there is a war that needs waged

Wage it;—bring slaves home from the country.

Murder, rape, pillage.

Do not fight it with ethics,

As war is the abandonment of ethics.

The time for war is a time for every egregious crime.

And if a nation does not measure up to that punishment

It ought not be fought.

If the citizens do not deserve to die,

If the people do not deserve to have their houses destroyed,

Their children dashed across the rocks,

Their elderly slaughtered,

Then do not wage a war.

Doubly, if war would be a catastrophe,

Leading to suffering for all mankind,

I doubly say such a war would be foolish,

And if crimes were to be committed by one nation on another

Rightly, it would justify those crimes if it meant

The whole Earth wouldn’t erupt into suffering

If otherwise no action were taken.

War is punishment.

War is a legal time to commit the most heinous crime

The most heinous deception,

The most heinous fraud.

It is nothing more, and nothing less.

If we do not treat it as such,

Whole generations suffer.

Subconsciousness Relic

There is a relic called earnest love.

The redeemed know it is so.

Remember the relic, and hold fast to it

Lest you torment your heart with fear and solitude.

Regarding the fierce storm of love

Replenish it with touch, when with your friend

Whom you are naked with, two souls

Lost in the barrens of this world

Fulfilling the commandment

“You must love your neighbor

As if they were you.”

Fulfill the commandment,

“Two will be one body.”

It is priceless.

How To Earn a Living on Writing

The secret is

That when nothing comes,

You set out to make sure something comes.

You latch onto something,

Once as banal as a Coke for me,

And numbing you break through the torture

Of the dull pain in your head.

Study for hours.

Rest. You need lots of rest.

But for all purposes, do not let the muse come to you.

You must be like Romulus and Ramos

Founding Rome.

A muse is a jackal,

And there she is twirling about above you

Great and mighty.

She says, “Chase after me, my dear,”

With her slender face and pointed ears

Her beautiful face and burgundy hair;

Sexy she might seem bursting from the pools

Of imagination, with her slender form of youth at the age of love.

No, she will stray away from you.

Stray far away from you…

Therefore you must take her like a spoil of war;

Like we Jews who conquered the Philistines

And so many like them.

Then, she will abandon her lover

And follow after you.

Take her, beat through the headache

And the thunderous aches of war.

Conquer, enter into the city,

Or encamp around it,

And she will flee to you,

Seeing that you are stronger.

For a muse will not come to you…

She, rather, likes to be taken and swept away

By the passions of her loves.

Every conversation,

Every argument,

Every great debate,

Use it—

For there can be no great writer

Who waits for the muse to come.

She is like a lover in that regard.

You cannot wait for her,

But you must buck horns with her other suitors.

It is why I am not suited for love… I am afraid…

But I am suited for this profession.

Because I am afraid of the flesh and blood of woman

But the one in poetry I can readily chase.

Writer’s Headache

When you have writer’s block

You have to push.

Stories do not come,

Push through the psychical pain.

It is pain, is it not?

Yes, it is pain.

That is the work of storytelling,

Pushing through the pain of the writer’s headache.

Tapped out of material

One must—to be a professional—

Push through that headache,

Dulling, and acrid in the frontal lobe.

What insanity will it reap?

What great mystery will it unravel?

Push through the pain.

Writer’s block, to me,

Is a headache.

It always comes, pushing like a dull, numbing pain

On my frontal lobe.

Pushing, painful,

Brazen…

Push.

Push hard enough, and a new story will be forged.

A new horizon will be reached.

Push, and it will be reached.

It will be claimed, the prize,

Which is the reward for working so hard

For driving yourself nearly mad.

Wisdom wells up in the soul

So the man who is responsible will

Well it to words with writing.

Well it to words, with writing, and withal, the wonderful wakes of imagination will tell

That the exercise of this is my secret to keep writing.

Fresh new stories about writer’s block,

It comes, and then comes the next epoch of my work.

The Brother of Queen Maeve’s Charge

Oh Queen Maeve in great dearth of joys, deep hatred I had not—

’twas Ferguson who spoke so vile, but your bad name must now rot.

For I have this unwholesome dream, his murders which greatly spun

Of what you did, what you said, flights; his firings of the gun.

I sit in wonder at the great deeds, poor and in rags my pants;

Sinner I was, and sinner I be, forget a thousand rants

Said in private,—were not for men to see; nor was it a felony

Which stirred the nations stalwart from sea to every bloody sea.

My verse had changed, your heart’s not true, your judgments, they all were wrong.

Nothing but tender love I had for you; your betrayal had sorely stung.

These dreams are torment—nails in my arms, the pain of your sharp gun.

These are not my dreams, but I have to say, they are that Ferguson’s.

For I am small, known not by you, my strong friend but ally lost;

For I never had thought you’d harm me; but friendship was paid the cost.

Rather, someone else I see, in vision who wears that rebel cloth—

It is Ferguson, he who is to be, that man eternally lost.