STUPIDITY | willowdot21

I’ve got a friend, he’s a pure-bred killing machine
He says he’s waited his whole damn life for this
I knew him well when he was seventeen
Now he’s a man he’ll be dead by Christmas

The eastern world, it is exploding
Violence flarin’, bullets loadin’
You’re old enough to kill, but not for votin’
You don’t believe in war, but what’s that gun you’re totin’”

“In 1965 Vietnam seemed like just another foreign war
But it wasn’t
It was different in many ways, as so were those that did the fighting
In World War II the average age of the combat soldier was 26
In Vietnam he was 19”

“And the battle’s just begun
There’s many lost, but tell me who has won
The trench is dug within our hearts
And mothers, children, brothers, sisters torn apart”

Through these fields of destruction
Baptisms of fire
I’ve witnessed all your suffering
As the battle raged higher
And though they did hurt me so bad
In the fear and alarm
You did not desert me
My brothers in arms

Yes, how many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky ?
Yes, how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry ?
Yes, how many deaths will it take till he knows
That too many people have died ?
The answer my friend is blowin’ in the wind
The answer is blowin’ in the wind.

http://www.minti.com/members/mcm/photos/

Hello this week for my poetry challenge on war I have cobbled together a strange poem. This poem is made up of verses from lyrics to anti war songs. I think that they do make a strange sense. Below I have cited the the songs and owners of the words.

Edwin Star

NERINA PALLOT

Barry McGuire

Paul Hardcastle

U2 –

Dire Straits

Bob Dylan

I have said all I can about war and so this week I shall not repeat myself . I shall just leave it to music of John Lennon and the voices of children to say it all for me.

Poetry Challenge #7 is to create a journal of links and your reactions to poems by established (living or dead poets.) Details are here. Example response is here. Mr. Linky for Challenge #7 is directly below

Poetry Challenge #7 15/10/2012

15 Oct 2012 Leave a comment

by willowdot21 in Uncategorized Tags: abuse of our world, Fear, futility, Poetry Challenge, STUPIDITY, War

google images

Oh! so many gods, so many creeds,
So many paths that wind and wind,
While just the art of being kind
Is all the sad world needs.

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Ella Wheeler Wilcox (November 5, 1850 – October 30, 1919) was an American author and poet. Her best-known work was Poems of Passion. Her most enduring work was ” Solitude“, which contains the lines: “Laugh, and the world laughs with you; Weep, and you weep alone”. Her autobiography, The Worlds and I, was published in 1918, a year before her death.

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This is a short and very sad, sad poem. A sad indictment on the world, many creeds, many path , too much talk and bluster when all that is needed is love.

Poetry Challenge #7 07/10/2012

07 Oct 2012 4 Comments

by willowdot21 in Uncategorized Tags: abuse of our world, Fear, futility, Poetry Challenge, STUPIDITY, War

“Everybody’s Gone To War”

I’ve got a friend, he’s a pure-bred killing machine
He says he’s waited his whole damn life for this
I knew him well when he was seventeen
Now he’s a man he’ll be dead by Christmas

And so, everybody’s going to war
But we don’t know what we’re fighting for
Don’t tell me it’s a worthy cause
No cause could be so worthy

If love is a drug, I guess we’re all sober
If hope is a song, I guess it’s all over
How to have faith, when faith is a crime?
I don’t want to die
I’f God’s on our side, then God is a joker
Asleep on the job, his children fall over
Running out through the door and straight to the sky
I don’t want to die

For every man who wants to rule the world
There’ll be a man who just wants to be free
What do we learn but what should not be learned?
Too late to find a cure for this disease

And so, everybody’s going to war
But we don’t know what we’re fighting for
Don’t tell me it’s a worthy cause
No cause could be so worthy

If love is a drug, I guess we’re all sober
If hope is a song, I guess it’s all over
How to have faith, when faith is a crime?
I don’t want to die
If God’s on our side, then God is a joker
Asleep on the job, his children fall over
Running out through the door and straight to the sky
I don’t want to die
I-I-I-I don’t want to die
I-I don’t want to die

Written by Nerina Pallot

“Everybody’s Gone to War” is a pop rock song written and recorded by the London-born and Jersey-raised singer-songwriter Nerina Pallot.

google images

The song, an anti-war protest, was written during the early stages of the Iraq War in 2003, and was composed on bass guitar by Pallot. The song was issued on downloads only in March 2005, and the following month saw a commercial release on Pallot’s album Fires. This original single release peaked at #88 on the UK Airplay Chart in April 2005. Read more here

This song/ poem just goes to show nothing changes. Young men have always and still do get trained and go off to war , many many of them die or become maimed physically and mentally.

Nothing changes, no one wins.

Poetry Challenge #7 02/09/2012

02 Sep 2012 8 Comments

by willowdot21 in Uncategorized Tags: abuse of our world, Christmas, confusion, Fear, futility, STUPIDITY, War

photo credits google images

The Battlefield

The dropped like flakes, they dropped like stars.Like petals from a rose when sudden across the June a wind with fingers goes.

They perished in the seamless grass, no eye could find the place; but God on his repealless list can summons every face.

EMILY DICKINSON

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photo credits google images

Emily Elizabeth Dickinson (December 10, 1830 – May 15, 1886) was an American poet. Born in Amherst, Massachusetts, to a successful family with strong community ties, she lived a mostly introverted and reclusive life. After she studied at the Amherst Academy for seven years in her youth, she spent a short time at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary before returning to her family’s house in Amherst. Thought of as an eccentric by the locals, she became known for her penchant for white clothing and her reluctance to greet guests or, later in life, even leave her room. Most of her friendships were therefore carried out by correspondence.

While Dickinson was a prolific private poet, fewer than a dozen of her nearly eighteen hundred poems were published during her lifetime.^[2] The work that was published during her lifetime was usually altered significantly by the publishers to fit the conventional poetic rules of the time. Dickinson’s poems are unique for the era in which she wrote; they contain short lines, typically lack titles, and often use slant rhyme as well as unconventional capitalization and punctuation.^[3] Many of her poems deal with themes of death and immortality, two recurring topics in letters to her friends. More information can be found here.

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This poem, says it all written before the wars of 20th century and this. They are still so amazingly applicable to this day! The first few lines ‘The dropped like flakes, they dropped like stars.Like petals from a rose when sudden across the June a wind with fingers goes.’ They do in war people drop like flies by the million, soldiers, sailors and airmen, refugees, prisoners , children and innocent bystanders.

The second verse is true too ‘They perished in the seamless grass, no eye could find the place; but God on his repeal less list can summons every face.’ The lay where they fell some lost for ever some unknown some known but not claimed . It matters not war always was and is and always will be.

Poetry Challenge #7 26/08/2012

27 Aug 2012 15 Comments

by willowdot21 in Uncategorized Tags: abuse of our world, Christmas, confusion, Fear, futility, STUPIDITY, War

I am away this bank Holiday and was surrounded by family all day yesterday which was lovely. That was one of the promps for yesterdays poem! I did not have time to do my poetry challenge but here I am with a few minutes to spare and my brothers computer to use and a fabulous book of poems.

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Thomas Hardy CHRISTMAS 1924

“Peace upon earth” was said.We sing it,

and pay a million priests to bring it.

After two thousand years of Mass. We’ve got as far as poison -gas.

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Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy, OM(2 June 1840 – 11 January 1928) was an English novelist and poet.

photo credits wikipedia

A Victorian realist, in the tradition of George Eliot, he was also influenced both in his novels and poetry by Romanticism, especially by William Wordsworth.^[1] Charles Darwin is another important influence on Thomas Hardy.^[2] Like Charles Dickens Hardy was also highly critical of much in Victorian society, though Hardy focussed more on a declining rural society. While Hardy wrote poetry throughout his life, and regarded himself primarily as a poet his first collection was not published until 1898. Initially therefore he gained fame as the author of such novels as Far from the Madding Crowd (1874), The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886), Tess of the d’Urbervilles (1891), and Jude the Obscure (1895). However, since the 1950s Hardy has been recognized as a major poet, and had a significant influence on The Movement poets of the 1950s and 1960s, including Phillip Larkin and Elizabeth Jennings.^[3] The bulk of his fictional works, initially published as serials in magazines, were set in the semi-fictional region of Wessex and explored tragic characters struggling against their passions and social circumstances. Hardy’s Wessex is based on the medieval Anglo-Saxon kingdom and eventually came to include the counties of Dorset, Wiltshire, Somerset, Devon, Hampshire, and much of Berkshire, in south west England.( this Biop is care of Wikipedia as I am not at home I have had to work faster!)

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This short and to the point poem say all there is to say. It highlights the pointlessness of war,the stupidity of the human nature and it’s inability to learn anything. GOD HELP US ALL!