Julian Langer
War Continues, But So Do I!
War continues
War continues
War continues
The great debacle continues
The bloody sire continues
War continues
War continues
Patriotism, the menace to liberty continues
The beginning of the end continues
War spectacle continues
War continues
And what could a poem do?
A poem written a continent away from the conflict,
By an individual who’s body is as they write this host to the plague that has spread across the world,
It’s worthless, self-indulgence, some might say,
But I would not.
This is to me an absurd refusal to accept any position of impotent inability to Affect.
Yes I am nothing,
I create myself though and refuse to not do so.
And while I refuse,
War continues
War continues
War continues
The playing of teams,
In sports-like spectacles of memes,
Live streamed
Continues.
In my twilight dances I climb the tallest tree heights I can find,
To scream, laugh and cry rebellion!
War continues
War continues
It fucking continues
It continually continues.
Wars between nations, states, collectives, differing heads on the Leviathan-Hydra,
Who is Moloch.
War as the annihilation of wildlife,
Their war being the assimilation of non-conformity into the system, if only through erasure.
War continues as the industrial-militarist-necro-capitalist work machine.
For as long as I have been aware of the media,
I have witnessed the spectacle of war,
With intensifying hyper-reality,
And at this point,
I am notified,
So I cannot,
Escape.
I was born in 1991 and first took real notice of the news,
When the civilised world became forever changed,
When the structures of architectural absolution,
Global finance, world trade, Western-victory,
Collapsed and this culture went on a series,
Of wars campaigned with but one aim,
An aim that it convinced itself wasn’t,
But now could only be true.
The aim of fossil fuels,
A vile excuse,
For all the
Sacrifices
Offered
To this
God.
And war continues
And war continues
And war continues
And the lives of the living are sacrificed,
For the Cause of sustaining industry,
Through the fuels that industry needs.
War continues
War continues
Are they the good side?
Are they the bad?
Are they the just and the other the evil?
I am sure each would say so of the other.
I see no goodness in either,
And I see no evil.
I see shallow, cowardly, revolting attempts to maintain empire.
I see cowards who lack the strength to fight with the bodies that they are,
So they use the machinery of industrial warfare, rather than their teeth or fists.
Some say they see tribalism in this war, but I see no tribes – I see collectives, assimilating individuals to be sacrifices in their Cause of warfare.
And war continues
War continues
War continues
War continues
Radiation leaks in the Red Forest
And war continues
Bombs fly across the world,
In far off places, with fewer nuclear weapons
And the war spectacle continues
Poems are written
Art works are created
Protest songs are sung
And war continues
Totalitarianism continues its production of totalities,
Totalities that will inevitably de-totalise,
And war continues.
I have protested as an attempt to challenge war-narratives.
I have attended anti-war marches and demonstrations.
And war continues.
Now I write this poem, as an absurd act of rebellion,
And war continues.
Will it continue on forever?
Can there be militarist conflict that is perpetuated ad infinitum?
Can we construct a mass-grave big enough to throw in all the corpses,
The waste products of industrial-warfare,
And somehow use them,
As fuel to somehow,
Sustain this,
Shit?
I have watched the spectacle of war for what feels like far too long.
Friends I have cared for have offered themselves as sacrifices for the militarist machine.
Tears come to my eyes,
And war continues
War continues
War continues.
The Cause of peace is war,
And war is Caused by peace.
The annihilation of conflict has been the single justification of war that I have ever encountered,
But as life strikes me as an experience of conflict,
The annihilation of conflict strikes me as,
Denying and renouncing life,
As revolting weakness,
Careless abuse that,
Cowers before,
The abyss,
Without the courage to look in.
Oh I see many soldiers: if only I could see many warriors.
Warriors who don’t wage wars,
As they don’t fear conflict.
But war continues
Soldiers continue soldiering
States continue stating
Nations continue nationing
And war continues
They say “war rages on”, but I see no rage in industrial militarism,
I see no emotions, no feeling, or if anything the attempt to non-attach,
With Buddhistic peacefulness.
I see no rage in a gun.
I see no fear in bombs.
I see no anguish in tanks.
I see no sadness in a drone.
I see no trembling in this annihilation.
Mindfulness weaponised as militarist-detachment,
For absolute peacefulness, through annihilation,
Immanetising the eschaton,
Through nuclear-dharma,
Om Krim Kali
Om Krim Kali
Om Krim Kali
I wish for no peace
I desire feeling and emotion
I want industrial warfare to end,
But it continues.
Om Krim Kali
Om Krim Kali
Om Krim Kali
May their machines rust
May a great storm destroy their weapons
May the earth quake and open up its belly of molten rock and consume all the metals that they have manipulated through productivity,
To die within earth and reborn anew.
Om Krim Kali
Om Krim Kali
Om Krim Kali
May this stupid poem be enough to destroy the icons of this fowl church,
Is it?
Are these words enough?
No, of course not.
But I still want to write.
Sheela Na Gig
Sheela Na Gig
Sheela Na Gig
Please birth a deep, dark, primordial forest,
Home to boar, wolf, deer, badger, buzzard, snowdrop, frog, hawk, snake, woodlouse, bee, butterfly, fox, lynx, mink, bear, newt, salmon, trout, great rock, tiny stone, moss, ivy and more,
Upon what was once the battlefields of mass-industrial-necro-capitaliist-militarist-productivity.
Sheela Na Gig
Sheela Na Gig
Sheela Na Gig
I desire life and the living
I have watched too much the spectacle of war
I have watched in horror and revolt and protested and war continues.
I was nearly shot when seeking to defend badgers from annihilation.
I want to be-Kali and destroy the machinery of annihilation.
I want to be Sheela Na Gig and birth a primordial forest.
I have met the Buddha on the road and killed him, for peace is too welcoming of the most life-ending violence for my tastes.
War continues, but so do I!