Another Anti-war Poem (you don't have to see the visuals to know what slaughter looks like)

Graphology Superscription 117: administrations

Without viewing

the visuals, you’ll 

likely know 

what killing 

looks like.

And you’ll know

that Biden’s call

for Ukraine to ‘revise’

its recruitment age 

from twenty-five

to eighteen

is an ‘anthem

for doomed youth’

played out by proxy.

An act of creative 

thinking.

And you’ll reason

that increased weapons-flow

is the twist in a presidential 

pardon that serves

next generations.

You are forgiven...

and you... and you.

Thanks very much

(from afar)

for your sacrifice.

Processing, you’ll second-guess

that a new administration

will pursue pet conflicts

under chosen conditions. 

A fresh set of eyes

even if you’re not looking.

Rerouting front lines

for fresher conscripts.

Different audio-visual

frames of reference.

Alternative newsfeeds.

You might re-say that wars

escape their makers,

their sustainers, and their

apologists. That wars ultimately

feed themselves. You might

tick off the days on the calendar

with or without hope.

You might also say that wars 

ache with clichés for slaughter 

even if you don’t view 

that latest footage from x

or y co-ordinates — sicut dixit. 

Edited... or even up-

loaded raw 

and immediate.

And other such

affronts.

And having said all this,

if you do say all of this, 

you might conjecture 

over potential

‘peace talks’; 

memorials;

re-plantings

of torn fields;

post-war 

economies,

strategic

realignments.

Allegiances.

And that hardly

mellifluous saying:

‘adult time for adult crime’.

John Kinsella

The Truest Faces of the Military

Written by John, posted by Tracy


In the same way that the use of nuclear power can only ever lead to destruction and pollution of the very people it purports to help, so with the military in all its guises. If for a moment one is ever deluded into thinking a genuine humanitarian motivation underpins a military vision, think again. Unless soldiers have been drafted against their will, or maybe even drawn into the military out of poverty, only to find themselves enslaved to something every bit as destructive as starvation, inevitably the ‘thrill’ of violence underpins the decision to ‘join up’. Adventure at the expense of someone, somewhere. Or maybe something far more malign than that.

In my teenage years, I was highly ‘militarised’, and had every intention of going to Duntroon and becoming an officer. I was obsessed with strategy and tactics, starting with Alexander the Great, the Peloponnesian War, Hannibal, and Caesar’s writings, and worked my way through to the finer details of armaments of the Second World War, their manufacture, deployment, usage, and the general thinking behind total war. I was a strategy game aficionado. As with a chess game, I saw it as intellectual pursuit.

Wilfred Owen’s poetry made me rethink things. I connected the dots between ‘intellectual’ interest, and the physicality of playing wars in the backyard (and elsewhere), and issues of repressed aggression (often engendered by humiliation and inadequacy in the face of being bullied). As my political and social awareness increased, I found it a struggle to resist this urge.

When I look back I am aware that this struggle came out of a paradox: a belief in the morality of ‘protecting’ in the face of a desire for control, excitement and power (however limited). This desire for power arose from being bullied at school, and compensating for an offended masculinity. I knew many people who went into the military, or had been in the military in some capacity. I don’t now. Not a few of those who went on to become soldiers were bullies, were very often racist and misogynist. Military women I only knew through others.

Now, to be fair, this was not carte blanche. I did meet those whose moral convictions were melded with defensive nationalism, who believed they were doing good (though all claim to be doing good!). But still, scratch away and an excitement over military ordnance, and an almost prurient interest in the casualties of war, drove motivation.

It astonishes me that anyone should be surprised that Australian (or any) soldiers in Afghanistan should post racist brutalities on their facebook pages. Just be surprised that it got through the military filter system. The military is that, but knows it must hide it to survive. The military exists because people believe it is necessary. The very same soldiers that committed these offences against human dignity at the very least, and maybe much worse, will be tomorrow’s heroes if they are killed on the battlefield. Their individuality will be consumed by the nationalist cause, while portraits of their goodness will be painted. Ironically, the military (and the country) will treat who they really are with as much disdain as they are treating the Afghan people.

When I was a youth I worked on the wheatbins for a couple of seasons. Soldiering and racism went hand-in-hand for some of my colleagues. They know what crimes they committed against others. It was just an extension of the military dialogue into civilian space. From a war/military-obsessed childhood and teenage years, to total pacifism: it seems an obvious journey to me.

I live in a place where violence is worshipped. Guns are never far away and they go with an anti-ecological stance and general social conservatism. The army recruits from such demographics. They brush the soldiers up so as not to show it in public (though they do, anyway), but they rely on racists, bigots and ultra-conservatives to feed their recruitment drives. Those very attitudes are what allow them to kill an enemy. An enemy they wholeheartedly believe in, that they’ve been encouraged to believe in as they’ve grown up, watched television, played violent games, and towards which they’ve been socially directed as an outlet, rather than venting on their own streets (which is obviously also disturbing).

A couple of years ago I met a cop who despised guns. Despised violence. He didn’t believe in meeting violence with violence. He gave me hope. The military isn’t designed to operate that way on any level. It is the home of propaganda because it is founded on violence and not an aversion to violence. The military needs all the propaganda tools it (and the government) possesses to sell itself to those who aren’t violent by inclination.

All sewn up? No. I won’t forget the boys cat-shooting and fox-shooting and roo-shooting, hyped up and talking about joining the army. And I won’t forget their elders saying ‘it will do them good and harness their aggression — give them control and make use of it’. No, it just puts the aggression in a holding pattern until it’s let loose to serve the military overlord-vampires and their human helpers who can walk in the daylight.

Our small son has had to endure threats of shooting, knifing and witnessing a parrot corpse frenziedly beaten with sticks. Many of the perpetrators idolise the military and say ‘war is good, we need it’. I don’t doubt that more than a few will sign up when they’re old enough, encouraged by their parents, their peers and the state.

See this article. Actually, evidence of an endemic problem is implicit in the article’s title — the headline is as much part of the problem as the soldiers themselves. We all provide the environment in which these things are fostered and projected. These soldiers just do the dirty work. Watch who comes out to defend these actions. It won’t be surprising. Think about it.

ANZAC Day and Pacifism

Written by John, to express sentiments held by both John and Tracy

Stated straight out, we believe ANZAC Day is an extension of the State’s desire to keep the population militarised.

From school classrooms where it is the prime focus of nationalist propaganda through to the television screens across different stations — interdenominationally, if you like — through their trans-vector fronts such as religious organisations (which have vested interest in the militarisation of the State to protect themselves and to use as a vehicle or vector for their own imperialisms), ANZAC Day focuses aggression.

We have no problem with acknowledging the horror of war, the brutal loss of ‘civilians’ and ‘soldiers’, and lamenting of humanity’s folly in allowing war to happen in the first place.

The inculcation of State values is, of course, desired by much of the population — though if such people were aware of having been propagandised, no doubt many would still choose the path of glorification rather than lament.

When the dawn services call to memory men and women who died in war, they cast it as sacrifice for the nation, for the country. This may or may not be true in individual cases, but it certainly can’t be made as a generalisation.

My Auntie Dulce is one of the last still-living wives of a Gallipoli veteran, Harold - a soldier of the 10th Light Horse, who came to believe in peace and never war. Uncle Harold, who would never march on ANZAC Day, never trade in what one might call the ‘currency of medals’, used to say, ‘Don’t let them glorify it – it’s not glorious, it’s brutal.’ And he felt that if talking about it would help people understand it was brutal, then that was worthwhile – but not if it was intended to glorify.

So we don’t object to the conversations that come out of ANZAC Day, but we do object to the militarisation of our children at school, our ‘selves’ as part of the country.

To give a sad intensity to this lament, we are disgusted to see that the Australian Defence Minister used this day to announce in Afghanistan that ‘diggers’ had ‘killed’ a hundred Taliban. Crowing over their skill in killing, the hierarchy cast it against the background of personal and collective sacrifice for the nation. Disgusting.

Did they mention the Afghan children killed by Australian troops in ‘crossfire’ during a military activity a couple of months back? We doubt it.

ANZAC Day is not about the people killed by ‘our’ soldiers, but about affirmations of the State as a military entity. Military entities require selective memories as much as they require poetry and art to feed their myths of glory. Every poem we write should be an anti-war poem. Every poem should be an affirmation of non-violence. Violence begets violence — and you don’t need to be part of a religious hierarchy to make this call. Pity religions didn’t abide by this observation.

ANZAC gatherings without uniforms, without weapons, without the military at all, would be an alternative — if people must gather for such things. By all means, lament the loss of humans, the death, the maiming, the damage to the environment, animals, plants. Lament the damage to the spirit of all. Not a gun in sight. Never. Read Wilfred Owen, read Leon Gellert or any of the many women poets of the First and Second World Wars (for example) who wrote against war and if not combatants experienced the horror in equivalent (or greater) measure. Poetry as activism.