IT'S BEEN AWHILE - AND THE WORLD IS GETTING SCREWIER BY THE DAY... THE HOUR...

…and seemingly by the second at times. Oh, and by the way, I’m back.

Given this Administration’s complete “mishandling” of… well… basically everything, many believe (with good reason) that we’re on the cusp of World War Three (WWIII). Of course, we have to recognize that it’s actually a matter of some things being mishandled, but other things being machinated by design: the border’s open status is not the result of anything being “mishandled.” That status is by design; rational people, adults, can see that. The destruction of education, K through University, is by design and rational adults can see that, too. Same for indoctrination of Wokeism to the young (and the foolish adults); same for debasing relations between groups of people - whether by race, religion, class, sex, etc., etc., ad infinitum.

It’s extraordinary (and good) the number of people reassessing President Trump’s term in office… and the number who voted against him who are now thinking of voting for him… hopefully in measure enough to beat-the-cheat. (The inevitable, and massive, upcoming cheat). Here’s hoping he makes it. Here’s hoping a false flag event doesn’t suspend the 2024 presidential election.

But, given that rational minds are discussing a potential WWIII, I thought I’d post an essay from my forthcoming book, A Bohemian in a Precarious Belfry - Vol. I: Poetry & Prose. The piece is entitled, WAR. I wrote the piece approximately six months or so ago, and it was written kinda with and for every soldier who has ever existed since the beginning of time… that is to say: hardcore combat soldiers… warriors. I seemed to be channeling it from somewhere. But I had a look at this piece in light of what Israeli and Hamas soldiers might be going through (and I am NOT equating the two - I hope Israel kicks ass) and thought it would fit under my Substack for sharing… with you. Not every warrior comports with the feelings of the first-person “I” narrator in WAR, but many do - or come to.

The book itself is difficult to describe. It will be on Amazon in November, but you can buy it here now. It is a mix of… yes, poetry and prose… and fiction and non-fiction. I’ve included its preface below the essay. All material is © 2023:

WAR

I hate.

I am consumed by hate. I am hate. I am running from hate and I am running with hate. I thought I knew hate prior.

I did not.

I hate the enemy. But I hate my own country. For putting me here, and for consuming me with hate. It is like the fire around me, yet within me, moving larger, faster and faster. Accelerating. The fire’s center and expanding elements heat all objects in its path and make them even more combustible; predisposing things for their burst into flames even before the onrush of the other flames get there. Spontaneous combustion. Heat, Flash, Explosion, Heat, repeat, escalate. As my hate.

And so a hellish cauldron expands in front of me, around me, and within me until it occupies me from head to toe, and out to my very fingertips, to my toes and seemingly beyond.

I kill. I kill with a savageness I did not formerly possess, or even suspect possible. It was unknown to me, this savageness, and where will it go, where does it go, after this? It merely evaporates? No. You can neither create nor destroy matter and the same with human will, emotions, agendas, and war. It will settle and metastasize in another place, another person, even as it leaves its residue and influence on and with me.

I can never go back; I can only go forward with it.

I’d been trained to kill but that was comparatively sterile, facile, disembodied. A game as a part of training. This is a central organic fury, a blinding rage, a sustained scream, whilst I don’t even know if I’m making a sound or not. The sound of war around me, of combat, is universal, too loud, and my own physical extremes of effort, motion, even within exhaustion, means that I would not be able to sense any exertion in the making of my own noises.

But I must be making those. It is kill or be killed. Kill now. Kill again. And again. And again, and again. And again, and again and again and again and again…

Bullets fly, and now one passes through me, even as they sting my comrades. They fall, I yet move forward.

I see bodies and limbs cartwheel through the air. A head bounces off my torso with force and knocks me sideways as I stumble to recover my balance. Explosions acute become dull with repetition. Near and further, further and near, and all around.

Hold ground and gain ground. Hold ground and gain ground. Hold and hate. Gain and hate.

I just sense the motions. Faint perceptions chopped into milliseconds: Running, dodging, firing, and killkillkill. It is not enough that we only live 50, 60, 70, 80, 90 years, and die. It is not enough that some die days in to a new life, or merely a year or a dozen years in, and that we face illness, disease and accident and murder. There is really nothing here worth gaining within so temporary and precarious a perch. And yet we war and kill. And kill and kill and kill and kill and kill.

I am consumed by and possessed of hate. The fire around me is matched by the fury of sparks and fire in my brain, shorting all circuits that could have been used for love, friendship, a helping hand to stretch, the building of something, appreciation of beauty and art, the making of music, a gentle touch to receive… a kiss dispensed, to experience a taste, a smell, a smile, another smile, another kiss, to build something… to see the sky again…

Why not kisskiss instead of killkill? Who machinates these wars from on high? Who would design such a world in the first place, with any whisper of a room for, the slightest chance of, war? If a god, I can curse such a god.

A crescendo of hate, fury, fire.

I hate.

______

Well. After that, something lighter from the book (and then, I promise, the Preface. I break all the rules - here the Preface comes last! But in the book, it is first, naturally.

AND THEN YOU

A fool such as I, living a lie

being complete, I stood on my feet

going no further

than needing no other

A fool such as I, while not knowing pain

could not know sun, from days of rain,

and lived with self, and abandoned care

never venturing, from the place where…

…I hid

.

.

.

.

and then you ~

_________________

Preface

Firstly, no artificial intelligence (AI) was employed in the writing of this book; I even eschew instances of offered “auto-complete.”

Unlike my prior two books, one a fiction work and the other a non-fiction MBA-text, this book presents a departure from those dichotomies. Comprised of poems, essays, short-short-stories, and text of indeterminate meter, style, and content, it creates its own beat on matters true and imagined – regarding life. And death.

That suits, perhaps, the reader: We’re loosed from the strictures of typical knowledge in the one case and, in the other, the silo(s) of usual plots, characters, and resultant actions and outcomes – and any associated expectations.

Here, some rules are retained for steerage yet breakage. Others are invented; whether grammar, punctuation, concatenations and words (definitions can, hopefully, be surmised by surrounding content), as paired with junked meter, blended with careening rhyme, reason, and alliteration… I reached and defined then swirled to the page’s canvas from an open, sometimes warped, pallet… and why not? As be-bop often floats from structure; changing meter, changing time, then returns, so we can here. There are no “wrong notes.”

The book of the Bohemian is free of charges that come to those who fold-in and down to forces they fear. Fears are such that, to some, they seemingly mean everything even as they mean nothing. Other forces are, most certainly, real and powerful – but I find no reason to yield.

In other areas of life, I’ve shucked “security” multiple times in service to experiences and simple growth. In stripping overlays and encroachments that can cripple any of us and too often do, one can enter a zone. No descriptions here; you must experience it for yourself. Believe in yourself, even if it seems tepid, initially, then find the storming into unanticipatable vistas, alliances, friendships, and yields.

We are all born knowing only hunger, cold, and fear. We cry and squall. We are so elemental in our existence that we don’t even know that discomfort and fear have relief. We cannot know ourselves from a bug being we don’t even know a bug… and certainly not ourselves. One doesn’t discover and live while harboring within strict, malfounded, religions or serving various… gods… fears… superstitions… and devoting to someone else’s shaky firmament of values and beliefs.

And so begins the injections of many things by other people: truths, lies, beliefs, propaganda… fidelities, trust, malevolence, betrayals… more… your protections and judgments weak if at all. As many expect a strong deference to fear to protect them while expecting others to behave that way, the authentic, growing, person discovers that a servility to such provides no protection even as it can only diminish the self and soul. Do not be usual.

I should also say: the dictum ever-serves; write what you know/write who you know - that is all anyone can do. But is it? A writer sometimes doesn’t know, when words start coming, precisely where they come from or even what they mean. Living, dreaming, nightmaring, awakening. Some of this book may be spirit writing… why not?...

Inspiration can be a face in a crowd, it can be a forlorn toy or bric-a-brac, a falling barn. It can be an old piece of film with people in backgrounds who have no idea they were captured. What life did they live? Who were they? Here and gone; a sliver of mere seconds the only clue that they were ever here. It can be an old person dining alone, staring… it can be the result of a visitation or premonition.

Lastly, many of these pieces are in the first-person. That is my writing preference but only some of what follows regards me directly. Some first-person narratives seemed to come from auras of people I observed - often from afar – and personalized as qualified by my own experience or… hubris.

Otherwise, life as lived… for now…

Regards -

The Author

__________________________________________________________________________

I am a U.S. Army veteran (HQ, 500th Military Intelligence Brigade [Japan]; 1st Personnel Command [1st PERSCOM, Europe]; Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations and Plans [ODCSOPS, Pentagon], more) and a retired Fortune500 I.T. executive (Young & Rubicam, Inc., DC-NY; Burson-Marsteller, LLC, DC-NY, more) as well as employment at major non-profits (Nat’l. Food Processors Assoc., N. VA [now GMA]; Water Environment Federation, N. VA, more); as well as Top Secret contract work for clients. I have passed four FBI background checks, the most recent in June of 2022. My new book, A Bohemian in a Precarious Belfry - Vol. I: Poetry & Prose is on Amazon in a few weeks, and elsewhere. I am also the author of the novel THE GRIM GRIND OF LIFE:  A PI’s Strange Bounces through a Surfeit of Eateries, Juke Joints, and Dark Doorways.  Prior, I authored the MBA-text I.T. WARS: Managing the Business-Technology Weave in the New Millennium (UofW, UofMD, more than a dozen others). The latter book’s last chapter discusses energy and U.S. grid vulnerabilities, and remains a leading-voice in those realms. Books and expanded bio are available on Amazon.