Against the Next War, Allies, Authoritarianism, Bad Ideas, Brotherly Love, Capitalism, Class War, Community, Compassion, Culture, Democracy, Free Market Capitalism, Free Spirit, Freedom, Freedom and Liberty, Friends, Giving, Human Nature, Humanism, Idealism, Ideologies, International Relations, Internet, Liars Lies and Lying, Life, Love, Obligations to Society, Peace, Philos, Political Ideologies, Violence, Wisdom

Against the Next War

Paul Sunstone

(About a 3 minute read)

The internet has made it now
Bound to happen
Tomorrow or the year after.
Bound to happen.

Maybe.
Up to you.

The politicians and the preachers,
The two dogs of the capitalist class,
Will once again want a war,
Just as they always do.

War to them is a gift, you see,
It’s not personal, it’s not their blood.
But war makes some folks rich
And you will never change that,
You will never change that,
Though the dogs will bark it’s not so.

A war of aggression
Against some people somewhere,

Most likely brown,
Most likely poor,
Most likely weak,
Most likely no real threat.

War for the sake of the banks
And for the merchants of death.
War for the sake of the pulpit,
And for the corridors of power.

But not a war for the sake
Of you and of me. We don’t count.
Our side is the one side
That has never counted.
Never.

That’s how war goes, it’s always been so
And it’s bound to happen again,
Soon happen again.

This is your world,
How it really is —
The world you think,
The world you were taught,
The gods want you to live in and love
Them more than you love each other.

In your world are great nations:
Nations the greatest in history,
Nations with the power of suns,
A thousands suns,
To do good, make truths come true
For even the poor man, the poor woman,
The poor child. Make truths come true.

But these nations,
Nations great and greatest,
Act only like whores,
Filthy whores,
Fucking folks raw,
Spreading their diseases,
Recruiting new girls,
Ever younger girls
To fuck you, to fuck all of you,
To fuck everyone.

This is your world
Your world without end.

But now someday you see

Someday now for once it will happen
For once it will stop
Stop the day they give a war
And you
You rise up, join hands
By the millions, possibly billions,
Linked together by the net
And by love, and by common sense.

At last,
At last you will rise, singing
“At last my spirit shall have water!
At last my cries shall be heard!
At last my thirst shall be slaked!”

Yes, you will rise up and you will say
In a voice thunderous and magnified
By the whole world joining in,

Say, “Those people are our friends,
We chat with them by day and by night.
We know their hopes, we know their dreams,
We know their troubles, we know their fears.
We know them, we know their names.

“Jane and Matthias. Terese and Sindhuja.
Mark, Parikhitdutta, and Min.

We even marry them now and then —
They shall not this time be murdered.

“You will not touch them,
Our brothers, our friends;
This once the bombs won’t fall.
This once the bombs won’t fall.
You politicians and preachers,
You capitalists and bankers all —
This once the bombs won’t fall.”

Yet you know it will ever be a dream
Just a dream, just a mere dream.
It will ever be a dream
If you, if we, keep on dividing,
Never uniting, never joining,
But instead just staying, just keeping,
To my echo chamber or to yours.

So let’s come together
Let’s come together,
Let’s come together.

So let’s come together
Before the nukes fall,
Before the demons fall.
Before we die in the winter,
And we come together
Never once come together at all.

 

Please seriously consider spreading this poem — spreading it to your site, to the social media sites — in an effort to make it go viral. We need it viral well before the next war, we need folks mulling over the idea of rebelling against the violence. Spread this poem and then you too write — write about the ideas presented in the poem. For you, for your brothers and for your sisters, for your children after you — stop the wars of aggression!

Please Note: Matthias has responded by dedicating his poem, Pooling Strength, to this cause.

Bruce has reposted the poem on “The Life and Times of Bruce Genencser“.

Kat has responded by posting this article: I Don’t Know Anything About War.

Published by Paul Sunstone

I live along the Front Range of the Rockies, near Cheyenne Mountain, and blog at Cafe Philos.

58 thoughts on “Against the Next War”

  1. Pingback: Against the next war — Café Philos: an internet café – lunarpoet

      2. May I beg you to think about sharing and/or reposting the poem, Wendi? It you don’t that’s fine — You should feel no obligation to do so, but if you decide to do so, that would be great too.

        Like

  3. I LOVED this, Paul! One of my favorite genres of poetry is anti-war poems and to see something like it written today is exhilarating. I was wondering- did you just mention WordPress bloggers in the middle of your poem? Hahaha 😀

    Like

    Reply

    1. Sure did! I had to force myself not to mention everyone too! But it would have ruined the poem for sure. Thank you so much for your kind words. I hope you’ll seriously consider reposting the poem and/or sharing it on social media.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

  5. A very passionate piece of writing. I’m all for anti-war anything.

    This part was especially powerful:

    “But not a war for the sake
    Of you and of me. We don’t count.
    Our side is the one side
    That has never counted.
    Never.”

    That part makes it all very personal. Wars are fought between those in power (whether they are big countries or big “men”) and rarely have anything to do with the average individual. And yet it is the average individual who suffers. It’s not fair. It never has been.

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    Reply

    1. I so agree with you about that, Sindhuja! To me, among the greatest evils of war is the fact that the common people bear most of the burden of them. In fact, I have read that it has been over a 100 years now since the last time a war killed more combatants than it killed non-combatants!

      By the way, I do not wish you to at all feel any obligation to post about any of this on your blog, but please do if you can see value in it.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply
  6. Pingback: Against the Next War by Paul Sunstone | The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser
  7. Pingback: I don’t know anything about war – Kat's observations.
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  10. Pingback: #513 (pooling strength) – lunarpoet
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  12. Shit, Paul, I’m sorry it took me so long to get here. I have to go to bed soon, but I’m reblogging this, or maybe copying and pasting. I’m pretty tied up the next couple of days, but I’ll do a follow-up when I can.

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    Reply
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