Sounds about right to me. Yesterday I wrote a
diary about the concern top military folk have with blogging soldiers. I was a little suspicious of why they were.
Rev wayfarer was killed in Iraq. He did a blog. I can see why Schoomaker is scared.
Drudgeretort has a story about him.
From the blog of rev wayfarer(Sgt. Thomas Strickland, 27):
"What the fuck has my chain of command been doing? We were winning somewhat when I left. And now we're being pinned down in our own fucking homes? Insurgents are pushing locals out of their homes and taking over my area at will? What kind of fucktarded plan have we been half-assedly executing? Obviously the kind that neglects sound contact with locals. Obviously the kind that gives further distance to unbridged gaps between soldiers and locals. Obviously the kind that has shown enough weakness when confronted by the insugency that it has been encouraged to grow."
From the bio of rev wayfarer:
"You say you want your love to work out right
To last with me through the night
You say you want diamonds on a ring of gold
Your story to remain untold
Your love not to grow cold
All the promises we break from the cradle to the grave
When all I want is you"
Terrer
Pts 1&2
one (Virgo)
Hail hail the dusky crow!
Sweeping silhouetted across the noonday sun,
Happy unfortunate shadow rolls
Looking eastward and inverted
in unkempt homeless ambition
and predatory
bleached blonde-ness.
"Liberty": its lamed-hoarse holler
"Liberty."
Give us misdirection
Perched upon your dinted lamppost
Rusted, paint-flecked,
piss drenched.
Speak more of shame
and loss
to hobbled monuments
mangled documents
and decayed halberdiers.
Speak me Liberty once more.
In tear drop-tattoos
Let us wounded march
to your tune.
Speak me death.
two(Cancer)
Hail again
O black-winged foe!
Blow, breath carried death, blow!
Woe to those beneath your
terrer-ble wings,
craddling embrace
and wide smiling face;
A Sahara-sun of blistering eyes
and teeth flashing kindness,
ashing wetness with heat emanation.
Your Ca-cawing
drives
withdrawing
and lost surface tension
and back pulling evaporation puddle,
lips baring gums and teeth,
on soaking sand sponge,
baking rock.
Your bright smile
warms the flapping butterfly flock
26 strong
in shock and struggling
orangy golden brown speckled
flop-fluttering
unhomogenously
in the wet-spattered crust.
Give me Liberty if you must,
Give me Liberty
make me dust.
Note from the author: A friend asked me to keep a journal of my tour in Iraq. He said he'd want to read it when I got back. I think he'll expect a recounting of days, a memoir of events and actions. I don't expect it to be a record like that at all. What I'm after is an outlet, an escape, a hiding place for the me that takes a back seat when I put on my uniform, when I wear the face of a soldier (the only me most of you have met). Don't get me wrong...I've never been directly pressured by a fellow serviceman of any rank to be anyone but myself, and I don't want anyone who might read this to understand my second self as anything but the me I CHOOSE to hide, the me I want SECURED in my own words. Losing that me is my irrational fear, because it is me who has set that self aside with each wearing of the uniform, since the beginning of my enlistment.
Back to topic: Whether this and my paper journal remain an expression of myslf that is poet, critic, intellect, and humanist or they become the ritual memory of the me that is soldier, scout, trained killer, I can't predict. I expect what I write to be as full of contradictions as I am. I expect what I write to be warm, cold, complicated, simple, contrived, honest, direct and abstract. I expect it, above all, to be an imperfect reflection and expression of that greatest contradiction, humanity.