Tag: War

Orange Genocide

My sister called us one night
She’d come back from a museum
In Vietnam
She sounded like she was crying
I couldn’t make out her words?
Something about Agent Orange
When I looked it up on the internet
And saw all the pictures
…
Can you blame me for sometimes losing faith in humanity?
Sheer stupidity cannot excuse the absolute evil of this act

Chaver and Urumi

1

Chaver:

Devoted to Death, the Chaver lives on
Vendetta, not health, keeps him duty bound
The word ‘amok’ is his by right.

Running

Cutting, slashing, slaying to keep his oath
To a dead corpse, whom he failed to protect
His suzerain’s murder must be avenged
Mother says, ‘Goodbye, die on Honour’s bed’
Devoted to Death, oathbound to die for revenge
The Chaver must dance with urumi, sword and spear
For the dead lord he swore to forever protect.

2

Urumi:

Thousand years of war, two hundred of peace
Gone are the ancient arts of dancing steel
But the blood still boils for battle; (they) join the Air Force
Wielding their new sword whip from inside a cockpit
Becoming one with the weapon. Spinning faster, stronger, higher.

Note: the word ‘amok’ is literally derived from one of the Chaver’s titles… unless they stole it from the Malaysians more than a thousand years ago. One particularly notorious vendetta went on for eight hundred years. The suicide squads were sent to fight the enemy king every eight years at a festival. They turned it into a grand show of violence, which was very well organised. It brought lots of tourists. I’ve written a poem about it, called Mamankam. Those were bloody times, the thousand years after Cheranadu was annihilated… Near constant state of warfare. The Kerala kingdoms’ administrative structures revolved around war, which is pretty weird and interesting to study. Also interesting are the shrinking demographics of the warrior clans, until duelling was banned.

War: A desire for more cows

Gavishti, desire for wealth
Nutritious milk
Good for your health
And Survival

Gavishti, most dire for man
Cattle raiding
Murder making
Soul denial

Gavishti, cow or money
Symbol’s the same
For when untamed
Lose what’s vital

Gavishti, know your desire
Share the outpouring
Quit that mouth watering
Balance desire with charity
No need for these bloody cattle raids

Note to the movie ‘Arrival’s’ writers, the Sanskrit word for war is Yuddha, gavishti is cattle raid. Perhaps you were trying to make a point, that wars had turned into cattle raids? But when were they ever anything more? Or perhaps, you meant the root of ‘war’ arises from the word for cattle raid, an evolution of culture and propaganda transforms it into yuddha? It took a while to work out that one little line in the movie… Quite deep! I suspect the word Yuddha comes from the Egyptian heiroglyph for arm… Or perhaps they share a common origin, from some other culture… I’m looking at you, proto Elamites!!! This heiroglyph is today’s letter ‘i’

Twenty First Century Labyrinth (Trapped in our own formation)

Identities most fragile, form a Chakravyuh Maze of fear and greed, of humanity’s own making
Lies are many, boasts belittle…

Abhimanyu!

Breaker of this formation,

gone away sailing…

Drauni not caught in the maze, he’s outside dreaming
Saw he a vision terrifying, Varuna
Ocean in new guise, nine storms on his face masking
Revealed by the dimming of once golden Surya
A change of Galactic seasons, Earth unshielded

It was then that he woke, ego not yet yielded
Saw the Chakravyuh, brother turned against brother
In their effort to be free, with paper armour
And those motionless chariots of apathy
“The maze can shift,” he shouts in vain, “move together.”
He watches helplessly as the bad season draws nearer.

Wiki: multi-tiered defensive formation that looks like a blooming lotus (पद्मpadma) or disc (चक्र chakra) when viewed from above.

Note: I use Drauni here to represent a certain type of person… One who has been alienated from society and its manifold identities. He’s the outcast, the rebel, the dreamer, who has seen both sides but still has a long way to go on his journey of enlightenment. Paper armor symbolising property documents, which I had to put in after witnessing some racist idiots on a YouTube thread.

Last Stand

Muscles ache, eyes weary, the war was lost, we run, we flee
A hay bed beckons my head in a stable, horses neigh
Sleep at last, my eyes close, glimpsing nightmares, my memories
My parents’ unavenged murder, and friends I was forced to slay

My companions wake me, we’re being chased,
They point to the next hill, at a torch trail
A fiery snake
A thousand riders
To catch five survivors
We who survived the fire lake

We split up to confuse the trail
Riding as fast as we dare
Without light, without bronze (and) mail
Fear fills me everywhere

Our pursuers do not split,
They chase after me with unity
My fear then transforms
Anger feeds my storm

My horse topples down and I wait for the enemy
One against a thousand, the odds are against me
An owl screams from the trees, “Noo Noo, easy peasy”
I chose my spot, and wait with moon sword and sun shield
As dawn breaks I kill the last man while he tries to yield.

Last Stand Music:

[Poem] After Troy

Trojan defeat, the Greeks returned triumphantly
Etruscans aid Trojan refugees building Rome
Greek democracy plagued by demagoguery
Socrates killed by hemlock in his home

Rome defeats Carthage, Ave Jupiter Maximus
While Greece stagnates, their men of talent drained away, turned null
Phalanx versus legion, sarissa against gladius
What use are your big spears when your commanders are inept?
The neo Trojans return to Rome, their new home, in triumph

Image: Battle of Pydna, artist unknown

[Poem] 29 May, 1453: The Day that Forever Changed Civilization

The Varangian guard, bearded and tall
Make the Greeks look so very small
Vultures circle as they form a shield wall
Their songs tell of Valhalla’s hall
Enemies break on their shields, shortswords out

The Varangian cut and stab. It is hot
Fighting from within a wall of flesh, wood and steel
Tired and sweat drenched they march forward till all yield
“For Wotan and the Eagle of Constantinople!”
“For Jesu, and the Divine Flag of Caesar Constantine.”
“For Great Thor, and the Hammer of the Righteous Sky.”
Many gods they invoke in their final hours, betrayed by Venetian bankers
But even a hundred mighty men like these cannot win against tens of thousands

(This is not strictly accurate. The Varangian were more or less culturally and religiously assimilated by the Greeks by this time. Three centuries earlier though, and this scene wouldn’t have been too far off.

Also, it was more like 10000 behind the city’s walls against 100000 and some ginormous canon. The defenders lasted 53 days. Then someone from the inside opened a gate… Western Europe was forced into accepting an Ottoman trade monopoly for eastern goods, and the rest is history: renaissance, major chattel slave trading that was kickstarted by a certain bankrupt Portuguese navigator king, colonialism, industrial revolution, and many ‘damned foolish things in the Balkans’…)

[Poem] Angel of the Battlefield, Antietam (Bloodiest day of the American Civil War)

Antietam/ Sharpsburg, where hallowed ground plaques abound

Sleepy old towns, living atop cemeteries

Let September Seventeenth, Eighteen Sixty Two resound!

Come Ferry down one of History’s estuaries

 

Union Johnny Raw waits near Dunker’s Church in fear

He knows old Stonewall and Robert E Lee are near

 

McClellan be a blind fool but he’s got ‘Lost Order’

And the boys at Harpers are buying them some lost time.

“Maryland, my Maryland,” he thinks he can hear (Confederates draw nearer).

In beat, the Potomac gently humming in rhyme

 

Over twenty thousand men dead, wounded or missing

After only a few hours of the clock ticking

 

Aftermath is devastation, yes… but also proclamation of emancipation

Non-intervention of other ‘great’ nations. A medical barrage:

The birth of the Angel of the Battlefield, the Red Cross and critical triage.

 

“I was lying on my back, supported on my elbows, watching the shells explode overhead and speculating as to how long I could hold up my finger before it would be shot off, for the very air seemed full of bullets, when the order to get up was given, I turned over quickly to look at Col. Kimball, who had given the order, thinking he had become suddenly insane.”

Lt. Matthew J. Graham, Company H, 9th New York Volunteers

 

“Comrades with wounds of all conceivable shapes were brought in and placed side by side as thick as they could lay, and the bloody work of amputation commenced.”

 

Union soldier George Allen