The tour began in the South of Italy.

He fought to the north, and then

by way of England, Sgt. Edward T. Weleski

charged Omaha Beach as

the Rangers scaled the cliffs.

Somewhere in France

a grenade’s shrapnel sent him

to the hospital, but only till

the Reich broke the line

and the wounded went to the front

to push back the Bulge

if they could hold a gun and stand,

which he did, until frostbite

wrecked his feet and sent him home.

He would have done it again.

War is always.

Necessary, sometimes.

But we must never forget what it brings.

It does not bring clarity.

It does not bring peace.

It brings my grandfather back to France.

Unconscious on his deathbed,

that shrapnel still in his body

a half century later,

assembled grandchildren hear

Sgt. Edward T. Weleski

anxiously report to his commander

even as his wife holds his fading hand.

If I killed you

Would it bring peace

If someone killed me

Would there be reprieve

We sit and watch the world die

We listen to all their lies

Death and war, bombs and drones

And you believe peace will be the prize?

They have us where they want us

No better than a zombie

I will do whatever they tell me

I will believe we are the only right country

I will believe that there will be no consequences

There will be no revenge

There are no man made diseases

Nothing to avenge

War will bring joys

No mothers missing their boys

No dead daughters on the side line

After this world war,

yep,

Everything will be just fine

It started with a misfire.

The nuke was never supposed to hit civilian targets.

This would have been bad enough on its own, if it weren't for the fact that the country hit struck back.

This would have been bad enough on its own, if it weren't for the fact that America

'intervened'.

The good news is, this can never happen again.

After all, there's no one left to fight.

Bye bye, humanity.

“General! General!” I demanded as I pushed through the second barrier of locking doors. “A few words please!” I waved my tape recorder in his face. He brushed me aside.

“What do you want, reporter?” He asked. His eyes were grey, cold. But they weren’t tired. No, they were awake. Observing everything. I sucked in my breath.

“This new war brewing… Everyone wants to know: will it be the next world war? World War III?”

The general exhaled slowly. I detected a hint of nicotine on his breath. Cigarettes? No one’s used those obsolete addiction sticks in over fifty years. He scoffed at me, a few chuckles, then said. “You’re a reporter. Without a doubt, you’ve seen the pictures.” He glared at me. Like I was wasting his time. “Why ask a question you already know the answer to?”

I bit my lip and continued the interview. “Do you think the New Allies will win?”

He laughed again. It was deep, rich laugh. Coming from the pit of the stomach. A genuine laugh. Damn, this man thinks I’m an idiot. “Reporter-girl, you do realize I’m a five-star general for the New Allies. Right?”

“I am aware of your rank. Yes.” I held my ground. After breaking several laws to get into this room, I wasn’t gonna let his lack of straight answers dissuade me. “But you didn’t answer my question.”

“Well, my answers depend on you. Do you want a story, or do you want the truth?”

“The truth is the story!” I defended.

He shook his head at me, clicking his tongue in disapproval. “The truth is never entertaining like your stories are. Once you spin the truth, you have woven nothing but a lie.”

He looked to me once again. “So, do you want a story, or do you want the truth?”

I didn’t answer right away. A pit was growing in my stomach. I thought of my brother. He had enlisted as a volunteer for the New Allies weeks ago. He was going to get out of basic training soon. Probably going to get shipped off to fight the enemy soon.

I dropped the recorder. It clanged against the ground. Part of its plastic fragmenting off. Broken. I didn’t care. “I want the truth.”

“Very well then.”

“So, do you think the New Allies will win?”

He laughed again. “Still on that?”

“You said you’d give me the truth!” I growled, irritated.

The general grinned at me, then threw his hands in the air. “The truth is I don’t know.” Leaning forward, he added in a whisper with an almost cheerful tone. “And it doesn’t matter!”

My blood boiled underneath my skin. I gritted my teeth. It took every ounce of self restraint not to straggle this man. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

He didn’t answer. He just kept smiling.

What a fucking loon.

How could my brother giving his life to you just not matter?

“This war is going to bring about world peace, isn’t it?!” I was practically shouting at this point. Hysteric. “That’s what everyone says!”

“The ‘everyone’ who reads your stories? If people are fed nothing but lies, how could you expect anything but that to come out of them?”

“It’s going to bring about peace!” I repeated, desperate to convince myself. “The war to end all wars,” I said in a near whisper.

“That’s what they said about the first world war. The Great War. That’s what they called it. But, then there’s World War II. And I bet you, some folks also thought that would just be the end of it.”

Then he gestured to the room around us. A room with specialized military personal planning the next move. A room with maps detailing the enemy’s territory sprawled across the walls. A room with buttons that could destroy entire nations. “Yet here we are. War does not beget peace. The only thing war begets is false peace. For the remainder of our lives, yes, there may be no more war. Only because the scars of it are burned too deeply into our skin. But our offspring are born, free of marks. They do not know of our pain, our suffering. Instead, they grow arrogant in times of false peace. And once we have passed… a new war shall be born of their ignorance.”

He smiled at me. A toothy grin. He was missing a front tooth. I wanted to knock a few more out. God, I hate that smile.

“You have been fed lies all your life. A common citizen. I do not blame you. But I’ve seen the truth. Now, I’ve given you the truth. But you are not a general. You are a weaver.”

A man at sea is always at war.

With the sea

His vessel

His men

Himself

But most of all

The dreams he desperately steams toward at the end of the horizon

Conflict makes man

We can only choose to survive

Victim to the haul and tow

We can only choose to survive

The salt-wind that cuts our faces and burns our eyes

We can only choose to survive.

We like to say that chimpanzees are warlike. Instead of having sex to make peace, they hunt down their enemies and patrol their border areas much like armed guards patrolling the ruins of a prized museum. Upon closer inspection, though, we’ve found that wars and human incursion - no arms for that which they cannot resist - have led to the chimpanzee wars. Limit their territory, start living where they live, and they turn on each other.

Humans are very much the same, I think. Marginalized communities like mine are under attack right now and we’re setting up purity tests all around us, a lot like border guards, to limit who can come in and who belongs in the wasteland. We even hunt down and attack those who’ve transgressed our rules of what mustn’t be said and how to voice dissent. Resist, but only in one specified way with pre-printed words. It reminds me of 1984.

I was just asked when I was leaving after quoting Green Day’s “No Trump, No KKK, No Fascist USA” around the Census being armed by Border Patrol to identify people we deem illegal here in the US. At first, I wanted to just reply lol, but the binary of love it or leave it required more than that. Then I remembered Harvey Milk’s speech - “Come to San Francisco? Or stay and fight.” I thought of “I’ll stay and fight, like a patriot” was a good response, but someone else beat me to it. A response so I don’t have to say much else.

I’m disturbed, though, by my recycling of slogans. Am I just as bad as The Party, simply repurposing things at hand to lob little bombs at my snarky targets? I’m not really a fighter. I think, and it saddened me that we killed our latest target of border ire. Not because he was a great guy. Just because, well, he was killed. Killing anyone is a sad occasion to me because we all have families, we all possess a divine spark that is not our human right to extinguish. Never.

I want to say something original here, but it seems like everything has already been said. I find myself lobbing makeshift grenades at human targets.

Am I any better than a chimpanzee?

Oh USA, USA ... You can't walk in peace

you don't want peace, you want war!

you are worse than a fox

your mask is a bomb box

what is not enough for you?

tell me you're so greedy

you are a master in dispute

my bitter poem begins - are you ready?

I'm right, I'm not a US citizen

I don't even know your system

but ...

I am just a child on this planet like you

even though I'm a normal guy

I have the right to comment

even though I can't fly

I know you have benefited the world a lot

you have invented so many things

people call you a magical land

please don't influence their opinions ...

A guy named Trump

He started stupidly, taking great risks

he threatened the war with his own, and confused everyone

he is a man - a lot of money! One day he would die

but ...

what about the poor?

the poor, the sick, and the children?

who is thinking of them?

the world is split into two poles, waiting for war, WAR!

Wake up, O people! Wake up!

Now is not the time to keep quiet!

write!

write!

write!

keep writing until the fools come to their senses!

write until peace is established! Write!

I'm not a politician

I just didn't write this poem

I don't want to offend anyone

I'm not on the side of anyone

just ...

I am just a boy on this planet!

The conclusion is from you

War create peace in a time when there is enough destructive force to kill us all?

I don't see it.

I only see escalation and retribution until no one is left to fight.

Until those in power are too weak to push another button and there is nothing left to win.

God save us from the madman (woman) who thinks that a war can be won without destroying anything that is worth fighting for in the first place. What victory is there if no one is left to see it, to live it, to claim it?

And even if we got away with only ruining part of the planet and part of humanity, it wouldn't be long until we tried our hand at it again because war is never satified with its victory for long. War is about power and power is greed. and greed must be fed.

War is about power and wanting more than you need. Peace is about sharing until there is no more need. Peace come from war? It seems an oxymorn to me.

Stepping over debris, the fox sniffs at the ground. She laps a browned stain in the icy ground and wanders deeper into the valley. A million bodies lay fallen in the snowbank, being slowly covered by the flurries. She looks out then turns back to the forest. A moose in the distance startles her and she races towards a large boulder in the distance. Close by, she smells two humans. She peers over to see two children walking through the snow. She cowers as they walk by, picking up plastic bottles and debris.

“I hate this new job,” the taller boy says as he tosses a bottle into the burlap sack he’s carrying.

“It pays well enough. After the depression, we needed the money,” the other murmurs.

The taller boy scratches a growth on his neck and picks up more debris. The fox watches, her eyes and ears twitching to make sure she’s not in danger as she watches. The boys disappear from view and she hops on top of the boulder. She walks over to wher the boys were, but a hare dashes by, taking her mind away from her work. She rushes after it, scaling rocks and diving thorugh brush. All of a sudden, a loud crash startles both the hare and the fox and the fox dashes up a tree. A plume of smoke rises in the distance. The smell of fire wafts into her nose, and she begins to make her way out of the forest. She’s almost out when she is greeted by the worried look of a young girl. The fox scrambles up another tree, but the girl pays her no attention.

“Mike? Davey?” she screams as she looks around the forest.

There is no answer. She drops her sack at the edge of the fox’s tree and wanders into the brush. The fox waits for her to leave then moves two branches lower on the tree, eying the sack. She listens for the girl to come back but after a while, she climbs all the way down and sniffs at the sack. she bites a corner of it and plastic spills out. She sniffs at a bottle, but a gruff male voice startles her. She runs back up the tree and watches as a man in a camouflage uniform grab the sack and walk into the forest. She curls up and falls asleep.

“Damn kids stepped on a landmine,” she hears as heavy steps thud under the tree.

The uniformed man is back, holding the little girl by her collar. She is charred on her face and has red welts on her back. He throttles her and tosses her to the ground. The fox watches intensely as the man kicks the girl in the back. She growls as the little girl cries on the ground.

“How can stupid can you brats be! For eighty years no one set off a single bomb and now you’re costing me money!”

The girl sobs as the soldier spit on her and leaves, kicking over her burlap sack as he marches into the forest. The girl lies motionless on the ground for a while, then slowly she rose, grabbing her bag and shoveling the trash into it. She turns and walks away from the forest, slowly picking up more debris from the snow. She is long gone when the fox scales the tree again and resumes nosing through the snow, looking for her next meal and stepping gingerly to avoid any forgotten landmines.