writings/poetry/sun-tzu don't know shit

There is no art to war -- see,There is no art to war -- see,
Even though we've been having them a while
It's never evolved anything I'd call style.
Just revolves like a terrier after his tail
But scaling ever upward,
First easel, then mural, then nuclear bomb,
Because
And correct me if I'm wrong
Nobody's ever said,
“The Franco-Prussian War was a perfect example of War's Impressionist period”
Know what I mean?
You can make dye from mustard grass
But you'll just die from mustard gas.
And as for all those dead kids and missing limbs
Replaced by sculptures of plastic,
Unlike art, the classics don't get better with age.

So that's it, then. No art in the way war is waged,
But maybe in the way it's wagged.
Like, what technique does it take
To make a douchebag wave flags and hate ragheads?
Hmm... No artfulness except the artifice,
I guess,
Because I know I'm not supposed to,
But I remember the Alamo.
I remember the Maine
And the Gulf of Tonkin
And the smoking gun in the shape of a mushroom
(and you say I'm the one stuck with MY head in the) clouds.

Fuck Sun-Tzu. He don't know shit.
The Art of War made no sense,
So I decided to commence trying
reading it upside-down, inside-out, backwards.
There is war in art if we're talking about words,
The s-words of Homer,
His Iliad is making me ill,
Filling it with the first written words,
Words about killing.
And I have the gall to call myself a writer
As if being a lover was any different from a fighter.
Canon, yeah, canon fires the cannons.
I'm hit, I'm hit.

They say we don't have real wars anymore,
These days I guess we just fight.
And Sun-Tzu don't know shit about the frightened nights
I spend awake, fist clutching the bedpost,
My eyes clenched tight,
Trying to ignore surgical strikes exploding overhead,
Or the trench I dug in front of my TV
Sweating out Katie fucking Couric's latest police action
Zipping overhead.
And all of a sudden a million people are murdered
And we're all just watching
Like it's an episode of Law & Order
Asking, "What's the motive? What's the motive? What's the motive?"
As if we weren't trapped on this locomotive with rifles for ties
And if my eyes aren't lying
It goes on
For miles and miles
Past each horizon
With no destination
No stops
No stations

As if the only way off wasn't to take your hand and dance.
Left... right... left... right... left... right... left...
Until we tip this fucker over.
So that you fall on top of me,
Or maybe I'm above
And we can finally get around to making
...art.

-- Steve Stormoen: 2009


poetry;
return;