It’s peaceful here in my backyard.
The crows sound happy
with warm October sunlight.

I just read about a deadly gathering in Las Vegas.
Absence of sun-drenched peace.
Inconvenient this time of lost loss.
Death is always inconvenient,
even when invited.

A veteran,
about my age,
this shooter.

I feel like it took more than one
to hold and fire this mental illness rifle.
In a sad and guilty complicit sense,
we have collectively achieved what we bought
and sold
and settled for.

This malformed soldier
is a remnant of what most believed we needed to create,
back in the 60s,
brainwashed into believing
we were protecting wives and kids, somehow
by killing Vietnamese husbands
and many times their wives
and napalmed children,
trees,
forest.

Not exactly breeding ground for growing healthy minds
and well-armed bodies.

I dimly and darkly recall
a much earlier disagreement
with the new commander of the U.S. Navy’s
Officers Candidate School.
A first woman commandant,
something atrociously surprising to men-only militia violence,
similar to Medea
planning an angry hostile life.

This earlier time also started peacefully alone,
but inside,
waiting to be called in to her office,
at the beginning of her second week
in her new exalted position
over new violence-empowered candidates.

I had just completed a gratuitous violence first week of abuse
and militarily precise neglect,
as ruthlessly systematic as racism,
in frigid first week of January,
Rhode Island.
We were so close to the Atlantic
it felt like we were in the ocean.

We had also been frigidly outside,
and hotly inside,
yelled at,
systematically starved,
force marched in gusty zero-degree 3 AM darkness
without coats or hats or gloves,
in fact I think we were in our boxers and Tshirts one night,
due to someone’s sin of omission,
whether contrived on schedule
or spontaneously erupting
from pneumonia reduced and disabled minds,
I do not know.

The hardest part for me
was less than two hours sleep per night.
Industrially guaranteed to reduce oneself to crazy.

When I was first ushered in
for my early exit interview
by none other than her Military Medea Mightiness,
she took one look at miserably civilian dressed me
and asked why would I think it appropriate to disrespect her
by not bothering to show up in uniform.

I started to mention that I had never been issued one
when she told my keeper
that we needed to do an about face
and try again when I looked right.
Or at least as righter
as I might become.

So, he had to go out among my now-former classmates
to beg and borrow,
hopefully he didn’t steal,
boots and belts and pants and shirt and hat.
Later that same long and tedious day
I was once again summoned
for a second shoot.

She wanted to know
why I thought it was OK
to be the first to go
from this new class of officer candidates.
Did my recruiter not explain about this first hazing week?

Well no,
in fact I thought he told me hazing is illegal
in most States.
We develop soldiers;
we don’t grow bullies.

I understand you didn’t make a total ass of yourself.
So if you want to change your mind,
now that we turned the heat back on
and keep the lights off all night
and have turned the verbal abuse down a notch,
or maybe two,
I might be willing to listen
if you beg me nicely to stay here
with us in Navy Officer Paradise.

No thanks,
said I,
I’m already quite disgusted enough
by your shocking lack of even militarized intelligence
to see this as a navy not invested in preserving,
much less protecting,
real live humanity
hanging onto some semblance of sanity.

Oh but you see
this is not true.
Our rules of first week operationalization
are to save your sorry ass
because,
as we all know,
teamwork builds through ego assassinations.

Well no,
actually,
your own recent research on these issues
lies at my fingertips.
Required reading for psych and communication majors,
attitude change and persuasion students
where I hail from in Michigan.

It is a clear and present common threat to survival
that most quickly grows cooperative trust and teamwork,
cooperative co-investments,
especially among those who have learned to trust and respect each other,
including for our recognized
and understood and
appreciated diversity
of talents.
and shared sufficient simplicity of sleep
and active co-listening for harmonic voices.
Or maybe that was just for choirs
and military orchestras.

Well this is fake news to me!
she exclaimed in her sternly patriotic face.

I believe you,
which is why
I want out
of this absence of healthy care
and any semblance of sanity,
disloyal to my family’s investment,
my nation’s rational self-governing future,
and anathema to Sacred Mother Earth.

Are you Native American,
asked she,
as if she couldn’t care less or more.

No more or less than you
I would surmise.

It came as no surprise
when she eagerly accepted
my request to be relieved
of further dishonored service
and cast aside my various borrowed parts
because of ecopolitical leaders
confusing noble grace of unity
with bare-knuckled
bare-headed
frozen uniformity.

I wonder how the Green Beret shooter
in lost loss of Las Vegas
might have suffered from this same sad loss
of militarized teamwork disabilitization,
chronic and critical climates of constant stress.

When the enemy is down
and out of sight,
we cannot afford to have disaffected grunts
sit on angry-fearfilled butts
rethinking who is truly in my ego team’s best interest
and whom we might agree to take out next,
because healthy mental care giving and receiving
has nothing to do with formation
of militarizing violence.

In this same way,
a Presidential God Bless You,
twittered to victims of our own militarizing violent formations,
feels so empty,
fake as the blesser
would do even lesser
mental health care and receiving
for all God’s militarizing
and industrious We Win
So You Must Lose
soldier candidates in deformation,
but also neglected children
and trees,
and starlight
which could bring us together
in one mind of great thanksgiving.

So I was feeling badly,
sad,
because I share our mutually complicit status
for my compatriot’s difficult terrorizing
chronic stress disordering
time.
I too have been there,
lost there,
to a more moderate extent.
I just walked away.

I wish I had done more at the time
in the Navy’s January frigid spaces
against cooperative ecopolitics,
about being of more general use
if fascist critical events of the mid-seventies had been recorded,
freezing dark military-academic preparation time
industriously repeating
away from deforesting further virgin ecofeminist Vietnam forests
and their matriarchally cooperative villages,
to become watched on YouTube
by all prospective soldiers
and NRA advocates,
by patriotic nationalists,
thinking about possible antecedents,
before Bad Ol’ Daddy’s Country-Western Concert
went so very wrong.

I wish we could have recorded
this matriarchal confused and frightened patriotic
loyal commandantish face
when I shared with her
I felt ecofeminist disgraced
by her
Bitch!
Shoot at me again and I will Take You Out!!!
defacement,
in a most homophobic frozen officious place
of mutually inflicted terror.

So then I was feeling a bit more glad,
but still sad
I had not actually said more,
done more,
so I began trimming my twining tendrils
enveloping what’s left of uprooted deadwood trees
malingering in my back lot
and having a rough go of it
as my hedging shears
are no longer what once they were.

As usual,
I tend to speak with my plant recruits
and candidates for future flaming victories,
and felt required,
“I apologize
for this jab
and grab
and pull
and pushy ecopolitics,
but Mommy needs sharper,
and probably newer,
scissors for shutting up her
RightBrain EcoFeminist Diva Voice.

Apologizing to the entire human race”
of potential soldiers and ballistic deadwood downsizers
for your not yet having seen
that anti-feminist patriotic face
glare me back into space
with timeless time exclaiming
BITCH!
Shoot your GLBT EcoFeminist mouth OFF AT ME?
I DON’T military anti-ANTIfeminist THINK SO;

but I wonder how I feel about being this predator
in this eternal frame of egopolitical ignorance,
lack of cooperative military research
and economic-educational-formational intelligence gathering.

As I continued with hacking scissors
and played-out ecofeminist sawsall balls off
and the big manly Yang chopper offer
with their underdog heads!
I kept going back to those January freezing eyes.

IF LOOKS COULD KILL!!!
BITCH!!!!!
YOU DO NOT KNOW ME
and think you can punk your gay white ecofeminist butt
in my guest chair
and think your MidWest Academic BullCrap
will even so much as reach one
WinWin Ping of inspiration
aspiration
hope,
YOU DON’T KNOW ME!
I might have majored in BullDike Fascist Terrorism!
YOU DO NOT KNOW ME!!!

and maybe I don’t either.
Who wants to be that angry lose-lose antagonist
of military industrial absence of intelligence,
would you?

I wish this imaginary spacetime scene had played out
in RealTime frames just that audio way,
but even without sound,
with just her
I AM NOT YOUR BITCH!
but you are not going to be mine
either.

She could not sign those exit papers fast enough,
continues visual only images
of how I still feel,
more or less
about these tangled vines
and tough deadwoods
hanging out in my wanna be ecofeminist backyard.

I will chop them up
and paint them
into diva totem poles
and frames
in which ecofeminists
always play in YouTube Blue and Green Estates
of most polyculturally
matriarchal peace in this back lot solitude,

Although occasionally the patriarchal husband
makes a cameo appearance
for a few All Lives Matter Moments,

But usually just me,
in an early October day
preferring to forget dark frigid January anti-feminist nightmares
of militarized neglect
of basic health assurance and safety
delivered by angry matriarchal commandants,
and hedging shear divas,
depending on which lens is in play,
the full-staged historical tragedy
within my more personal back lot comedy.

It’s still peaceful here in my backyard.
The crows have flown off
warning descent of warm October sunlight.