Articles by Tom Greening

We found 67 results.


Bombing Sheep
Tom Greening – TRANSCEND Media Service, 24 Jun 2019

On a hot, dry, smoggy day in Los Angeles,
a military jet roars over my house,
leaving a beautiful white vapor trail.

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Insurgents East and West
Tom Greening – TRANSCEND Media Service, 7 Dec 2015

We’re having a problem here
with the occupiers sent
by a foreign ruler named George.

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Liberated
Tom Greening – TRANSCEND Media Service, 23 Nov 2015

There she lies at midday in the square
as if resting from her errands,
shopping bag in hand, wool gloves, sturdy shoes,

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Hitler Won
Tom Greening – TRANSCEND Media Service, 2 Nov 2015

Hitler won.
He has converted the Jews,
Palestinians, Russians, Chechens,
Iranians, Iraqis, Afghans,
even his nemesis, the
Holy Americans.

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War Wounded
Tom Greening – TRANSCEND Media Service, 26 Oct 2015

I cannot see you.
I do not want to hear you.
Go away–

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Walter’s Search
Tom Greening – TRANSCEND Media Service, 14 Sep 2015

He said he joined the Army
to give meaning to his life,

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Throwing Babies on Bonfires
Tom Greening – TRANSCEND Media Service, 7 Sep 2015

Throwing babies on bonfires
doesn’t make sense to me.
I can’t imagine that they burn well,
so what’s the point?

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How Can This Be?
Tom Greening – TRANSCEND Media Service, 31 Aug 2015

Hear a mother softly cry
Beneath the dark and mournful sky
War claimed her child and she asks why….
How can this be?

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Don’t Ask
Tom Greening – TRANSCEND Media Service, 17 Aug 2015

Let a thousand flowers bloom
as we hasten to our doom.

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Onward U. S. Soldiers
Tom Greening – TRANSCEND Media Service, 27 Jul 2015

Onward, U. S. soldiers, marching off to war,
with the lure of conquest worth the blood and gore.

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Imperium?
Tom Greening – TRANSCEND Media Service, 8 Jun 2015

Our nation’s efforts, cruel and chronic,
to reign supreme and hegemonic

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Peacemaker
Tom Greening – TRANSCEND Media Service, 9 Feb 2015

Most people thought by now that I’d at least
have stopped the fighting in the Middle East.

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Falluja Corpse
Tom Greening – TRANSCEND Media Service, 17 Nov 2014

I will lie here,
buried below Falluja
for a long time.
Being dead,
I am in no hurry.

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The 2000th Death
Tom Greening – TRANSCEND Media Service, 10 Nov 2014

Although George died as victim of a bomb
let’s greet his death with patriots’ aplomb.
There’s nothing in his death that’s grim or stark,
for he is just an artificial mark

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Peace May Come
Tom Greening – TRANSCEND Media Service, 27 Oct 2014

From what I have seen of the human race
I calculate that peace may come to the world
when about ten people are left,

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Crusade
Tom Greening – TRANSCEND Media Service, 20 Oct 2014

Living in this Christian land,
it isn’t hard to understand
our President was not elected,
but was by God himself selected.

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To Recruits
Tom Greening – TRANSCEND Media Service, 15 Sep 2014

You are pawns–
don’t you understand that?
It’s a game
and you aren’t worth much,

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Military Recruiters
Tom Greening – TRANSCEND Media Service, 8 Sep 2014

Ghouls troll school halls
preying on the young
who have no better options.

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Geneva Accords?
Tom Greening – TRANSCEND Media Service, 1 Sep 2014

I must admit that I am bored
by each arcane humane accord.

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Not a War Criminal
Tom Greening – TRANSCEND Media Service, 25 Aug 2014

Like Julius Streicher,
I’ve never killed anyone.
He was a Nazi newspaperman
hanged at Nuremburg
for portraying Jews as evil.

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Looted
Tom Greening – TRANSCEND Media Service, 16 Jun 2014

I suppose there was looting in 331 B. C.
when Alexander the Great “liberated” Babylon.

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Death’s Rainbow
Tom Greening – TRANSCEND Media Service, 9 Jun 2014

I walked upon the battlefield
and saw a grotesque scene revealed:
the corpses there, both friend and foe,
all formed a sort of weird rainbow.

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Prepackaged Thought
Tom Greening – TRANSCEND Media Service, 2 Jun 2014

No longer staid and antiquated,
my thinking now is automated.
Why dream up ideas by myself
when I can get them off the shelf?

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Pleader
Tom Greening – TRANSCEND Media Service, 19 May 2014

I, too, am a pleader,
but insane, groveling,
inarticulate, nearly mute or shrieking,

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Revenge
Tom Greening – TRANSCEND Media Service, 12 May 2014

The moon is low and casts its shadows long,
and in this gloom what God can say I’m wrong?

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Collateral Damage
Tom Greening – TRANSCEND Media Service, 28 Apr 2014

No one has asked me, but if they did
like Pilate I’d wash my hands of it.

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Why I Am Not Going to Iraq
Tom Greening – TRANSCEND Media Service, 7 Apr 2014

I am not going to Iraq
because I might see
a ten year-old girl get her face blown off

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Sniper
Tom Greening – TRANSCEND Media Service, 31 Mar 2014

One man, one gun, one shot, one corpse.
That is how Ernie Pyle died on Okinawa,
caught in the crosshairs….
and how many others
in how many wars?

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What Is Left of Honor
Tom Greening – TRANSCEND Media Service, 24 Mar 2014

After the IED blew
on the bridge over the Tigris River
the medics scraped the body parts
that had once been Jeffrey R. Wallace

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Where Is Thoreau Now That We Need Him?
Tom Greening – TRANSCEND Media Service, 17 Feb 2014

I think it’s time for us to go
and pay a visit to Thoreau.
In times like this we need a sage,

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Anti-War Poetry
Tom Greening – TRANSCEND Media Service, 3 Feb 2014

I scurry around the city
intoning my anti-war poems
at peace rallies and poetry readings,

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Sleep of Fools
Tom Greening – TRANSCEND Media Service, 27 Jan 2014

So will this be the magic, blissful year
when finally all wars will disappear?

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Vengeance
Tom Greening – TRANSCEND Media Service, 13 Jan 2014

Hatred like a high velocity bullet
pierced my skin, gathered my organs
(heart, brain, the rest)

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Anti-War Demonstration
Tom Greening – TRANSCEND Media Service, 6 Jan 2014

Instead of going to Baghdad
I strolled four blocks
to a convenient anti-war demonstration

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Criminal Intent
Tom Greening – TRANSCEND Media Service, 2 Dec 2013

Were I to be a criminal
I’d try to be original.

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Turkey Shoot
Tom Greening – TRANSCEND Media Service, 25 Nov 2013

Some say turkeys are dumb birds
and get what they deserve.

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Patriot
Tom Greening – TRANSCEND Media Service, 11 Nov 2013

I never guessed that my friend Howard
would turn out to be a coward.

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Nacht Und Nebel
Tom Greening – TRANSCEND Media Service, 4 Nov 2013

“Nacht und Nebel” is what the Nazis called
the way they hid the camps,

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Meditating on the War
Tom Greening – TRANSCEND Media Service, 28 Oct 2013

On January 16,
whoever is running this ashram
turned up the heat—

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Drones
Tom Greening – TRANSCEND Media Service, 16 Sep 2013

Drones are fun, so let’s enjoy them,
from safe distance fast deploy them.
Blow up people easily

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Let’s Try Everything
Tom Greening – TRANSCEND Media Service, 2 Sep 2013

Back then
I was a young and sheltered American,
but I remember the newsreels:
Refugees on broken roads
trod east, or was it west?

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March 16, 1968
Tom Greening – TRANSCEND Media Service, 19 Aug 2013

On the day the United States
killed itself
504 Vietnamese also died.
The My Lai peasants
died their deaths in ditches,

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What Is War?
Tom Greening – TRANSCEND Media Service, 5 Aug 2013

What is war, and whom shall we ask?
Clausewitz gave his bland definition,
“nothing but the continuation
of politics by other means,”
but he did not then bleed.

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After
Tom Greening – TRANSCEND Media Service, 29 Jul 2013

After the fun, after the shooting spree,
this is the part we did not want to see—
Two groups of victims on a smoking plain,
one armed with tanks, the other armed with pain.

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Endless War
Tom Greening – TRANSCEND Media Service, 15 Jul 2013

When a war has just begun
it can seem like lots of fun—
hunting down the evil prey,
killing bad guys every day.

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My Drone
Tom Greening – TRANSCEND Media Service, 8 Jul 2013

I know that I am not alone
in wishing I had my own drone.

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Gulf War Memorial
Tom Greening – TRANSCEND Media Service, 24 Jun 2013

With its 750 oil well fires
burning like giant votive candles
on a vast sand altar,

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Betrayed
Tom Greening – TRANSCEND Media Service, 17 Jun 2013

Boyish Soviet soldiers believed
they were being sent to Afghanistan
to build hospitals and plant trees.

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Nichts Neues Im Westen
Tom Greening – TRANSCEND Media Service, 10 Jun 2013

Back in 1928 Erich Maria Remarque
confronted us with the image
of the beheaded soldier
still running,

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Blood and Oil
Tom Greening – TRANSCEND Media Service, 27 May 2013

The war is over, and I’m told
we good guys won,
so God must love us,

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War Drugs
Tom Greening – TRANSCEND Media Service, 13 May 2013

When we go marching off to war
our need for drugs begins to soar.

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Kill for Peace
Tom Greening - TRANSCEND Media Service, 6 May 2013

Some soldiers do not like to kill—
not for the glory or the thrill.
But do not fret—relax, for now
psychologists can teach them how.

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Pray for War
Tom Greening – TRANSCEND Media Service, 29 Apr 2013

Our heroes need good wars to fight,
for that is their God-given right.

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Waiting for War, Again
Tom Greening – TRANSCEND Media Service, 15 Apr 2013

I sit on the edge of my chair,
hold my breath,
wait, pray, fret,
cower and rant.

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Refugee
Tom Greening – TRANSCEND Media Service, 1 Apr 2013

Take my land, take
the brook where I caught my first fish,
the field my grandfather
cleared of rocks and stones with . . .

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War Games
Tom Greening – TRANSCEND Media Service, 25 Mar 2013

Children get killed in wars,
which is not good for them.
They should be tickled
and made to laugh,

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Imperium?
Tom Greening – TRANSCEND Media Service, 4 Mar 2013

Our nation’s efforts, cruel and chronic,
to reign supreme and hegemonic
impress our allies as moronic, …

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Where Is Thoreau Now That We Need Him?
Tom Greening – TRANSCEND Media Service, 25 Feb 2013

I think it’s time for us to go
and pay a visit to Thoreau.
In times like this we need a sage…

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Hitler Won
Tom Greening – TRANSCEND Media Service, 7 Jan 2013

Hitler won.
He has converted the Jews,
Palestinians, Russians, Chechens,
Iranians, Iraqis, Afghans,
even his nemesis, the
Holy Americans…

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Onward U. S. Soldiers
Tom Greening – TRANSCEND Media Service, 24 Dec 2012

Onward then, ye soldiers, brave and righteous throng,
blend with ours your voices in this insane song.
Show that you are loyal unto Obama our King,
Kill those who oppose him, and his praises sing.

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Liberated
Tom Greening – TRANSCEND Media Service, 17 Dec 2012

There she lies at midday in the square
as if resting from her errands,
shopping bag in hand, wool gloves, sturdy shoes, …

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Anti-Depressant
Tom Greening – TRANSCEND Media Service, 12 Nov 2012

I’m depressed and hallucinating again,
and need my doctor’s help.
I see things on TV
that aren’t really there,

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Is This What It Takes?
Tom Greening – TRANSCEND Media Service, 22 Oct 2012

Is this what it takes—
flaming, crumbling tombs on Wall Street,
a burning Pentagon?

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A Happy War
Tom Greening – TRANSCEND Media Service, 15 Oct 2012

Pacifism’s such a bore—
I’m going to design a war

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Virus
Tom Greening – TRANSCEND Media Service, 24 Sep 2012

Our species coughs and wheezes,
and we can barely help each other.
The immunization shots
provided by religions
didn’t work, or made us sicker.

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Not Ours
Tom Greening – TRANSCEND Media Service, 17 Sep 2012

I comment to the doctor on
the far worse plight of Afghani civilians
being maimed and killed by mines and bombs.
“Three a day, by the mines,” I remark.
“Not ours,” he replies.
Ah yes—the former Evil Empire’s.

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Conflict Resolution
Tom Greening – TRANSCEND Media Service, 10 Sep 2012

When I perceive I’ve been attacked
there is a virtue that I’ve lacked:
Instead of letting strife abate
I’m eager to retaliate.

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