A Collection of Writings by Connor Guetersloh
If there were no humans
The air would be relieved
From strangled choke of smog and smoke
Coughed out by their machines.
If there were no humans
The land would be set free –
With fields and beasts and birds and trees
Not bound by their ill will.
If there were no humans
Would not the seas be blessed
With more marine life, less oil strife,
And glaciers all intact?
If there were no more humans
The world would lose its worth –
For does beauty really exist
With none to witness it?
Choppy the waves that crown the sea,
Black the beach our eyes can’t see –
Iron umbrella strapped to my back
With spread to beat back the burn of flack
That sprays like sunrays, or foam at the knees
Tripping up our boys wading in, floating free,
And those primed to hop out the LCVP
To seize spots for basking and advance the attack.
“We’ll start the war from right here!”
Shouts our chief among the debris
Of waterlogged sandals and detainees
So we pump ever faster, to triple our tracks,
Cover that beach with swissed Union sacks,
And so, to make sure fun in the sun the future guarantees,
“We’ll start the war from right here!”
I feel marginalized
Ostracized
Because I am not accommodated
For being a left-handed man;
Everywhere I move,
Everything I touch,
Reminds me of just how handicapped
I am as a left-handed man.
I ought to sue the government!
I ought to have reparations –
For I’ve never known the privilege
Of being a so-called “elite”
Who can use his right hand in anything
And not feel hindered or oppressed
Though he hinders and oppresses me
By being born quite differently!
And yet, because we are unique,
Being a rarer bunch to find,
We find solidarity in our identity
And tell you: Yes! Left-handed men
Can be just as good as Right-handed men
If not better!
But it’s still a pain and you still should pay for my discomfort.
Today we go to the field of battle.
So, boys, gather round me.
We’ve been through the darkness of the bloody nights together,
We’ve fought through cold, under enemy fire,
Through heat, above the corpses of fallen brethren.
Now, today, we go out onto the final field – The last struggle.
Before we brave the horror before us,
That great horror,
I’d like to pray for all of you.
It’s not my own prayer,
But one passed down by the major before me
And the major before him.
So gather around,
And let me pray for my soldiers.
…
…
“Oh, God in Heaven,
Have mercy on these piss-ant pussies,
For they know not what they do.
They thought they’d be a soldier,
Come out here and pull a trigger as much as they pull on their dicks,
But now they’ve reached a breaking point.
Now, the climb is starting to look harder
Than bringing down the whole mountain.
Well, big fuckin’ deal!
Only sissy-boys take it in the ass like that!
They bend over,
They’ll wish it was my dick
and not my steel-toed boot!
That’s how we play it,
‘Cause better a foot than a bullet.
These crusty old feet used to be on the front lines,
Stuffed in their same blood-crusted boots
With artillery spraying
Like angels’ piss from a Heaven
Whose gates have busted open
Not unlike my ruptured bowels,
Spitting out excrement.
Still, I fought,
And they have, too.
But we have sinned, Father,
We’ll never get to Heaven
Because we are that excrement!
Or, at least, we are in the eyes of our fellow countryman
Who call us murderers, interventionists,
College drop-outs, and all around
Anti-humanitarians.
They hate our guts!
What are we thinking,
Killing the poor terrorists, the misunderstood ‘other,’
Keeping down the man who shouts ‘Death to infidels,’
The one who literally lives in a state
Belonging to infidels?
I tell your troops what they’re thinking
Because they all have the collective brain density
Of a marshmallow peep
According to the world.
They’re thinking, ‘I’m doing this
Because it’s how the world works
And will always work!’
And they’re smack on the money.
But them back home don’t think so.
They think the world
Is a plain of daisies
And that everyone would be happy if they’d just
Skip on through it.
But that’s just plain pigeon shit,
And they’ll hate us forever for it.
They’ll hate us forever –
Doing what man has done for forever –
Since their so-called ‘progress’
Is just an escape,
A blind eye turned
To questions concerning life and death.
They fire their blustering bullets at us –
But help us remember, all they have are titles,
Identities,
And we are soldiers,
Our identity, brothers
Bred from centuries fighting against titles.
My prayer is that we wake up
And realize that though the world
Might have left us behind,
It went forward because of our desire –
Now it’s time for us to go forward with it,
Or against it,
But always forward.
Let us not do ourselves the disservice of surviving abroad
Only to die in our beloved country,
Else we’re only worth returning to the dirt
We were descended from
And spent our lives protecting.
May we take that dirt
And build a new land for ourselves,
That we might be men again.
In your name,
Against the name of those who see themselves
As gods back home,
Amen.”
…
…
A harsh prayer is better to a soldier
Than gentle assurance.
And now, onwards – Into the final battle
My troops
My brothers,
Always onwards.
May you have a safe flight home
And your families welcome you better than the world will.
You bigoted hypocrite
Insufferable radicalist
Determined reformist
who art thou?
With flawed logic
Perverted fantasies
Worthless fancies
who art thou?
You depressed slug
Drugged demon
Obsessive destroyer
who art thou?
Blatantly selfish
Absurdly stubborn
Empty of compassion
who art thou?
You fallen slave
Self-proclaimed king
Scourge of Earth and self
who art thou?
thy knew who.
thou art man.
Suited up like Astronauts
Set for starless black expanse
Undulating under rusty rugged rig
—-Blip—-
Down the ladder,
Slip beneath the liquid black
Where Opah bounce like mini-moons
—-Blip—-
See a shooting school of Oarfish
Orbit ‘round the coral rings
Of trenches carving craters in the deep
—-Blip—-
down
down
down
Until down can be seen no more
For down is all around
And up likewise disappears
As you fall below into the sky
Formed by briny blue bottom above.
Cosmos formed of plankton
Broken by meteors made of squids
Warmed by dim sun from the cracks in the floor
—-Blip—-
Forth from the vents
From the core of the Earth
Cetus emerges like a nova enraged
—-Blip—-
His constellation-scarred body
Sucks in all like a vortex
And rearranges this galaxy as chaotic aquatic
—-Blip—-
up
up
up
Expelled from space below the skies
A land where no man has gone before
And no man can go find in his dreams
Lost in the briny blue bottom beyond.
The shadow that hangs from any regular thing
Never seeks for what’s more, nor has the heart to complain.
It shuns what is wrong, but avoids what is right
And it flees from the transition of morning to night;
Yet it reappears every day, for it never had gone astray
Though no heed or attention to it do we pay.
No; we just wander on, as it traverses the lawn,
As on it no thought or care is mentioned upon.
When our road has been paved, and we enter the grave,
That void is now no longer our slave.
But with us it stays, though sunlight it craves,
As it wastes away, hidden, never to behold the light of day.
Well, it may truly know, through the sun and the snow,
We supplied it with shelter, so it could continue to grow.
We didn’t care that it was there, its contract was fair;
It would stay by our side until the fabric of time would tear.
With us till the end, though we don’t call it a friend,
Even when we’re alone and our bones start to bend.
Oh, what is the price to find someone so nice
To be a sixth as devoted Christ’s sacrifice?
Nay; rarely a soul today would be honest to say,
“I was with them throughout the most boisterous fray.”
Though we search high and low, from the deep to the shallow,
We will never find something on Earth more devoted than a shadow.
Peering behind shaded lens
I notice natural stances
From which the human being moves
And sends askance glances
Where suspicion reigns, hostility
Marks the passing leer
Through which the human soul expounds
Animalistic fear
That every man’s an alien
Invading private spaces
Despite the fact the globe’s a sphere
With no cornered spaces.
As I walk by, six-foot-two,
Women look aside
As if, for all their pomp and stance,
My shadow blinds their pride.
Men are blind to environment
As if they do not see
The world around is not their own
But a hostile society.
I watch with eyes hidden by shades –
Emerald-tint sunglasses –
Which I bought for the hefty price
Of raising my defenses
Since all these children do the same
To fly with reckless abandon
Into sunny relationships
That last for half a second.
But as I watch them through a window –
Expressions in a haze –
I realize green-colored shades
Do not conceal my gaze.
Oh, where have all the good girls gone
From centuries ago? With
Manners primed and grace refined,
Humble compassion all aglow?
Where have all these good girls gone,
To leave such mired furrow?
Why did all the good girls die
And leave men thirsty hence? Legends
Writ Dickens, beyond sick hens
Roosting, temporary, since.
Why did all these good girls die,
Replacements worth a pence?
Where did all these foul girls come from,
Who swear and smoke and screw? Their
Manners crass, gaining mass
In flesh and witless crew.
Where did all these foul girls come from,
Who chase away the true?
To where did all the gentlemen fly
And escape these helpless dopes? Each
Dumb broad with an unscrupulous sod
Spend time lost in gropes.
To where did all the gentlemen fly,
And with them all our hopes?
Am I left in this uncultured rabble
To sift through broken skulls? To
Scour the beach in vain to reach
Some glimmer of virtuous Belles?
Am I left alone in this uncultured rabble,
A feminicity of Hells?
It was a bright, blissful day — just like every day —
When I started on my stroll near the Gate.
My family was laughing, the birds were all chirping,
And I – me – myself — felt just great.
I asked my Father for permission
To wander through the forest — off on my own.
He peered up from His Book – which He always took –
And informed me that He would read while I roam.
The smooth, metal streets–they were glistening.
The warm, pleasant light — it followed suit.
The clear, sparkling water shone like crystals,
And the trees nearby were ripe with fruit.
The zephyr’s caress was sweet as it blew by my feet
And I sighed with relief into Space —
When I perceived a small cry – To my utter surprise –
Of a lost someone — someone pleading for grace.
I walked ‘cross the grass – I tried to move fast –
Before ducking below bushes to hide.
A man was shaking the Gate at a quite frantic rate –
But I knew it was locked from the inside.
The man, I observed, was not old –
And his mannerisms seemed a trifle weird –
But what stood out the most, as plain as a ghost,
Were the feelings he felt – he feared.
I gathered up courage and approached him –
His eyes grew wide as he exclaimed,
“Thank God that I’ve found someone else here –
On this crazed and desolate plain.”
“I’ve been walking for what seems like ages,”
He continued in a soft, sensitive sputter,
“Do you have food to spare — way over there —
Where your folks feast on warm toast and butter?”
I pitied the poor man’s condition,
And thus went back to my mat —
I returned in a flash with his wish,
And he greedily gobbled the snack.
While he was noisily feeding at present,
I asked him a question of past –
To which he replied with a look most unpleasant —
Staring — fixated on me — completely aghast.
“Please tell no one, I pray,”
— He was nibbling on his bread cautiously —
“I flee from the cops, who will pull out all the stops
Just so they can beat and arrest me.”
“I don’t know what rage came over me
After finishing my fifth round of beer –
But I swear it all was an accident
When I hit her…and her blood smeared.”
“I got out as fast as I could,
But the police trailed swiftly in stride.
I swerved and I swerved ‘till my car hit a tree,
Forcing me to get out and hide.”
“Oh please, sir,” he tearfully requested
As soon as he had ceased to eat –
“Can you open the Gate, for that water does bait
Me to soothe all the sores on my feet.”
In truth, I felt all of his sorrow,
But I calmly declined his plea.
I told him he was a criminal, and, even if I wanted to,
I possessed neither key nor authority.
I was met with a sneer and a snarl,
But he concluded with a terrible gasp –
My Father appeared – whom I never did hear –
And seized the ragged wretch in his grasp.
“You malicious miscreant, you,”
He bellowed in his grand, booming voice –
“What you did to her was your own doing,
And the sin was your sin by your choice.
I was reading my Book peacefully,
When I noticed your name was not mentioned.
So begone! You are not welcome here!
By drunk delusion your soul is condemned!”
He tossed out the miserable rogue,
Who was immediately snatched up in hand
By Satan’s foul, beastly minions – all on a mission
To escort this villain to the valley of the damned.
This scene was so disturbing,
Yet I still watched them fly off with that soul.
I quickly glanced at my Lord – His spirit seemed torn –
As he led me down streets of gold.
“My son,” he tenderly whispered –
His sadness was hard to behold –
“Stay away from the Gate, for beyond it is hate
Of which only I must bear to witness unfold.”
I replied, “I love you, my Father.”
He assured me, “I love you, too, son.”
He then carried me back to our picnic –
As if our day had just begun.
I avoided the Gate, like I promised,
And that horror soon left my head.
Woe felt like a dream, the same as when I was received
At that Gate that opens for the dead.
Morning's Early Dark 