on pacifism
I guess I have just recently recommitted to, or decided I need to accept, that I am and must be a pacifist… in this year of 2024, there are wars and armed conflicts in various places around the world… some of these wars seem justified on one side or the other and some just seem to be the result of blundering on the part of national governments… but, the more I read the news, the more I think about these conflicts, the more true it seems that if the human race is to flourish, or even survive, we must find a way to eliminate war from this planet…
my first argument against war is always to appeal to logic… even if one has no moral objection to the killing and maiming of other human beings in pursuit of some national goal, war or indeed, even smaller armed conflict, is seldom efficacious in resolving the dispute… so often international affairs seem like building houses of cards based on negotiations and diplomacy while war comes in with a sledge hammer… that simply destroys everything and makes matters worse…
war is built on the foundation of violence and the belief that killing certain people will make nations live together in peace… that does not work… killing people just makes their families and friends angry and outraged… they do not want to live in peace with the killers of their loved ones, they want revenge on them… war begets hate which begets more war which begets more hate, etc. etc. etc… war is not an efficient or effective way to solve international problems…
my second argument against war is that it is morally backwards… might does not make right… and just because one nation has a better army and can kill more efficiently, that does not make that nation more right than any other nation… usually the things fought over are in grey areas anyway, so there is no one side that is fully right and no one side that is fully wrong… so compromise and negotiation are the way to make sure that each side gets some of what it wants…
my third argument against war is that it is always fueled by greed for money… and the people who wind up fighting in the war and harmed by the war are almost never the people who wind up with the money, no matter who wins or loses… and in trying to negotiate a compromise over things like border disputes, the only way these issues can be resolved is if both sides are willing to dial back their greed and settle for less than all the money, land, water rights, natural resources, etc… killing a bunch of people does not in any way help for any nation to put aside greed and attempt a fair and respectful resolution of international problems…
my fourth argument against war is the obvious moral observation that it is immoral for any of us to take the life of anyone else… I believe that each and every human being is born into this life with a right to live and participate in all of the joys and pains that make up our lives… these include a right to food, shelter and safety… the first things usually destroyed in a war are food, shelter and safety… it is immoral to kill our fellow men and women period… under any circumstances, any time… and it is also immoral to allow our fellow men and women to live without food, shelter and safety… war is always always always immoral… war is always evil… English poet Wilfred Owen, who knew a few things about war, called it a “cesspool…” there is nothing glorious about it, ever…
okay, now that I have convinced everybody that war is ineffective, evil and immoral, let us proceed to the question of how do we end it… one would have hoped back in the 1950s when I was a child, that the inventions of nuclear weapons would make war obsolete… when nations have this horrible weapon in hand that would make any large war, the last war, because the effect of the war would be to eradicate human beings from the planet; one would think that we would look at each other and say, “let us lay down our arms and look for peaceful ways to solve international problems…” before we finish ourselves off altogether…
but that did not happen… instead nations kept building more and more nuclear weapons in an arms race that goes on to this day with weapons armed and ready to launch right now that would bring on a nuclear winter that would end human life on this planet and most other life as well… this is lunacy… it is like a person walking night and day with a razor sharp knife pressed against his or her throat… we must get rid of those terrible weapons… and we do that not by using them, which would be suicidal, but by education and arms negotiations… we need to all know and acknowledge the danger we are in and make our governments destroy those weapons… there is no harm that any nation can inflict on me that makes it morally right for me to launch a nuclear weapon…. killing one person is immoral… killing hundreds, thousands and millions of people is hundreds and thousands and millions of times more immoral…
I am not sure how to go about accomplishing this goal but, I truly believe that military actions of every kind will not lead to the goal of nuclear disarmament… military action does not solve international problems, it always makes them worse… increasing the hate and dehumanizing those denoted as “enemy” makes it more and more likely that an accidental international blunder or an intentional act of lunacy will send us over that precipice and start a nuclear annihilation of humanity…
so, I advocate demilitarization of this planet… I believe that it is the only way to prevent a humanity annihilating nuclear war… there are so many challenges facing humanity… this planet is rich and abundant but we should be carefully tending it and setting it up to support our human communities so that all people can have food, shelter and safety… we are threatened by disease, by natural disaster, by things like climate change and ozone depletion and dozens of other threats…
I think that we could work together to solve these problem and to make a long and healthy life easier for each of us to attain, if we could quit fighting with each other and start working together to make the world a better place for the benefit of us all…
the first step, I think, is for us all to embrace pacifism… we must change our attitudes about military in every way… there is nothing good about military actions… all military action is immoral in that it aims to kill people… that is what guns, tanks, bombs, etc. exist to do… to kill people… so we must stop extolling the warrior… we must stop funding the military… and we should be working with every resource we have to spread pacifism to every human being on the planet… it is the logical, moral and decent thing to do… we must accept that every human on this planet is our brother or sister and deserves respect and all human rights and happiness being born here should provide… and we must always remember that might does not make right… it never has and it never will…
Tiny Eschers After Rain
If one of these unrolled pillbugs looked up,
glassy, beaded dew would refract the light
from the sky and bend their world of vertical green lines
into spheres of shining blue.
Even if the pillbugs were too nearsighted
to see the geese above them
arrowheading their way north,
the potato bugs could hear them.
Honking-honked birds with their straight necks
crissing one season, crossing the next:
for centuries they’ve been stitching the north and south together
so that pillbugs can have a whole world
beyond their tiny patch.
Trading
I will trade my rusty flesh and cold blood
for a pack of cigarettes and a liquor.
I will trade my emotions and lifeless harmony
for a pack of cigarettes and a liquor.
I will trade my citizenship and foreign passport
for a pack of cigarettes and a liquor.
I will trade my morals and unspoken ethics
for a pack of cigarettes and a liquor.
I will trade my broken heart and warm hands
for a pack of cigarettes and a liquor.
I will trade my ageless smile and falling tears
for a pack of cigarettes and a liquor.
I will trade my heathy organs and memories
for a pack of cigarettes and a liquor.
I will trade my unclear accent and colourless dreams
for a pack of cigarettes and a liquor.
But I’ll never trade my past and homeland
for a casket of the war I barely survived by hanging…
Circle Family
Can someone find me a map?
Where there is no bloody barbed wire fence
There will only be lines of love
Villages of humanity will undoubtedly reach the sky
The paths along the way will be dreamy
The song of communism will be heard in the flock of birds
The tone of union will anchor the language of the earth
The footprints will not be pierced by the arrows of hatred
A flower's aroma will grow in the congealed wound
Let our children draw that map
Poetry will touch the edge of that map
All the accumulated troubles will be removed
There will be no tears in the world of circles
Hungry eyes will not burn.
the masturbator
hear him
in the library stacks
oohing and aahing
beating that rhythm
to chinese beauty magazines
see him
head down
on hard wood tables
snoring and scratching his balls
sleeping like a child of heaven
a wad of paper towel
still clutched in his hand.
this work email
today
i’m not going to answer
this work email
i may never answer it
i want the person who sent it
to sit in their office
and wonder why i didn’t respond
yes
i’m going to let
this email sit in my inbox
and rot
like raw meat in the hot summer sun
because
it’s the only form
of independence
that i truly have left.
bait box blues
i watch
the exterminator
put poison and steel wool
into the holes in the wall of my office
watch him set a huge yellow trap
with a dollop of chocolate
and line up bait boxes
like rows of black, plastic apartment buildings
the rat has run by me
twice in a month
the second time
i sprained my foot
trying to get away from him
the exterminator looks at peace
while he sets the traps
he gets up off the ground
and says, we’ll get him
fooling me into a certainty
that i haven’t felt in a long while
even though tomorrow i know
the steel wool
will be pulled out from all the walls
the chocolate from the trap
licked up and gone
those bait boxes pushed around
like an earthquake hit
and a small pile of rat shit
will be waiting for me
on my desk
reminding me of my true place
in this pecking order.
halcyon
each human transgression
is its own freshly sharp blade of grass
i try not to hold it against anyone
but sometimes you just want someone to blame
for all of this sadness and futility
a god to shake a fist at
and i could say i make
the best of things in my spare time
but i don’t
i’m a hungry man with a fork
in a world full of nothing but soup
angry almost always
and growing older ungracefully
another car wreck of a human life
musing those halcyon days
that never were
as the stoplight changes
from green to red
and any semblance of home
seems an eternity away.
everything
and
when she said
it feels like
you hate everything now
there was
nothing left to do
but wash the dirty dishes
sitting in the
dirty sink.
John Grochalski is the author of five poetry collections, three novels, and the forthcoming novella Wolves of Berlin Play Amateur Night at the Flute and Fiddle Pub. He currently lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Meanwhile, in a galaxy not that far away
Last night The Empire
Strikes Back, & a shot of
Yoda resting his 900-year-
old chin on the hand grip
of his walking stick. &
today I am sitting with
my weary chin on the
handle of my walking
stick, waiting for the plane
to take us to Sydney, five
years after I last flew. In
between, faulty knees +
hearing + breathing. & no
holograms around to en-
able me to use The Force.
& on the flight south
I find in the seat-back
pocket in front of me
a finger-sized bar of
milk chocolate, & The
Road, a book by Cormac
McCarthy. Though temp-
ted, I leave the chocolate
where it is, but take the
book to take home with
me. There it will be
placed at the back of a
queue which already
includes the last half-
dozen Lucas Davenport
novels by John Sandford
which I am re-reading
& a number of other
crime novels picked up
at remainder prices in
the (almost) local Big
W department store.
Do not remove all the chairs
The pipe is overhead. Free from all disc-
ursive attachment, it can float anew in
its natural silence. Make no mistake,
nothing is easier to recognize than a pipe.
This is the first rule to be observed. The
second? Never sit down to the piano unin-
vited, unless you are alone in the parlor. An
old custom not without basis, because the
entire function is so scholarly as to allow
the object it represents to appear without
hesitation or equivocation. & the third? The
small articles of a wardrobe require constant
care. Should be of such material as will bear
the crush of a crowded store without injury.
A dignified, modest reserve is the surest way
to repel impertinence. No truer remark was
ever made. In vain the text unfurls below
the drawing with all the attentive fidelity
of a label in a scholarly book. A figure in
the shape of writing. The image of a text.
Sources:
This Is Not a Pipe, by Michel Foucault
The Ladies’ Book of Etiquette (1860), by Florence Hartley
WAITING TO MEET YOU AGAIN
If ever we are in this life or the next,
I will be there waiting to meet you.
Take me to the sky and beyond my imagination
Touch me deeply and tenderly in the depths of my soul
For my heart pines for you over and over
no matter which life we are living in.
Your name is always on my lips when I speak,
as well as the memory of you kiss
At night as I sleep, you enter my dreams gently.
At times they are so real that I cry out your name.
I have no control over the outcome of our life together,
Because, my Love, One who knows best has already
drawn that line and I can not erase it.
Alone...
Loneliness and sadness grew in my heart without you
I tried to find in someone else what I found in you
What I failed to realize is that you can not be replaced
When two hearts are one, none can separate them,
no matter how much I try to move forward..
If he would try to touch my hand, it would chill me
I couldn't look in his eyes...
Because I couldn't find my reflection
You hold the key that locks these golden chains around my heart
I need your kiss, your touch, and the love only we share
But I have no answers...
Because though we are apart in distance
our hearts couldn't be closer
So I will stay alone with your memory
'cause I can't live a life with someone else that was only meant for us
I pray that one day you find your way back to me
You will find me where you left me.... Alone
WHEN I SMILE!
Do you ever wonder why I smile?
I smile when I see a beautiful sunset
When I hear birds sing on a silent day
When a baby laughs, I shine
For many years I lost my smile
Then I saw yours, and slowly
I found my smile again.
Now our world has changed
Our destiny is clear ahead of us
You can rely on me; My world is in you!
Could you not see?
And yes, I am smiling now
So when you see me smile
I hope you realize I smile because of you .... ❤
