war
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The Last Days of May
I was born in 1957 and so I am reckoned by some one of the last of the baby boomers, that generation borne by the parents who went through World War II. I grew up in a neighborhood full of fathers who had served in World War II, some later in Korea, and frankly I… Continue reading
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THAT BRIGHT MOMENT
YOU ARE TRAPPED IN THAT BRIGHT MOMENTWHERE YOU LEARNED YOUR DOOM— Samuel R. Delaney in City of a Thousand Suns Whether it is Doom in the archaic sense from the Anglo-Saxon and Norse of the totality of your deeds and reputation and the consquences thereof, the story of the Hero; or, the Doom imposed from… Continue reading
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What Comes Next
I think the progression from Adonai deciding to break with the other Levantine gods in his tribe and end child sacrifice with Abraham, through the genocidal conversion of Northern Europe and much of the rest of the non-Asian world to Christianity, culminating in a genocidal slaughter of Islamic children by modern Likud Israel funded by… Continue reading
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The Middle East
Middle of what? The eurocentric “West?” West of what? The East in the Middle of the West is how you get confused boundaries and their inevitable wars. At least the Romans arranged their subject people rationally. Example: Palestine. When Rome merged with the Germanic world things got weird. They took the Levantine game of chess… Continue reading
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This is me, is us
The Challenger shuttle, the first Gulf War, 9/11, the second Gulf War, COVID, Trump. These were universal or near universal cataclysms that shaped generations. This quote is me, is us, in the middle 1960s, facing the lurking horrors we were schooled to, watching fire fights on the news in black and white while somewhere in… Continue reading
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Hurray for the Red, White and True
On the occasion of Hitler’s attack on PolandTrump’s attack on Caracas and kidnappingof another country’s president and first ladyThe blue pills kill the back pain spasms from yogabut I’m awake. The ache moves from musclesinto the morning news like cancer run amok.We’re not sorry it’s spread to the mind andwhat we sometimes call the heart… Continue reading
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The Whole World Is Watching
Once we were inured to horror by the smallness of our televisions, war a crackling black and white firefight a world away, until the cartoon television generation became their own Justice League and rose up singing, Love, children it’s just a kiss away it’s just a kiss away. They kept the cameras out next time,… Continue reading
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NaPo WriMo Day 2; War Day 27
My Radio Is Bleeding My radio is bleeding heinousnews of war and ethnic cleansing.Once this nation and its allieswent to war to stop atrocity.Now it cowers in fear of lobbyistswho insist it endorse the horror,as the innocent inmates huddlein the concentration campawaiting death or ethnic cleansing. History did not start in October.A few of us… Continue reading
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Ghazal for the Lost
I first I called this a ghazal because of the form, but then I said, this is not an amatory poem for the absent beloved. Until I realized it was. What is this land for which my grandfather weeps into his tea?My plot is cinder block and corrugated tin. The door has no key. What… Continue reading
About Me
Mark Folse is a provincial diarist and aspiring minor poet from New Orleans. His past blogging adventures included the Katina/Federal Flood blog wetbankguide on blogspot.com which David Simon told NY Magazine was one of three blogs that helped inform Treme, and Toulouse Street–Odd Bits of Life in New Orleans, which once outranked the Doobie Brothers on Google Search. His work has appeared in The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, Trampoline, Unlikely Stories, Peauxdunque Review, LMNL Anthology, The New Delta Review, Metazen, New Laurel Review, Ellipsis, What We Know: New Orleans as Home, Please Forward, The Maple Leaf Rag IV, and A Howling in the Wires (which he co-edited).
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Well Bottom Blues 