Trump awards Medal of Honor to military hero who freed more than 75 hostages in Iraq
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Even though a cloud’s white curtain in a far-off corner flashed
An’ the hypnotic splattered mist was slowly lifting
Electric light still struck like arrows, fired but for the ones
Condemned to drift or else be kept from drifting
Tolling for the searching ones, on their speechless, seeking trail
For the lonesome-hearted lovers with too personal a tale
An’ for each unharmful, gentle soul misplaced inside a jail
An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing
Starry-eyed an’ laughing as I recall when we were caught
Trapped by no track of hours for they hanged suspended
As we listened one last time an’ we watched with one last look
Spellbound an’ swallowed ’til the tolling ended
Tolling for the aching ones whose wounds cannot be nursed
For the countless confused, accused, misused, strung-out ones an’ worse
An’ for every hung-up person in the whole wide universe
An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing
Stone-cutters fighting time with marble, you foredefeated
Challengers of oblivion
Eat cynical earnings, knowing rock splits, records fall down,
The square-limbed Roman letters
Scale in the thaws, wear in the rain. The poet as well
Builds his monument mockingly;
For man will be blotted out, the blithe earth die, the brave sun
Die blind and blacken to the heart:
Yet stones have stood for a thousand years, and pained
thoughts found
The honey of peace in old poems.
— Robinson Jeffers
Reason will not decide at last; the sword will decide.
The sword: an obsolete instrument of bronze or steel,
formerly used to kill men, but here
In the sense of a symbol. The sword: that is: the storms
and counter-storms of general destruction; killing
of men,
Destruction of all goods and materials; massacre, more or
less intentional, of children and women;
Destruction poured down from wings, the air made accomplice,
the innocent air
Perverted into assassin and poisoner.
The sword: that is: treachery and cowardice, incredible
baseness, incredible courage, loyalties, insanities.
The sword: weeping and despair, mass-enslavement,
mass-torture, frustration of all hopes
That starred man’s forehead. Tyranny for freedom, horror for
happiness, famine for bread, carrion for children.
Reason will not decide at last, the sword will decide.
His soul stretched tight across the skies
That fade behind a city block,
Or trampled by insistent feet
At four and five and six o’clock;
And short square fingers stuffing pipes,
And evening newspapers, and eyes
Assured of certain certainties,
The conscience of a blackened street
Impatient to assume the world.
I am moved by fancies that are curled
Around these images, and cling:
The notion of some infinitely gentle
Infinitely suffering thing.
Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh;
The worlds revolve like ancient women
Gathering fuel in vacant lots.
— Eliot
The scientists are in terror
and the European mind stops
Wyndham Lewis chose blindness
rather than have his mind stop.
Night under wind mid garofani,
the petals are almost still
Mozart, Linnaeus, Sulmona,
When one’s friends hate each other
how can there be peace in the world?
Their asperities diverted me in my green time.
A blown husk that is finished
but the light sings eternal
a pale flare over marshes
where the salt hay whispers to tide’s change
Time, space,
neither life nor death is the answer.
And of man seeking good,
doing evil.
In meiner Heimat
where the dead walked
and the living were made of cardboard.
Even though a cloud’s white curtain in a far-off corner flashed
An’ the hypnotic splattered mist was slowly lifting
Electric light still struck like arrows, fired but for the ones
Condemned to drift or else be kept from drifting
Tolling for the searching ones, on their speechless, seeking trail
For the lonesome-hearted lovers with too personal a tale
An’ for each unharmful, gentle soul misplaced inside a jail
An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing
Starry-eyed an’ laughing as I recall when we were caught
Trapped by no track of hours for they hanged suspended
As we listened one last time an’ we watched with one last look
Spellbound an’ swallowed ’til the tolling ended
Tolling for the aching ones whose wounds cannot be nursed
For the countless confused, accused, misused, strung-out ones an’ worse
An’ for every hung-up person in the whole wide universe
An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing
Gerard Van der Leun
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This is an account of Americans. Which is, I am heart broken to say, not an account of the people who make up more than a very small percentage of the population of the USA.
I am convinced that there will be a bloody reckoning in our country in the not too distant future. We will need men and women who are Americans to save our nation.
Barely a mention from the media of this man receiving the Medal of Honor. Instead we got a large dose of hearing the disbelief of fans in Kansas City booing a demonstration by football players.
decency is downplayed, abomination is exalted
got a new arkansas wet stone, pure black, BIG, 6″w x 14″l x 3″thick
gonna try to wear it out on a shitload of edges that need refined
when it’s done that becker will lay waste to 6 necks at once
Thomas Payne’s MOH citation as a graphic novel:
https://twitter.com/wretchardthecat/status/1304594909228232704
It’s one of those MOH stories that makes you get goosebumps from the drama and courage of the event. This man, and his stalwart unit, remind me that Americans do tremendous things when the moment arrives. Like always, I try to personalize things from the news, and so please permit me this indulgent memory. I attended a dress blue uniform dinner in the Eighties, and one guest at our battalion mess quietly sat with the commander. Both were Green Beret vets of the Vietnam war, and it so happens that our guest was one of a handful of the founders of Force Delta. There’s good, and then there’s damn good. And goddamned few better yet. SGM Payne takes his place at the Valhallan table set for just his caliber of man.
I can read like the rest of us, and I am not a veteran. Airborne school post boot camp and AIT from what I read, is non-stop running and push-ups (Ghost can confirm). This MOH winner also went through Ranger school which is a total suck-fest of little food, less sleep and total dedication of physical capability through pain. He eventually makes it to Delta Force which would physically and mentally crush even a toughened man. I have two Ben Franklins that say he earned his CIB (combat infantryman’s badge) LONG before he ever got to Delta Force. Dude is a total badass.
Snake sed: “Airborne school post boot camp and AIT from what I read, is non-stop running and push-ups…”
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During basic at Fort Knox (summer 74) we walked every where, miles upon miles. Probably several hundred before it was done. If it was raining we rode the cattle cars but that was rare. Then off to Combat Engineer AIT at Fort Leonard Wood. The first day during the el-tee’s introductory speech one of the troops asked if we were going to have to walk very much. The el-tee grinned from ear to ear and said, “There will be very little walking here at Fort Leonard Wood, (everybody breathed a sigh of relief assuming we would be riding the cattle cars to all the ranges) you will be RUNNING!” He pulled the rug out and everybody was shell shocked. He continued, “There are only 2 ways soldiers move on my post, flat out hauling ass double time, or on your belly in the goddamned gutter.” We ran like broke dik dawgz.
This was in late summer, and we ran like barren hoons every where. Hundreds of miles. Imagine 200 swingin’ dix in formation double timing with a 9 man front. They made the fat doods road guards and they ran them fuckers into the ground. I wasn’t fat, but maybe more than I should have been. I was 185 (6′ tall) when I started basic and when I came out of jump school I was 155. When I went home on leave afterward my mother was shocked. She said I looked like a concentration camp victim. lol Maybe, but I could out run the wind!
Late Oct 74 I got to my permanent party in Wildflecken Germany (my home for the next 37 months) and waddya know? The company commander is a gd ranger. jeezis chryste. Every.god.dam.morning he started us out with a 3 mile run around the whole post. A year later he was promoted, shipped stateside and we could finally act like normal people for a change.
Quiet. Confident. Shows admiration for his fallen friend. Says his medal memorializes everyone but him.
What a rare and noble man.