I recently attended a briefing on sexual assault prevention through my military unit. Predictably, the attendant video depicted a caucasian male officer fraternizing with an ethnic female junior enlisted. No actual sex took place; the assualt consisted of the male groping the female behind a bar AFTER she had flirted with him. And also, apparently, several months after they had already consummated a consensual physical relationship. Never mind all of that; the female is emotionally devasted and the male's career needs to be destroyed.
Questions of actual sexual mores aside, I ask the following of the producers of the aforementioned video: If one lacks the physical ability and courage to defend one's self from sexual assault, the mental ability to avoid situations which might lead to sexual assault, or the ethical ability to refrain from the commission of sexual assault, then by what virtue is one in the profession of defending the United States of America?
This is not an attempt to "blame the (imaginary) victim" or excuse the (imaginary) attacker. I simply wonder why the Armed Forces so often continue to cater the lowest common denominator, rather than inspiring--and demanding--greatness.

As I am preparing to attend Missouri OCS class 47, I recently had the opportunity to question the local RTI about what I might expect. She told me to be prepared to deliver limmericks and perform skits for the Christmas party. Then, she looked offended when I made the statement that "That explains VOLUMES to me about the United States Army."
Here are two limmericks I came up with off the top of my head:
-----
A member of my fine cadre
Ordered me a limmerick to say
While feeling quite grim
I stared straight at him
And said "Celtic folk-poetry's gay."

I can extemporize in quatraine
Without really racking my brain
And sonnets are nice
I'd do haiku twice
But from limmericks I'd rather refrain.
-----
She apparently preferred the second to the first.

The Propheteers

The Towers were broken, and the Madmen
Laughed, for the flame, and the death, and our fears
Three thousand died and the Strange Folk have lied
For the profit of Jihad Propheteers.

There are those who have expressed the odd View
That architechtural steel would not fade
If subject to fire; and so I inquire
By what process do they think steel is made?

Another wrote war memoirs of Iraq
And the horror of his moral decay
Though no one recalls his craven attack
And he had not yet seen combat a day.

Jamil Hussein, late of Bahgdad PD
The AP has quite often insisted
Writes of loss in Iraq, but would he still
If the author of these pieces existed?

Chaos shrieks a hideous lullaby
While the Light croons a long dying lament
The world descends in a Fedayeen cry
And never will the Jihadists repent.

Tomorrow

Whatever happened
To the tomorrow
Of yesterday?

Heroes with sinews of syntax
And swords quenched in syllogism
Cruise the blooded highways
Of information.

The Madmen dance
To the Dark Angels' harping;
Happiness is dopamine
And all life is suffering

Tamagochi and karaoke;
Ban books and censor TV
But don't make me raise my kids

Logic bombs and Behrer bonds,
Anthrax and "I love you"

Whatever happened
To the tomorrow
Of yesterday?

The First Ballad of Avril the Legionnaire

The people at People and E! Magazine
Thought they'd seen every celebrity scene
And knew all the fads that came with each season
But even the Enquirer was stumped for a reason
When Avril Lavigne joined the French Foreign Legion.

She made up her face, and kept her face plain
As she listened, aghast, to the recruiter explain:
"There's been some mistake, Miss; you've read something wrong;
We don't hire young girls, or need singers of songs.
We train hard-core killers. You'd best run along."

Out lashed a tiny foot, high-arched and fey
Clad in three pounds of leather in deep shades of gray
It broke the man's jaw, it sprawled him out reeling.
Avril said to the man (as he stared at the ceiling)
"I've a penchant for violence, and find wet-work appealing."

"March or Die!" was her motto in those next desert days
As she learned the hard lessons of a warrior's ways
In every assault, she was first through the door;
In the long waits between, she was cool to the Corps.
"Lie back," she would say, "It's all been done before."

Natasha

When I was lonely
When I had retreated from the world
You found me
You saw me somehow without seeing
And touched my stilling heart

Angel of strange skies
Still I've not plumbed the deeps of your soul
But your eyes
Returned the sunlight to my being
Enflamed my singing heart

And for the first time in my life
I smile.

Moment

To my brothers in arms, and all who stand against tyranny and terror

Dawn
The Lustral Water breaks golden
Beyond the starred and scarred Horizon

Celestial fire arcs
And throws back the tyranny of Night
Clouds of rose and coral
Bring tears from once-young eyes

There is no Self, there is no Other
There is not Time, nor Place
And that golden, glorious Dawn
Is the only moment in Eternity

Veritas

Unhallowed, this immortal truth
Is known alike by fool and sage:
That the green and golden dreams of youth
Become the grey regrets of age
And no Nepenthe' will assuage
A man whose broken soul
Flitters in it's failing cage
For want of being whole.

There is a second, nobler truth
Taught by beggar-men and priests;
A simple way to savor youth
And save, of our youth, a piece.
A beckoning wonder, a beckoning feast
Of life, from a truth so small
Which rivals the fabled Golden Fleece
This truth, which is our highest call:
Live now, if you would live at all.

The Euphonic Plague

Desert of souls unsung
Miasma of words unwoven
I survey
The victims of
The Euphonic Plague

Wandering the barren mindscape
I dispatch
Apathetic monsters
With deadly double-edged daggers
Of cold-forged irony.

I see light ahead
Not hope...
Twin points of fallen
Angelfire
Smoldering in the darkness

Why must that damned Abyss
Keep staring back into me?

Mine

She loves me well, her sweet caress
Doth linger on my beaded cheek
While she will with tender wrath undress
My deepest wound--that blooded streak
On which she feeds, and keeps me weak
Though she every day unflesh my bones
Her eyes a crueler vengeance wreak
With the dust of my heart, and with her own
She chokes to death my mangled moans

I lie there alone and alive in the dark
And whisper and whimper when my lover appears
My memories sweet, but her hatred so stark
As she sends my mind and my screams and my fears
Echoing down hallways of unending years
And into oblivion--unmourned, unforgiven
Save by flowers of silence that bloom in my tears
Shed by a soul too black to be shriven
By my direst damsel, to whom vengeance was given