Listen!

The sweet peals of moonlight-induced lovemaking on the streets tonight

Listen! The soft purr of motorbikes

Ready to strike up the night alight

So don’t tell me of your troubles, your emotional grief

Enjoy the sights this is shore leave

Don’t talk of true love, unscrew your frown

Enjoy the entertainments of nighttime town

Experience the red rooms, the green tables, the souvenirs

Make memories, haunting or fabled

The gallant mist of red blooded chivalry

Instilled in basic training

By standing in line today

You secure a place among the Saints

Go get them son

Now your life begins

To die for your country does not win a war

To kill for your country is what wins a war

Don’t tell your name, don’t ask for hers

In this land of oysters, you are the world

The painless, plainness of military life resumes Tomorrow night

If not for you it would’ve been cholera, malaria or some eastern disease

Forget about it, son - a slap’s all you need

We did it all we seen it all and worse much worse, son

The massacres of ages - too many to recall

Limbs rendered birds by the speed they flew off

A soup nothingness that once was your best friend

Motherless children and Temptress widows

The Wild, The Useless, The Dead, The Untameable

Snivelling fuck, staining this street

Lucky I don’t shoot you on the spot

bullets were made for men like you

The impotent idiots god forgot

Tonight you decide which corner takes residence

Which room looms forever in your mind

But now you’re on your own, we don’t need men like you

Private Tristan Bongo - hereby discharged!