10th Anniversary of the War & Occupation of Iraq (I Tried To Stop The War)

A performance poem based on a protest chant spontaneously created by 30 or 40 mostly anarchists and witches during a protest against the first Gulf war, in February 1991. When AWOL (Artists and Writers Out Loud) asked me to perform at a rally "after the war", I scribbled it down and yelled it from a megaphone in front of SF City Hall. Then it was integrated into my solo performance, The King Is Dead (Long Live The King) which was presented in San Francisco and Auckland. In collaboration with Essex Hemphill (RIP), the text was edited slightly and then performed as a duet to benefit The Bastard Review at New College of California, later in 1991.  

Dedicated to the 200,000 Bay Areans who publicly protested the oil war.

 I TRIED TO STOP THE WAR

Oh yeah, I tried to stop the war
I tried to stop the war
BUT IT DIDN'T WORK!
I tried marching in the street
BUT IT DIDN'T WORK!
I tried yelling my head off and beating a drum
BUT IT DIDN'T WORK!
I tried blaming the war on George Bush
BUT IT DIDN'T WORK!
I tried exposing the war at home
BUT IT DIDN'T WORK!
I tried calling Saddam Hussein an evil wicked tyrant
BUT IT DIDN'T WORK!
I wrote letters connecting George Bush 
to the corporate shadow government 
that hates its own people
BUT IT DIDN'T WORK!
I tried saying Peace is Patriotic
and War is not Peace
BUT IT DIDN'T WORK!
I tried voting
BUT IT DIDN'T WORK!
I tried not voting
BUT THAT DIDN'T WORK EITHER! 
I tried to learn about Iraq
BUT IT DIDN'T WORK!
I tried to learn from history
BUT IT DIDN'T WORK!
I tried to blame the borders 
i tried supporting self-determination
I tried hating imperialism and refusing to rape
BUT IT DIDN'T WORK!
NOTHING WORKED!
I COULDN'T STOP THE WAR.
I tried healing my inner child
BUT IT DIDN'T WORK!
I tried healing Saddam Hussein's inner child
BUT IT DIDN'T WORK!
I tried blaming the war on Saddam's mother
BUT IT DIDN'T WORK!
I tried blaming the war 
on Bush's emotionally dysfunctional father
BUT IT DIDN'T WORK!
I COULDN'T STOP THE WAR.
I tried sharing my fears with friends
I tried calling home and bonding with my family
I tried late nite prayers in circles and ritual bathing
BUT IT DIDN'T WORK!
I tried raising sexual energy
BUT IT DIDN'T WORK!
I tried minding my own fucking business
BUT IT DIDN'T WORK!
cuz the war invaded my dreams
and all my friends were talking about it
and all the papers and air waves were full of it
so I tried to blame the war on racism
BUT IT DIDN'T WORK!
I tried to blame the war on male violence, homophobia, 
and gross warrior romanticism
BUT IT DIDN'T WORK!
I tried to blame the war on penis size
BUT IT DIDN'T WORK!
I tried to blame the war on sexism
BUT IT DIDN'T WORK!
I tried to connect sexism with disasters in the environment
I called the earth my mother
I warned about oil spills and endless fires and dead dolphins 
and screaming birds
BUT IT DIDN'T WORK!
I tried complaining about the costs
BUT IT DIDN'T WORK!
I tried exposing the profits of oil and guns
BUT IT DIDN'T WORK!
I chanted, Money for AIDS not for war
Money for AIDS not for war
Money for AIDS not for war
BUT IT DIDN'T WORK!
I said think of the children, listen to the earth, think of the future, 
listen to veterans, listen to womyn, listen to queers, 
think of the future, look at the past, 
remember Hiroshima, Tienanmen Square, Bangladesh, Soweto
I said think look listen feel
BUT IT DIDN'T WORK!
I said think look listen feel
BUT IT DIDN'T WORK!
I promised to think positively
to focus on light
to do good 
to respect all my relations
BUT IT DIDN'T WORK!
I tried to escape the war
I tried to keep working
not to get distracted by the war
BUT IT DIDN'T WORK!
Everywhere I could sense the war
Every siren was a death I could feel
Every flag was a child in flames
Every headline was a community in prison,
a family separated, a history forgotten
a family separated, a history forgotten
I expected the police at my doorstep
I expected the church in my bed
I predicted heroes and parades and speeches by serial murderers
and it came true
IT CAME TRUE!
I COULDN'T ESCAPE THE WAR
When I yelled no one heard me.
When I walked on stilts only my friends saw me.
I COULDN'T STOP THE WAR 
Nothing seemed to work
We returned to the streets
We blocked the federal building
We took the bridge 
We exploded a cop car
We made art
We refused to make art
We sat down
We stood up 
We walked and walked and talked and talked
BUT IT DIDN'T WORK!
We hugged and healed and felt and witnessed and blessed and learned
BUT IT DIDN'T WORK!
WE COULDN'T STOP THE WAR.
Not the war in iraq
Not the war at home
Not the war inside
Not the war between womyn and men
Between animals and people
Between property and freedom
We couldn't stop the war against sex
We couldn't stop the war against art
IT DIDN'T WORK
IT DIDN'T WORK
IT DIDN'T WORK
WE COULDN'T STOP THE WAR!


Keith Hennessy, 1991, The Mission, San Francisco

In 2013 I added the word cop before car, 
surprised that it wasn't always there.

10th Anniversary of the War Against Iraq (Illegal Bride)

ILLEGAL BRIDE

by Keith Hennessy, from the solo performance Chosen (2005).

(Performed in a re-purposed, long, white wedding gown with fetish details by Jack Davis, periodically drinking apple cider vinegar with a straw, gagging and drooling excessively, while standing on the fire escape of Dance Mission Theater in a piss and junk alley off 24th St. in San Francisco.)

A piss and vinegar letter in honor of the dead world citizens

since September 11, 2001.

Dear George W Bush

Dear Mr Cheney, Mr Rumsfield, Dr Rice, Mr Wolfowitz, Mr Gonzalez,

Dear Mr. Bechtel, Mr. Chevron, Mr Lockhead Martin, Mr Monsanto, Mr Smart Bomb, Mr & Ms New American Century,

Dear Mr. Billionaire who doesn’t pay taxes

Dear all you poor suckers, you grief stricken and fear frozen, overworked and underpaid, flag waving Americans who are so lost in your own pain that …

Dear all of you. Fuck you.

Refrain: I told you so, I told you so, I fucking told you so

I told you that war always kills children

I told you that there’d be no way to win this war

without bankrupting the US,

without destroying the hopes of our youth…

leading to more hungry, illiterate, and orphaned children

Refrain: I told you so…

I don’t want to talk about it

It hurts

It hurts that the killing continues

as I speak, as I drink, and even as I sleep

It hurts while the starvation and bad water continue

While the profits of Carlysle, Bechtel, Chevron, and Haliburton continue

It hurts while the profits of the Saudi and Kuwaiti royal families,

the Bush and Bin Laden royal families, the Fox and CNN royal families continue

While the repression of female power, education, community and health continues

Don’t make me give all the details

You fucking know it

I told you so

Everyone told you so

Even your own goddamned experts must have told you that most Iraqi citizens would never forgive the first Gulf War

All the cruel killing, war crimes and destruction of water treatment plants, pharmaceutical factories, and other essential services.

You are responsible for the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children

and even more adults in the 10 years preceding 9.11 and yet you dare to brag, “We bring freedom to tortured souls!”

Meanwhile after 3 years of illegal imprisonment and torture there have been no convictions of Guantanamo prisoners! No terrorists found.

And the International Red Cross says that 70% of Iraqi prisoners in US custody were arrested by mistake, have no intelligence value, and will never be charged with anything, and yet you force them to suck each other off on camera.

You couldn’t find a terrorist if you were looking in the mirror.

Instead of asking, “why do they hate us?”,

we should be asking,

“What will it take to disrupt America’s fake-ass innocence and total denial of the crimes of the corporate state?

Crimes which we support every time we drive a car, lace up our sneakers, and eat an ear of corn.”

Refrain: I told you so…

Refrain: I told you so…

I hate that revenge is culturally acceptable in Washington, Baghdad, Jerusalem, Hollywood, Ramallah, Jakarta, London, Beijing, Fruitvale and the Mission.

I hate the cynical tactic of terrorizing people into accepting the punishment of others, of accepting that entire nations are evil enemies to be violently contained.

Every war and occupation is based on the same fucked up logic that Hitler triumphed and that’s why I name you all fascists.

Refrain: I told you so…

With 15 million people in the streets on the same day I told you so

With the majority of the UN I told you so

But you don’t seem to care about the UN.

What the fuck is the matter with you?

The entire hope of the UN is the promise of NEVER AGAIN;

of promising to the hearts ripped open with grief and betrayal that a liberation of body, soul and planet is possible blah blah blah

But you hate hope

What the fuck is the matter with you?

Over 3,000 humans died in the attacks of September 11, 2001

And since then you’ve killed more than 20 times that including 1400 US Soldiers, at least 3000 Afghani civilians and a minimum of 20,000 Iraqi civilians...*

How many need to die? How many need to lose a leg or an eye?

Your wounds cannot be healed by the blood of dead children.

Stop killing their babies!

Stop killing their babies!

Why are you so fucking cruel?

You don’t fucking care about safety, about home, land, security?

You’ll kill anyone anywhere just to make everyone more depressed, more afraid, more anxious, more likely to kill.

The more you kill, humiliate, and starve,

the more danger and terror you bring to your own home.

You’re the number one inspiration for fundamentalist religious violence.

You have trained, funded, and armed terrorists.

You practically invented Al Queda.

You befriended and funded Saddam for years.

You collaborate with anti-democratic torturous regimes all over the world including Pakistan, Indonesia, China and Saudi Arabia.

You lied, you lied, you lied, and you lied again.

You’re a bunch of mass murder war criminals who ought to rotting in a prison made just for wealthy cynics.

Refrain: I told you so…

But you don’t listen

You don’t listen cuz I’m a drunk homo bride with no land to call my own

Yah you don’t listen cuz I’m a drunk homo bride with no land to call my own and I confuse all the issues.

But I give up. You win.

Now fuck off and leave me alone.

(every time it was performed there was a PS or two... mostly to address an immediate news event or terrible feeling I was carrying around... Here are the PS's that I could find:)

PS. 2008

Fuck you San Francisco for supporting Gavin Newsom. It was a sad day for democracy when he ran unopposed. Evictions continue. The rents are way too high. The homeless and mentally ill have received neither Care nor Cash. Fuck Don Fisher. Fuck Warren Hellman. Fuck Getty, Feinstein, Newsom, and the all the rich trash who want this city for themselves.

And a special fuck you to Barak Obama and Hilary Clinton, one of whom will be the next president of the United States of Global Terror and Endless War. Neither one of you will have the integrity or courage to get out of Iraq. You will maintain the chaos, you will maintain the sink hole of tax dollars which will compromise every progressive social vision that you’ve ever had, you will continue to protect the oil companies and the hugest of profiteering corporations, public schools and hospitals in the US will continue to suffer while illiterate children continue to starve in this great country, and you will continue to support Israel’s ongoing imperialist strategies of Palestinian erasure. I’m already sick of your empty promises, fake smiles, and online donations. Fuck you.

PS. 2005

To all those gain grotesquely from Halliburton’s pathological profiteering in Iraq, spending billions on US military bases and zero on hospitals, schools and homes, fuck you. And that includes Dick Cheney & Condi Rice, Halliburton’s filthy rich thieving friends in the White House, and to Alberto Gonzalez who supplied the legal justification to torture anyone who gets in the way of those profits, fuck all of you.

PPS. And a special fuck you to each and every employee of the CIA for intentionally fucking up democratic hopes and movements from Guatemala to Guantanamo, from Haiti to Indonesia, from Iran to El Salvador. Instead of preventing 9/11 and catching your buddy Osama, instead of supporting peaceful uprisings to oppressive regimes, instead of feeding all the people and teaching the world to read, you’re just a bunch of overpaid, dumb ass terrorists. Whatever. Fuck you too. I’m out.

PS. 2004

I don’t care how many marriage licenses Gavin Newsom signs.

As long as he refuses to tax the corporations who own downtown,

and refuses to stop bullying our poorest citizens, he’s an enemy of the people.

And a special fuck you to all who praise Ronald Reagan (after his death in 2004). His political career was a disaster for humanity, an insult to democracy, and a scourge upon the hardest working peoples of the world. He stood on the wrong side of every liberation struggle... AIDS, Central America, women...

*…(Iraq Body Count)