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Zero Week, it is a treat,

Transcendental mental

kind of retreat.

Zero Week, it leaves effete

the masculine, immortality of boys.

 

It leaves them effete; they begin to sink,

down through the ambience 

of a realm self-retreat.

A mental defeat, but non-discrete.

to forms for one’s self-preservation.

 

There’s shots to take; changes to make;

what was real to the self undertakes,

or initiates! the transformation.

 

Metamorphosis of the free-bodied soul,

as the changes much needed to initiate

the Initiates, the million-bit

particles: particulates!

that matter distilled of the soul.

 

Oh! soul just beginning to itself unfold,

bold! in the soul of the teenaged boys.

Mold! Bold! the immortal soul.

Make us some men of these toys.

 

To break it down.  Move it around.

First, what is needed: a dull mental round;

a week of testing, to test what was sound,

to fracture the full mental mettle.

 

Death to Immortals through various portals,

the soul is erased to produce fine fettle.

Innoculations, indocrinations;

skin-head haircuts – Immasculation!

 

Full-bodied suits of gunny sack armor,

where slim physiques had might once enamored,

fall away to the folds of the former.

And dopey huge hats that molds them together,

into amorphous, indistinctual matter.

 

Oh! those lads!

Had they known just last summer –

When they were the former

selfs of themselves,

would they have taken this road or another?

would they have studied to push themselves harder?

could they have chosen, now knowing the better?

 

Nay!  These boys were just being themselves,

leaving their lives to immediate pleasure.

Imminent danger was way off the shelf.

These were the boys, imbued of last summer.

 

And Zero Week evaporates,

one mental year innervates,

just to the point when someone would think

all sense of the senses, it now hibernates.

 

When then! would begin what invigorates,

and shakes the soul from its doleful straits –

The trucking of chattle to old Logan Heights,

and electro shock treatment

for a full eight more weeks!

 

Now! Basic Training Commences!

 

 

 

 

©2013, Marvin Loyd Welborn