Ukraine

It’s possible to destroy even hell

And turn evil to dust

With the dropping of shell after shell.

What remains is one man’s lust

Mating with his own cold will,

Giving birth to blood and rust.

Each bullet or bomb’s a pill

That plugs a hole in his brain,

Which is cold and still,

As is Ukraine,

Where a young child fell

And didn’t get up again —

Her killer dares her now to tell.

Violence In Peacetime

An Air Force brat, I was so used to soldiers marching by our house, I hardly noticed.

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How orderly the mower’s sound,

blades mincing, round and round,

the tender blades of grass.

I hear the boots of soldiers pass

beneath my curtained window,

and don’t wonder where they go.

Our Winter

Mid-January and winter has arrived at last.

The branches droop beneath the snow of two

storms.  No bird has sung for us in weeks.

I have read of winters so cold, so long,

the birds fell like leaves from the trees;

always war is raging nearby or the smoke

of the crematorium has smeared the snow like

a gray, vague and indecipherable rubbing.

No bird in my backyard falls from a branch

that doesn’t catch the air beneath its wings

and swoop off into the wind with a kind of

triumph.  I have never been shot at either.

And yet, not forty miles from here a man

was dismembered and his body parts used

in a ritual with no better purpose than

the resurrection of some long dead devil.

In the next county, a girl of sixteen was

hog-tied and set on fire by two brothers

who confessed she had teased them with her

body.  One brother accused the other

of dancing to the rhythm of her screams.

And so, each day, I watch the birds.  This

morning, a cardinal sat hunched on a limb—

as if I’d mistake him for a bloody fist.

War, Terzata #45

Cold air slipped in the window

Left open overnight.

It’s 100 below zero

And all is either black or white.

Ice leans against our home

As if meaning to fight.

The wind chants a lifeless Om.

“This is our new Ice Age

Under a sun silver as chrome,”

Says the nodding sage.

There’s no bitterness or woe

I could scratch on this page —

The ink has ceased to flow.

 

A Nation of One, Terzata #37

His own minion in that nation,

He eats like a king, thinks like a stool.

All of his words are defecation.

His actions insipidly cruel,

He pounds his fist on the able,

Whips his army like a mule.

Hacksaw and hammer and Babel

Bang on the running heads

Of corpses on the embalming table.

He dreams of flowing Red,

Of flags and blood, this revelation:

The elimination of the dead

And his exalted exaltation.