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.
I took bread from the shelf,
As so many thousands have,
A simple act for a simple meal.
I thought, from this one place
The uncountable have been fed,
From here, this grocery store,
Where the shelf is never empty.
And not just once — I have
Performed this act of grace
So many times myself, I wonder
That there’s any more for others.
Would I take the last loaf left?
We have all done far worse things.
It wouldn’t be a crime, of course —
Someone must be the last to eat.
I could say, “There’s more bread,
Perhaps, on shelves in other stores,”
Succumbing to rationalization.
There are now thousands lined up
Behind me, waiting for me to choose.
Has every one made up their mind?
If you were me, what would you do?
A man looked out at his black yard,
wanting to make good use of time:
I need to make one fine thing hard,
he thought, make it mine, only mine.
He stole a dozen doors of glass,
and built a house, and hung a sign
that said: You shall not pass.
Then he bought some seeds, a pot
and dirt, and began to grow grass.
Each night he stood inside and thought —
watering grass is not too hard.
Soon the roots began to rot—
in the greenhouse, out in the yard.
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 disappearance of the dead
And his vacuous exaltation.
The machine gun slung
on a guardsman’s shoulder, aimed
at blue sky, as if the war might be
The Knight and his Death ride horses bridled;
One with studded leather, the Other twisted hemp.
The Devil walks. Having nothing hasty to attempt,
He's happiest when men, actively morally idle,
March, run, ride, or fly toward anything Ideal.
Plodding along, He's never too far behind.
The Devil and Death have nothing to conceal
From a Knight known to be uncommonly unkind;
To the men who've just been maimed by his sword,
He's always spared a righteous, comforting word.
They show themselves: anthropomorphic Fates
The Knight, smiling to himself, politely ignores.
A running dog briefly disrupts the stalemate
Only one of the three has the power to restore.
The military objective: to knock the chip
Off the mysterious stone's shoulder, then tip
The whole evil mass over and bury its white
And gaping, bespittled gob out of human sight.
The soldiers, rigid with fear and umbrageous rage,
Are all innocent, young, exactly the same age.
Their memories are identical, none recalls
How his father fought the same war with the same balls.
Though they are many (the stone is ageless and numb,
Impervious to thought, its nervous system dumb),
They're dry sticks waved over dry soil by a dowser,
When what's needed is a six inch field howitzer.
They break against the stone, bounce back, and charge --
Small men to prevail over what is merely large.
