for holy water, afterlives beyond Ukraine,
sure heaven neither judges nor atones?
Atop tarn uniforms, their sun-bleached skulls
resemble cauliflowers amid rapeseed,
fodder for architects and lords of greed
who build Earth’s fences and tear down Earth’s walls.
No second coming for these meek and poor,
no Christ to lean on, anti-christ to blame—
they mistake fuse for wick and pray to flame
we’re not on the eve of the third world war.
4 August 2014
of oranges in the south of Greece, all bloodyand ripe with sweetness, while the bank’s the colourof meadows in the north of France, deep greenwith a heifer’s downy mane, a country rose.Love, I shall never take you to those places.I’ve squandered all my gold upon the water,which for you mirrors the eternal sun.
a raven soars beneath the summer sun.The elder chłopi say none have appearedfor many seasons, having understoodat last the ways of man. For on the flanksof the old hill, no hare or vole had runacross the plush green grasses. Drought had searedthe soil; and industry had promised gain.The young and able have moved far away,and…
father with hand on clutch,a barge with smoke and steamwed to our pickup dash,the sun bright on the river.Nettles in my rashbooze burning in my liver,childhoods where whites ruled.Now just more monkey talk,the masses cucked and fooled.The corn cob is but stalk,no corn or yellow kernel.The bream bleeds from the gill,the smiling old white colonelhas…
before man’s feastsbegan to spoiltheir habitat?Eat or be eaten?Even the fatfrom a club-beatendhole was treasured,its snout and tonguecrudely measuredwith fists, then flung,into a kettlechipped out of stone.A jell would settle.Headcheese alonehelped cause the deathof many speciesof which man’s breath,brain, and fecesare not of anygreater worth.Think of the manythat walked the earth.
I wonder what appeasing light, if any,may have eased your pain and strengthened youas blind and bleeding underneath the manywinding caverns of the hellish earth,your starved lungs gasping for a final breath,you prayed for some miraculous rebirthto justify the agony of death.But what your friends could rescue from the groundresembled only contours of a man.And…
with dew upon its snout,foe to the frog and beetle,always in the cornerof grey tabby cat eyes,it greets me as if Platoin the cave, I with beerdeposit bottles, and bellygraveyards towards heaventhat only I can peoplein Hades or at home.
