A boundary line to intimacy. There are legalities here I refuse to see. She is the one who speaks to me in a black tee. Blue painted nails, a tapestry of connection by words, by ministrations time limited, sensation confounded. One-sided? There are multiple dimensions to affect- her hands are treacherous and painful but there is complexity to connection. I cannot help emotions that are inexpressible, that must be suppressed. And yet, I feel cheated, a quirky thirty minute interaction is all I have. She chops the edge off minutes, refuses to say goodbye. The more we speak, the less there is. I am a segment of her working day, no more and maybe less than a notation in a weekly journal restrained, my sentiments possibly resented.
Warrior The metal plated skin is betrayed by the human heart within. As the barrage of armament is hurled without affect, without reflection, without concern for innocents who die, that man who directs the tank turret’s blast, himself is put at risk, and those he most regards. Air strikes against the ectoderm that harbors newborn life, sound penetrates the womb with drums of death.
An Early Frost Alone, again, again alone. In coldness gazing at the phone. It doesn’t ring. There’s darkness there inside her chest, a shadow ghostly brightly shown by a scan that penetrates each brittle bone. So cold, she shivers from the chill despite the radiated heat, despite the warmth of wool despite the furry teddy bear she clings to-it’s comfortless. It was a gift from years ago, timeworn, from days long gone. Her slightest breath now aspirational, inspired although labored. Parting the window’s solemn shades she sees a little streak of pallid sun.
A Congress of Crows The crows are blackened by despair. The American eagle has killed again, his bald head smug, uncaring, despite their caterwauling, despite their swooping penetration of his nested fortress. The crows are blackened by sundry air pollution by soot that flies in free fall from chimney tops and wingless smokestacks. Irresolute they squawk in congress, planning strategy. Frantically they circle the man whose burning debris threatens every household tree every avian that swallows air every duck that paddles oily streams and even Mother Earth itself is carbonated and combustible. Settling on a stalwart branch the elder three consult, gowned in dusk as justices supreme, their beaks pecking in agitation their offspring safe in armored eggs still white and clean.
World without rhyme There is no poetry in war because there is no rhyme no reason, no scansion determinable. A poet lies when addressing war, when caressing war with phrases harmonic- such lines are duplicitous, crooked, unromantic, sycophantic. A poet lies defeated, dead, deadened to the conflict deafened by the gunner’s thunder, the erasure of words by unspeakable acts rubber-stamped by a hierarchy bent on obliteration of all artistic creation, of the beauty of humanity absent commiseration, absent justification, allowing only iteration of bombast, of explosive blast. Already dead poets quaver, they cannot savor the futility, the fragility of pulpy poetry set against the jagged profundity of war.
