some new images and a dirge

Enticing, a response to a poem

words try to run away
you seem to have
if not their number
their names.


Oh, there we are…..

Sometimes in the morning we are walking
together with a poem
and only later
it wakes up so we say
thank you!



They are Only Boys, They are Always Only Boys

The men who died in the patriots noise
are known by the timbre of stirring words
But we, who caressed their terror
packed their hearts into sterile plastic
Know the dead are not words or threats.

Know that hidden behind
Glittering gold symbolic stars
Huddles a bare-faced woman
a grim father, who know the terror
seeing that boyish face suddenly
in dreams, and among the platitudes.

I love them all, dead wounded and living
and weep for their sorrow.
I love them the more for their honest tries
At hiding the grief
In social silence, we hide grief.
Bring them home
Remember their sweet young faces
Who stood for what they must, who did.

For Cindy Sheehan, and all the mothers who disagree or agree or simply share her pain. We medics, graves registration techs, and other bearers of the souls of war also feel..



Beginnings

When I was first in China, and then Japan
and other Asian galleys
I, so well beloved of western words
and literary intellectual smug-uggery
couldn't read .... couldn't write
and a preliterate
slave at least had a home.


PoetryWriting