When nights are dark you’ll never see
the depths of our humanity,
but in the light of desert days
the shades of death will quite amaze.

So if you’ve time to take the trouble
sift just once through wreck and rubble -
ashen bones of tots will rile,
though eyes of rampant killers smile.

While starving at their mama’s breast,
one wonders whom those babes transgressed.
But as the bombs boom, split and splatter,
does it even really matter?

Yes, mothers often pay the price
with holy wartime sacrifice:
in flight, miscarried embryos!
Quite slow as ethnic cleansing goes,
but nonetheless, one must confess,
infanticide’s a great success.

The Chiefs disdain the Rule of Law -
their conscience never seems to gnaw
when dealing peace its last hurrah;
though charged with crime, they never rue it,
persevere and still pursue it,
smile and claim “they made me do it”.

They smoke their own, like cannibals,
with dictates, such as Hannibal's,
erasing also hostages
in so-called rescue carnages.

With bullets flying back and forth
the hungry hordes are driven north,
since promised aid (that’s long gone south)
was empty words from furtive mouth.

Instead of plates of pita bread
the meals are served with plated lead,
and those expiring at their hands
will sleep neath sheets of silent sands.

On fallow fields where kids once played
you’ll find a random hand grenade,
the only one that didn’t explode
the last time that the lawn was mowed.

As prancing children cross the roads
sometimes a tampered phone explodes.
One wonders what the future bodes -
perhaps some elegiac odes!

Where are those boys that threw a stone?
Well, some were shot; and some were not,
but whisked away to place unknown
and in the meantime... left to rot.

Within dark tunnels, bad guys hide,
beneath the clinics, far and wide,
so missiles raze them to the ground -
no bodies of the bad guys found,
but upstairs in debris, instead,
lie doctors in the ER... dead.

Twelve bombers flattened Ah-tross City
showing no remorse or pity;
now survivors hide in tents
in fear of further ‘accidents’.

But where are those with screams that gags?
Brought often back in body bags!
No need for sorrow for the slain,
since after death they feel no pain.

Today are waged uncivil wars
which burst the dams and breach the shores      
to empty vital reservoirs;
with water less than hitherto,
(and lacking coke from Timbuktu),
they’re left to lap the sewage brew.

This glance at barren battlefields
reveals the peace that killing yields,
evoking shadows time transcends
when man’s  existence finally ends.

EPITAPH

While Jungle Jim the Jingoist
embroils the world, and wars persist,
pale Peter Pan the Pacifist
pleads “Can’t we somehow coexist?”

A HUMAN IS CRYING

The dog is dreaming
under the piano

asleep across
its foot pedals.

The clock announces
the seconds

in a loud hear ye hear ye
town crier's voice.

A bumble bee is arguing
furiously with the glass

of a cracked
window pane.

Time is defeated.

A human is crying.

Time is different
for the clock, the bee and

the crying human.

Time ceases to exist
lost in his grief.

His brother is dead.

Somewhere in the journey
around the sun

he has left the planet.

Earth continues on
without him.

He sees his brother
everywhere.

Strangers
wear his face.

Walk with his gait.

He almost expects
to hear

his voice in the dark
at the turn of the stairs.

He sees him many times
in many mirrors.

Or in the back of a spoon.

His face trapped
in a cobweb.

It always appears
as if...as if

he has just left
the room and

will be back
any second now

but: he isn't. . .

The dog is still
asleep under the piano.

The clock has run
out of time.

The silence is terrifying.

The bee it seems is
dozing on the window ledge.

The human
is crying.

*

My brother's death stripped me of everything...the who I am...my name...my identity...I was reduced down to this human symbol...just like the dog...the this...the that...who as it happens is...crying. As if a computer was merely registering the things in the picture.

Brilliance of a deep blue sky
Whipped about on high
Mare's tails in their latticed way
Spray across my sky.
Wind aloft and rising
In its wild mercurial fling
Driving cavalcades of galloping
White mares to offering....
A magnificence on high
In a quotative display,
Stampeding into vastness,
To illuminate my day.

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Vastness on high
In a troposphere of sky
Delicately blazed
And so intricately phased.

This cavalcade of cirrus
With a slash of errant wind.....
Then, behold, with bravado,
To let the stampede begin.

A clash of hooves at gallop
Across a turquoise sky,
Joins the thunder of the passing,
With the scream of equine cry.

There's Mare's Tails in the Heavens,
In a symphony of song
And the Gods roar embellishment
At the righting of all wrong!

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