Thursday, March 28, 2013

Considering War


CONSIDERING WAR




See there, a child running smeared
in tank oil, when my friend lights
a match and flicks to give
the child wings that fly him
too close to the sun.

His matchbox once filled with
matches that lit my cigarette now
only have the ashes remaining from
wings that flew children
too close to the sun.

Let me light a cigarette, the child still shines
slightly, enough for me to light a
cigarette. A quick inhale, but already,
at the end of the slithering smoke, there
dangles the skin of the torched child. How
desperately it clutches, a gargoyle scorched
of wings, but not of claws.

But in the end, I am only a bookkeeper,
nightlessly piling, cleaning, and emptying
shelves of gargoyles that couldn’t
fly. 

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