Friday, November 7, 2003

WWI

weeds in a rose
the morning was born young,
and yesterday had died
like an alabaster wall.

the day was fresh and lucent
like the clear father sun;
and the linoleum stared me
in the face.

i felt i was chasing rabbits
and all animals inane.
and gently i felt tired
from waking to the day.

i wished sleep,
and things like death,
and sleep as needed.
but it was time for the day.

the school bell chimed;
a new bell, it had recently been changed.
it now sounds more like a church bell
than rattling insane.

and here i sit so patiently
in my desk on time
with a pencil in my hand
like the clock on the wall.

i take out my book
of history
and soon am reading
the mundane text
that tells of World War.

names are all over
weeds in a rose.

they are blooming all over
the stuff of my mind.

a man named archduke ferdinand
shot in his car
with shiny spinning wheels
is shot and bleeds
and dies.
and his wife
is shot.

and dies.
faded flowers
breed long sighs.

in the mundane text
i am told that the war began
a battle
to own land.

to own pieces
of something
on a map
that never
were planned.

that never were there
ever but on paper.

my feeling is of a creative flair
burn it all. burn the papers.
no countries. no despair.

but reality
is a monster
with longest claws
that is guised
in metallic hell.
sitting, knick-knacking
the war bell.

cling cling
clang clang
cling cling
clang clang

it is deaths' voice.
he owns the land.
and europe has become
a no-man's land.

cling clang
clang cling
cling cling
clang clang

the reverberations
of an artillery fire
and a tank's howl.

and millions of eyes
and millions of hearts
and millions of hands

all lined up
ready to fight.
ready to die.

ready to own pieces
of something
on a map
that aren't
even there.

the men are pierced to the heart
breathing mustard in their eyes.
coughing and sputtering
spider eyes.
a dead man's die.

i read names
in the mundane text
and they mean nothing
to what i can't see.

woodrow wilson
is a name that is bold.
i think of heavy eyebrows
when i think of his name.
and if this is wrong to view,
or name i do not know.
but his first name
reminds me of eyebrows.
piercing, atrocious eyebrows
that are long seen.

the lusitania
singing out at sea.
a catalyst in a cocoon
made of caterpillar's hands;
the weak mice touring the land.
and german, that monster
a large tarantula walking on the sea
setting vehemence in its bite.
poison seeping, and death's night—
the cocoon opened, the mice that crawl,
diseased and dead and born.

and once born
dead.
sputtered over
to woodrow wilson's
eyebrows and heavy
to his head.

the anger
like a tree
bearing new peaches,
rotten peaches to eat.

insipid as love;
bitten nationalism
bittering word.
like skulls, all wide and open
but not seeing the reasons.
but still entering too late,
and too out of reason.
and of you, i have eaten
and tasted blood.
also i have tasted bones,
white as snow,
and as black as tar.
the goo that goes too far.

the rotten peaches
that scar.

sussex pledge
more like a plunger
stuck in america's head.
a thorn that was hidden well.

"that infernal skunk in the White House,"
the roughrider man said.
does he stink?
does he crawl in your skin?
make you shake, make you cold as the wind?
and his eyebrows; atrocious as then,
and his wide eyes; sought and grim.

"my message today was a message
of death for our young men.
how strange it seems to applaud that."
yet clap they did; and enter they did.
and soon the draft began.
so somber, wilson, so you.

and the victories;
and the losses;
and the costs
of war.
shall there be
evermore.

croix de guerre
the cross of war.
a smothering cross
to crucify human
proclivities;
the endless
natures of hostility.

christ would smile.
he died on a cross
to feel more loss.

go to november 11th
1918.
early in the morning
a paper was inscribed.

peace at least.
peace at last.
the armistice
like a lovely rose.

just blooming.
weeds in a rose.

8 million and more dead;
their skulls empty holes,
maggots that were almost flies
in their heads.

but reality
is a monster
with longest claws
that is guised
in metallic hell.
sitting, knick-knacking
the war bell.

it is deaths' tongue.

that clang clang
cling cling.
hands all crying,
all hugging,
all rejoicing.

for its ding had end.

a useless silence
that only articulated
the beauty.

no more blazing guns;
no more machine guns;
no more death.
only life.

the great war
at last
had ended.

the great war
at last
had ended.

but not the last;
nor not the end.

for,
in man
there be
certain crutches
which bleed the most.

and in man
there be
certain things
that are the stuffs
they breathe.

all of the seasons
and all of the rain.
and all of the snow
and all the flowers
in the shade.

and all of the skulls
and all the forgotten names
written in this textbook
too mundane
to let me feel what i wished
i was alive for.

tears have fell
from eyes that only cry.

and i
am not one.
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