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Tag Archives: war
Tipping Point
The tectonic plates shift unceasingly beneath
the patter of our striving.
True to deeper dictates, the plates merge
motion into directions
each opposing the other—in a slow, mad whirl.
On the surface we chase happiness
as if it existed
in skirmishes won, in profits gained
at anyone’s expense—if we can bend
their wills and means.
What we call parties of politics
mirror the bloodlust shared
by men and rats
blind drunk on dark passion
when it suits them.
Facades of civility long nurtured
erode along a road paved
with short-term everything:
money resounds loudest when flung
after bad.
Climates of creeping entitlement,
promises made when it was easier
than not promising
come due, then overdue,
and are then exposed as shams.
New Himalayas, scaled to fit
our swollen views of self,
raise themselves among us
blocking all possible views of
shared humanity.
The solving of problems, always last
choice among us when empowered,
gain purchase and are then
discarded in orgies of name-calling
for what we dare not name.
Dreams purchased on the never-never
come due, and dilute, then,
into reappraisals
of what survival will entail
as we all buy guns.
The tipping point of a species,
this time our species,
breaks on the edges—
the conflicting, searing edges—
of the churning tectonic plates.
Passengers
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‘Protecting Bosnia’ (from 1996)
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Harbour Views on the Nearing War
Grebes break up boat reflections in the bay.
A single-master singles up her lines
and diesel-coughs her tired hull underway.
Whatever outcome anyone opines
about the war that heated up last night,
the grebes and coots and herons do not care.
The mallards graze the harbour, and, on deck,
the ship’s dog barks with pleasure at the sight.
Blond preschool children and their mother fare
well across the footbridge as a fleck
of oil an Adriatic ship has brought
spreads out, obscuring all we have been taught.
Who would have thought a feud could start a war
except the thankless cool unblinkered few?
Their knowledge does not get them very far
coming as it does without a clue
of how to stop the cancerous growing slick
of hatred that puts paid to common sense
and seeks ignition surely as these teals
seek mates when lengthening days dictate a quick
run on nest materials. The dense
smoke lifts and morning news reports reveal
what we have learned our fare is: people scared
and voice-overs as if someone cared.
I watch myself reflected in a pane
of the glass that lines the terrace where I sit
with a harbour view that’s blinkered against pain.
The year’s first tourists settle down to fit
themselves around a seaside lunch, some wine,
and what to them suffices for good talk.
I’m silent, less than jealous, for I want
escape from precognition. I sit and pine
for the innocence of birds, the calm a stalk
of celery displays. Such blank thoughts taunt
my conscience that does nothing. The world turns
while troops look how the house they’ve taken burns.
I know the answer: that there is not any.
I’d be depressed but find such cop-outs weak.
Besides, the Devil tells me, there’re too many
people living, and a war can tweak
ecologies to cleanse the world of slums
as well as of penthouses that encroach
upon what postwar is the perfect site:
sand everywhere, and the bones of what were bums
or children: offerings war makes to the Roach.
I pay and leave, afraid the Devil might
conclude my apathetic gaze means Yes.
There is no other answer I can guess.
Z Many Beauties Lost
Our research yields no insight that redeems
the evil he unleashes on the world.
Twenty-something years into his reign that he insists
historically should be called his term of office,
he stomps jackbooted over things of value.
He surrounds himself with weak or crazy men.
They feed his crippled ego, stoke his id,
and they, giggling, help him jeopardise the world.
An earlier incarnation of his type
was stopped, as such things are, but by that time
there were many beauties lost, and millions died.
As It Must in Good Conscience
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Song of Echoes
It was somewhere far away, another time.
Humans still joined together for peaceful purpose
not to feed on and off each other’s fears
and take their homes and children, kill them dead.
We listened to the healing music reggae.
We waved to people who were friends
we were sure sometime we’d learn their names
and invite each other to make love
not war. This was long so longingly ago
before the hate that used to simmer off of stage
was freed by despots to destroy all
we had won when we tried to be our best.
Listen hear the music’s echo calling
from the bomb-cracked wall more used to wailing
than to notes and rhythms of the spirits godly
in the times we had and hope to see again.
