I sing sixty-seven wars; the war now, the war for Rapunzel, earth cannot use her hair, the war of drowning hair drifting upward as it descends, the lover holding his cock like a switchblade, war of apples and pears beating against the earth, earth tearing a hole in sky, air to hold the light it has gathered, river bending until its back is broken, death a black carp to swim in our innards. ̺ ̺ ̺ Grand wars; the final auk poised on her ice floe, the wolf shot from a helicopter; that shrill god in her choir loft among damp wine-colored crumpled robes, face against a dusty window, staring out at a black pond and the floor of a woodlot covered with ferns -- if that wasp on the pane stings her... cancer to kill child, child to kill cancer, nail to enter the wood, the Virgin to flutter in the air above Rome like a Piper Cub, giraffe's neck to grow after greener leaves, bullet to enter an eye, bullet to escape the skull, bullet to fall to earth, eye to look for its skull, skull to burst, belly to find its cage or ribs. ̺ ̺ ̺ Face down in the pool, his great fatty heart wants to keep beating; tongue pressed to rug in a chemical hallway; on a country road, caught by flashbulb headlights, he wishes suddenly to be stronger than a car. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...DOMESDAY BOOK: AT NICE by EDGAR LEE MASTERS ODE ON MELANCHOLY by JOHN KEATS THE DYING SOLDIER by ISAAC ROSENBERG TALL NETTLES by PHILIP EDWARD THOMAS YESTERDAY by CHARLES GRANGER BLANDEN TO MEN ABOUT TO WAR (SYNCHRONIZED SONNET, INVENTED BY THE AUTHOR) by EDWARD RALPH CHEYNEY |