June 26, 2007 at 3:41 pm · Filed under Poems of War
Atrophy
In the mulch around the budding trees, insects crawl about.
Snakes, salamanders and frogs
slithering and jumping about everywhere.
The waters are dirty. There are no fish in the sea.
We live small dirty lives,
damp,miserable,cold lives,
full of crawling things
that slitter in the underbrush.
The nights are getting longer and darker the sun shines no more.
Weeds have overgrown the farms,
fungus thrives on every spot,
eating out the very life of us
little by little.
Yeasts and other scavengers
have found residence in and on our skin.
It is as if the very heart of us is poisoned,
covered by a morass and accumulation of dirty fungi
and putrid, dying flesh.
The trees around us are bent by the weight of
the ugly emotions in the atmosphere,
I look at you and see my ugliness mirrored there.
Published in He Didn’t Die Easy; The Search for Hope Amid Poverty, War and Genocide
June 26, 2007 at 3:37 pm · Filed under Poems of War
Grey clouds glide by darkly tonight,
a dark ominous moon shines from on high,
its cream and reddish rays fall to the ground,
disturbing our peace.
This night will not so easily pass.
It will be a long and endless night,
in yours and my mind.
The air around us heaves with wrongness,
someone’s insane laugher resounds through the evening,
like the echo of unruly flood water
rushing down the eroded gulleys
that form steep waterfalls in our minds.
Shadows and darkness abound
we cannot flee-
What is this our hands have crafted?
What plant is this we have put to the ground?
We send out our children to meet the ogres
meet the devouring creatures we have nurtured,
and the acts we have perpetrated…
have become their atrocious inheritance.
Published in He Didn’t Die Easy; The Search for Hope Amid Poverty, war and Genocide