January 17, 1991
across the wintry, dessicated dark
telephone bleats
reveal not voice
but lightning strike of pain,
shrieking, howling, sobbing, screeching
like they'd murdered her own son.
that anquished mother
did not need an ambulance,
firefighters or police—
but a world that made some sense,
where children were not sent
eight thousand miles
to aim their guns at children,
where days to honor men of peace
were not defiled by mortar rounds
exploding into flesh,
where rippling desert
vultures did not dance
over fresh human carrion.
a world where giant deadly jellyfish
had not unfurled across Hiroshima's sky
and billowed in the wind.
the sirens' keening
recalls another desert mother's dying son.
"it is finished,"
is what they thought he said.
which was ridiculous,
for it had just begun.
across the wintry, dessicated dark
telephone bleats
reveal not voice
but lightning strike of pain,
shrieking, howling, sobbing, screeching
like they'd murdered her own son.
that anquished mother
did not need an ambulance,
firefighters or police—
but a world that made some sense,
where children were not sent
eight thousand miles
to aim their guns at children,
where days to honor men of peace
were not defiled by mortar rounds
exploding into flesh,
where rippling desert
vultures did not dance
over fresh human carrion.
a world where giant deadly jellyfish
had not unfurled across Hiroshima's sky
and billowed in the wind.
the sirens' keening
recalls another desert mother's dying son.
"it is finished,"
is what they thought he said.
which was ridiculous,
for it had just begun.