Tag: War

COVID-19 Passes The Vietnam War

Published on by @DwPolkLeave a comment

and when the virus
constricted air from over
58,220 lungs, no one
came to the door
informing us of death’s
arrival, no uniformed soldier’s
solemn words to comfort
ventilator’s failure to save
lives, this war of
no bullets, no answers
to the endless quest
for vaccine’s hopeful solace

we look to blame
those who cannot contain
this invisble reaper, as
if this were one
person’s fault, as if
we could just drop
a nuke and make
it all go away
instead we walk by
black granite names, mourning
the many more, expiring
with each passing day

Hiroshima

Published on by @DwPolkLeave a comment

smudges, they became smudges, places where people
used to stand, sit, exist, before the blast, easier to 
see shadows than the melted faces, missing eyes

enola gay, little boy, happy nursery rhyme in the sky
where men dropped the end of life, bulbous war container
children in the death zone like charcoal burned with no grill

truman’s august angst, questions like grant’s total war to 
conclude inferno, force bushido to surrender their young kamikaze
suicide desperation, a nation’s emperor unwilling to stop suffering

until finished, after nagasaki, inception of nuclear era
destruction, non-fiction, we know, we know, but better
to kiss strangers in streets than think of erasing future’s time