SONNET 104
An Elegy to Camp O'Donnell
"I felt better just knowing I was going to take charge of my survival. ...I no longer allowed myself to see the signs of death, but instead I developed a stubborn, unquenchable thirst for life. I was going to make it, I told myself."
~ Lester I. Tanney, My Hitch in Hell
The sublime kind interfered Their apt imposing,
About as sustained humidity gores clockwork,
Reaching any liberation, alas, reaching
Inferno's time blindly, of skin tanned as a cork.
Acidic railcars off the dustdevil's smelter,
Natural palms and bamboo courtesy'f abb'rations
'Round 'ts expir'd waste, wagons, plates; 'tween and bombed shelters,
Their greatest trial was neither but consid'ration:
Stoic memorials endure still our bleak mem'ry,
Tangibly appeased, greetings found another tree;
Theater of the flies, rancid's all or'ficies
Pierce, the veil, their slender touch catches mail a breeze;
Takers halt, revoke, invoke, blaspheme, revolts; true,
The ground-shakers unshaped and reshaped in all hues.
