Concrete Horizons
The soldier jingles,
with a mouth full of silver.
His horizon concrete
under the silent sun.
Clay sludges into pores.
Red grime paints lips.
Flimsy paper—
not even a second of life
clenched in a frozen fist—
holds a mother and baby.
Stars pool in the creases of eyes.
Stillness gathers below the left lung.
Destruction and desolation spawn
a child far worse.
An ache settles in the grieving earth.
A man degraded to dirt.
Forgotten begets no funeral.
What do we do with our tissue paper lives? Burn, burn, burn.
Who is so willing to set the fire?
War is a poisonous infection,
a conflagration of the living.
A concrete horizon stretches before us.
Unless we drown the flames.
Tomorrow another soldier will jingle.
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Poems
PoetryPoems I have written from years ago to now. For any of you looking for a love poem, you most likely will not find one here (unless I write one in the distant future because for some reason my brain short-circuited and thought I it would be a good id...