Concrete Horizons

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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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