Selah

“war is beautiful only in parades” – zbigniew herbert

consider this: a brick building, three stories high –
scattered for three blocks after the discord of a tank’s canon

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a medal encased in a velvet box

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the pigtailed girl waving
with red and white streamers holding tufts of hair out against the blue background sky
– her eyes as stars –
she waits on Main St. for the marching band and the free candy from P.O.W.s

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there is no "beautiful"
- only irony –
for one man’s parade is another man’s grave

hear poem in wav audio

I. The Beautiful Uncomfortable

after Vincent van Gogh’s “The Potato Eaters”
for Skye

Drawn into the orbit of potato eaters –
Circling in near darkness—
Gaze upon gaze
rings under eyes
shadowed by the lit center –
I travel through the terrain of their knuckles
raised and knobbed like old mountains;
their faces, swollen tubers rooted in the hard life.

The gold on the table?
Merely resplendent potatoes.

listen to the poem read, click here

Lines & Shadows

Time, painted in the likeness of still life—
A pitcher here, an orange and lemon there,
A few books positioned just so.

The depiction is description –
Of how it was or hoped to be.
Here, in this blue back-dropped world.