There are still unexploded shells in the Somme
After a hundred years
Arrowheads litter the
plains
And radiation the
stratosphere
I've been thinking of
late about the way
My ticking heart is
wired
The way it's mined
With memory and
throbbing pulsing pangs
There are 246 square
miles
Of Croatian mine-suspected
territory
And somewhere in
BogotaKatmanduZimbabwe
A boy with a leg that
ends at the knee.
There is a web of broken
window glass
Stretching across this
revolutioned city.
It lies just under the
skin,
In eyes that don't
trust
Eyes that know what
mobs are made of.
Fault lines lie along
the palms of hands
That shake, but are
not shaking
Gashes open in the
earth
Along the lines of
skin and nation
The kettle's on again.
And when the whistle
blows: bombardment.
The world flat-spins and
And we'll carve each
other up
Like precision drones or yellowjackets,
Whittling bones again.
We fracture into you
and I
As the flak of words
makes a burning sky
The firebombs hit the shells
and
Powder packed
storehouses
Of every argument gone
by.
No good scout between us left to
fix
The knots untied,
The fires rise.
And the Khmer Rouge blooded
bones
Sit in the fields
unburied
And holding you opens
the scabs
Of everything I've
carried.
To live we must
remember.
To live we must
forget.
