The Languishing

American dream riddled with ghosts

holy rage the rifles

and hatred to our brothers

ink-well helmets feel the drone

of political discourse

overseas

and absorb the shock-thump glare of

vulgar ied's

wasnt it our side who pledged allegiance to the flag?

Dirtylands thrive and Hell doth blossom these blood-flowers

for the dead brown child holding a wooden gun,

the dismembered Marine from Omaha

or Portland or Chatanooga.

Wont God shed his grace on both?

Won't Heaven let fall her light on child and soldier tonight?



Under milky twilight swirled with the dust of war and desert-drumming,

a child dreams of a blue river and in it:

a million faces and red and white striped hands,

offering freedom, offering destruction, offering help, offering love and offering death-

all along the injured stratosphere of grace,

falls the hum of the distant brigade, the pounding of the approaching cannon,

the whistling laughter of the rockets red glare.



The inept hymns and tears have no place here in this most righteous of missions accomplished.



attempting to pray the goddess of peace,

we have barked rudely to the God of War,

hanging upside down in our swearing and chuffing, our angry bleeding to Christ.



the pink rim of the horizon disappears like a mirage beneath the blue firmament

and all around the lost village comes the sound of a silent respite-

as haunted children's ears are filled from within with the crazy, crying, singing stars of a promised peace.