100 Short Poems
The critic in his dotage
It requires too much suspension of disbelief on our part
to accept that Jack and Jill would climb a hill - for water?
What pond or well would one likely find at elevation. And would
young Jack be schlemiel enough to fall and crack his skull?
Clearly, whatever they were up to is hidden by the silly rhyme.
Before and after
Before: Elderly Irina Fyodorovna on a drab armchair
watching TV in her apartment in Slovyansk, Ukraine
where profligate Russian artillery suddenly finds her.
After: the TV upside down, blood pooling on the floor
a relative roots in debris for a photo to put on her grave.
When death arrived
The eyes lost focus.
Breathing became erratic.
The body stopped moving
and began to cool from the feet up.
Eternity moved in.
Bodies at Buna Beach
(Photograph at Papua new Guinea,1943)
Three lie splayed on the wet sand
just above the calm retreating surf,
the nearest one half burrowed in.
All are foreground to a half-sunk boat,
its prow tilting up toward the sky.
Little Boy
Detonated at an altitude of 2,000 feet.
Above, rising to a height of 45,000 feet
the boiling, purple mushroom cloud.
Below, 7,000 degrees Fahrenheit instantly.
People vaporized over half a mile away.
Fire Eater
Bosnia. Somalia. Chechnya. Syria. Yemen.
For years I went where most reporters wouldn't.
But eventually I married, settled, began an expat family.
Then Russians invaded and shot me dead in the street
my splayed limbs calling for others to find and report on.
Nature Mort
Bathed in early Spring sunshine
the sparrow busy pecking for food
is focused on life and necessities,
oblivious to other concerns, like
the assassin cat creeping closer.
I was a teenage Pharaoh
Enthroned at nine, I had ten good years
to return things to ma'at and luxuriate in
the wealth of Egypt, the tribute of nations.
When death arrived - too early and all unexpected,
they clothed me in gold, and walled my body up.
“Passed away suddenly
surrounded by family and close friends."
Apparently sudden only in the particular moment
but not entirely unexpected, what with all those
most vested in that life conveniently assembled
to witness that one not-to-be-passed-up moment.
For you, reader,
your death, if not yet arrived,
already well-established, waiting
patiently as you tick through things to do.
And who can know after which particular one
it will be there - waiting and ready to claim you.
The Untimely Dead
As if in a modern fairy tale
they were beguiled by liars
and misled by misinformation mayhem
until the plague claimed them
and they died alone.