Ignis Fatuus

 Would I be taken to task

if I were to ask

if an arsonist would be shamed

by a candle's brief flame? 

In a roaring bonfire, 

what is another match?

The catch is that

the great act of 

self-sacrifice is the 

pyre of future action,

the dwindling of choices

to one final

kindling of despair, 

to fare with the struggle

no more.

I do not think this is what

the great gift of our lives 

was for. 

It is not complicity to merely breathe

in a world of ashes,

and although I may grieve 

(in my own way)

I would not make an ash of myself. 

Burn not without, but within,

with motive pure,

go on with your life and yet fight.

Endure. 

Peril

 Underneath the cradle,

in the nursery

someone had placed a trapdoor--

whoever would have

put it there?

There, where the innocent

lay sleeping, over

the dark tunnel--twisting dark spaces

filled with deadly hardware?

It is both a terrible metaphor

and not.

I can't even tell you where the child 

is now. Fallen

like a leaf from

a storm-tossed

bough.

Swimming in their Blood

In the beginning was the first blow,
and the first blow begat vengeance,
and the next blow begat vengeance,
and vengeance begat vengeance,
like a family tree of misery.

The never-ending tit for tat
wrenched babes from tit and
tattered the world.
The vision of She Who Ever Fights
wades in the blood of the fallen
and her sword arm never fails.

And with each generation the lie
of who did what to whom and how
blood answering blood
will cancel the stain,
and ever do we see an
increasingly blood-stained history.

And microscopically I see
the everfighting bacilli
invisible to the naked eye
wading in the blood of those who
ever fight, infecting them
with bloody dreams.

For my steel, a needle
I might prefer, to subtly inject
an antidote to this bloody strain
that so poisonously infects,
inoculating with common good
against whatever this is
swimming in their blood.

Eating Dust and Bone

Eating dust and bone
with  bled-out mouths
through tears too dry
to leave traces,
they were staring out
at a land called hope
with no hope left
on their faces.
When the danger fled,
danger still hung on,
the form of a brother
changed to a
treacherous friend--
the story so old
they could tell it to
themselves,
with an ending
that tastes of dust
and bone.

Ten long years back
they were brave and awake
that the danger faced
could be made erased.
But that treacherous friend
simply lay in wait
letting the danger come back
by looking away.
They were promised guns
and the fat of the land
and got decades of war
and the back of the hand,
Could one be sore?
No, it was written in stone
if only they ever read
they would see,
that promises made were ever
dust and bone
and all they ever could be.

But the promises made
that lead to lives far worse
should be understood as
evil as a magician's curse
and the echoes back
from where they began
should cause sleepless nights
for the certainly damned--
as they sit at great tables
in their stately homes
may they taste nothing
but dust and bone.