November 30: As if Playing

 Look at them all, 

as if the children they were,

scheming and playing

all in the yard.

All in the yard, they stay

young men, and

dreaming

of a time when the lessons

weren't so hard.

The world is a yard

by a foot and half, 

a map on which 

they blueprint their 

moves

as if building war engines

from blocks to be 

used in a yard where 

some are armed with bullets

and others with sneers

and rocks. 

They go to it as if playing.

Playing, as some play asleep

and some play awake. 

The tin-can telegraphy of 

war plans ignored

because another game

seems to have more reward:

it could happen and has.

Too sadly I'm saying that

lives like broken toys

were lost

while the grown-ups

were playing.

November 29: Honored in the Breach

 There is a kind of decorated scoundrel

who exists as an example

that certain honors don't come

without a cost,

whose wake leaves such a toll

that certainly their soul

must be included in the 

ranks of the lost.

There are those who have been feted

having been fated

to do the things that ordinary men

would spurn,

that generations unborn

would read their biography with scorn

at the horrific legacy

they have learned.

Such men lead nearly blessed lives,

have fortunes, friends, and wives

all too good you well might think

for all they had done,

and when their end comes round,

in retrospect it's found

they did even more foul horrors

under the sun.

But having come to a close

in that ultimate fixed pose

they escaped disgrace

to their face

and sadly, "won". 

November 28: Justified

 The greatest sins (rape, torture) were triumphed eventually

with the greatest of pride; "Come and see

(click the link) that 'we' were justified."

The tit for tat that tattered the centuries

with war was glowed up for the new era

and everyone wanted more.

It was fought in press releases and with

the best intentions, and by people

meticulously checking their mentions.

And one side won but lost and the other

lost but won, and for a certain kind of mentality

that was part of the fun.

And no one really scrupled over how it 

all began. Stories differed, and kept on 

differing. Right according to plan.

And once over, those distant people felt their various

wounds and traumas, while nearer home

they threw a party to toast the end of the drama.

"Modern warfare, technological triumph,

tribute to our age": whatever. Rituals were

needed to sanitize the filthy remnants of rage.

The ancient horsemen rode with honor in the

ghastly parade. (Between you and me, to see them;

we all should have been dismayed.)

Famine taking his narrow, satisfied bows to

the most cheerful harvest song, to celebrate the dead fields

where nothing natural went wrong.

Broken ships and far-flung shipments to needless

distant ports left so many cupboards

intentionally bare, the margins brutally short.

War, that old charger, riding in his bloody medals

to a martial drum had success with the rumors of

his name and from where he would come:

"From everywhere, from all sides, trust no one!"

with messages confused, the people had

destroyed themselves, not knowing they were used.

And Pestilence, the opportunist, showed his face and let

the mob applaud, have done his best to direct the arrows

that were once slung only by God. 

Death led the way, and also fell behind and showed them

to the portal, with nothing more than these words to say:

"Remember, thou art mortal." 

But not today for that brave multitude, that owned: they showed out,

they ate, they became epic and immortal

apotheosized, heroic, digitally great:

the antlike soldiers, who memed and considered

all this war an op, having created great war machines

in Adobe and Photoshop,

drenched themselves in fake blood as people with

real blood died, they fought a great war to be

seen, and felt very justified. 

November 27: Fears

 Having given to fate

a hostage, it's you

that suffers terrors, insensible, alarming

on their behalf,

a vital organ attached by a nerve

but let free. 

The nightmare of colic, fever, 

the broken bone, 

even the thought that

they won't be happy.

And when that nerve has been

stretched until

you don't know where or how

they are now,

even worse than death

things at last

appear.

Life can be terrible and it isn't true

that you don't get more than you can 

endure.

There's worse than death to fear,

and that is

it's horrid comfort to you:

nothing to fear after,

evermore.

November 26: Libraries and Lighthouses

 The wonders of the world arrive

through sweat and tears

of human labor

and then 

are unmade again.

Libraries are burning

book by book

and the 

light of their immolation

must tell

you:

here are rocks

that would surely shock

the strong ribs

of your fine ship.

But we cannot sail on

for treasure beyond price

may well be lost--

what is the cost

of danger--

if to save a thousand worlds?

Cast anchor at your

distance, and let the lifeboats down.

November 25: Eruption

 Red and white up from the 

dark belly where no eye

saw the light from the great heat

stirring, churning,

under the terrible pressure:

the violence of shifting 

plates, the rock and the hard place

that is also rock, streaming free

upwards no more

to stop it from happening

it 

finally

explodes.

White then red

then

black.

November 24: Under the Pomegranate Tree

 "then she turned herself into a seagull

and he became like

a snare for her feet."

And under the pomegranate tree, 

grandmother's voice became small

and the sun on the white houses

seemed harsh but

the sky, dark, like wine pressed

long before.

She changed the subject.

"Medusa was fortunate, Athena did love her.

She heard her little prayer

but could not stop her noble brother,

and gave her the face

to make men leave her alone."

We knew men were not heroes

and neither were gods when she said it

and listened as if turned

to stone, and she said at length as the 

shadow of the pomegranate 

spread, "We don't 

have that gift," she said, "And you

will never be a bird. Never 

a fleet-footed Atalanta,

dodger of men, even if I warned you

of the golden apples in your path. 

I can't give you anything 

to make you free of the 

grasp of man or God, 

but one alone:

to make yourself into a tree,

and cast your roots so deep into the earth

that you drop your regards to

Persephone and cast

your branches so high

maybe they will see you from Olympus.

But be so still no one hears anything,

not even the wind in your hair

like the leaves, even the leaves of grass

that tell the tale of the asses' ears

of Midas. I have 

even been a tree, fallen but not dead."

Fallen but not dead. and still

leaves shooting, still roots casting

deep into the soil of us.

I believe we learned.