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THESE GLOBAL CHAINS (The 28th Violent Verse)

Writing about a violence that is so steady
as to become part of a daily tradition,
I can’t actually say with any certainty
that I know much of what I’m writing,

Like a fog lifting at the foot of the bed
where ghosts pace the wedding floor
and at last lie down next to the corpse
with a mind toward murdering love.

I am estranged from such things,
but only by the thinnest of threads,
all that’s needed for such detachment.
Surely it is in all of us, this devil-dog…

Men have always written of immense suffering,
But few have written about their own crime
and, if they have, it didn't change the future.
The truth slices into them in due course, I suppose.

For thousands of years an unspoken suffering,
huddled in smoky corners, bent in darkness,
struggling to stand and unfetter its chains
has tried to drive a stake between love and violence,

even you have lain down with your bones and
Tried to assemble a new man, new beast carved
from the same frame, the same ragged horror.
When her laughter haunts your dreams, again

you’ll cuddle her heart without consideration
and begin to believe in your new shell, you will
follow her laughter and bring what you think
is joy, that you'll dole out by the goddamn fistful!

She knows. She recognizes your frailty, your
infirmity to reason and this causes you to fear
her knowledge, so you must shut her up before
everyone gets wind. Complete. Feral. Vile.


© 2009 mrp/thepoetryman

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