© Louise Woodard, Violent Passages, 1989. There are violent beings, shells packed with noisy flesh, their fist digging their way out of a plate of armor like a god wielding immense wrath, as if angry at its own design, or angry that something melded its light into darkness. There are beasts heaving fists as hands, there are words, cruel as time, red as fire; a spirit piloting a monster, the least of kindness, a betrayal of mankind rising from the human ashes. The caskets coming home are painted in war colors and move across our high definition eyes like slow-motion murder, There are warriors as pale as shame, diluted by counterfeit demands; weaklings baptized in the steady stream of blood; Charon steering away from goodness, his craft heaving with the dead and the dying with their obolus , imagining they’re sailing to Eden. We are imprisoned by noise like a miner without air, like a child smashed in front of us, like death gripping our hands, motionless and loveless...
(The Weaver's Song)