CONFESSION ZERO

P ut a single bullet in the palm of your hand, it lays there, obedient, glistening, motionless, weighing no more than a thought. S e w all grenades into the sleeves of white dress shirts making sure to leave the pins fully engaged and they shall never again need ironing. Gently lower all IEDs to the furthest depths of the sea among the a mazing and peculiar mysteries of the deep and strange creatures shall dance to their silence. Pla c e all the military tanks on the planet into large pots, stoke all the furnaces and melt them down into a liquid and from them erect millions of rolling libraries. Hang all rifl e s and handguns from the surface of the moon like an airplane mobile or a holiday tree ornament, and listen to the wind make a jo y ful nois e . Sculpt all manner of bomb s into enormous statues, whose eyes look down and w hose brows are furrowed, and merrily stare back into their dreary fac e s. Pla c e a world of peace in the palm of your hand, feel it gently bre a...

Why do they stay there, between war and peace? Sky’s tapestry doles out guns, bombs and rocks while flesh and bone swim away from the ache yet live on as the food for the murder of peace. Why do we hide from the truth as if it were an ogre while death makes a home inside their living and war dispatches a raven to their door, smirking with the teeth of empire? Why do we wait, stooped for another wink? The sky’s drapery has tossed down ample clues, peace is breathing in harmony with war. (Road-maps are useless to blind leaders.) Why do they hold there, hunched in the gloom? Hatred’s bird cackling with bereavement needs end. Are we not rightly dishonored when we fill its trough with blood? © 2007 mrp/thepoetryman

They scatter me over the solemn ground. They wipe my death on the walls before my child’s eyes. My body is lifted from me and never returned. My eyes move to my child as the soil swallows my limbs. This, my death, pays no tribute, serves no purpose, only brings my child to hatred. Maybe that’s it- Teach children to kill, vengeance, one tormentor spent, sold for oil, this won’t wash away to befall something better. I descend with a last look at my child, eyes swathed in dread following me down, an ashen face and vacant eyes pleading as I pass beneath the surface observing the insipid reach of hatred. I know war only honors the things of beasts as I am grown in the ground like a seed for tomorrow. © 2007 mrp/thepoetryman

There is going gradually insane, there is even shelter from time to time, maybe a canopy for the truth, plagued by frauds, which is no one’s fault, they've only themselves to blame. Then there’s underneath the bridge which can be made to stay longer on the way. This particular variety’s imaginary, the idea is (was) to get homeless and insanity  to sound like the other, the words themselves to feel like the other, roll off the tongue unnoticed, that way, it’s easier to press closer and everyone sounds mad, then it's possible to create a subjective world, where insanity is like apple pie and only stares upon the grunt. The powers that be manipulating the machinations shall inevitably end up completely insane themselves, but, with such influences upon language, they’ll continue to mock the destitute Then, when all are reasonably and completely insane, we’ll not be able to tell the damn difference, t...

Lights rise on ATHENA (The Virgin), her flesh covered in ivory, her drapery and armor in solid gold. Soon HERA, the Queen of the gods, wearing the polos crown enters. In her hand she holds a pomegranate; the emblem of fertile blood and death (and a substitute for the narcotic capsule of the opium poppy). As she ascends the steps of the Parthenon, ATHENA addresses her. ATHENA: Hera, good morn to you. HERA: And to you, Athena. ATHENA: By your countenance it would seem less so… HERA: This daybreak I’ve heard a disturbing query. ATHENA: Might I answer? HERA: You might, were you not a virgin. ATHENA: Ha! You know that’s a myth, dearest Hera. There are Romans and Greeks whose foreheads have sprung tales of- HERA: Yes! I know, but you should hush, your father might hear you. ATHENA: You think I care about what Zeus hears, your husband and brother? I’ve given him bigger headaches at my birth than may leap from this! HERA: Yes. That you have, dear Athena. That you have. ...

For whose worship do the lips of flowers find their ashen prayer and whose truth does the mouth of history open, whose song do they warble, the captor or the conquered, for whose favor do they tremble? © 2007 mrp/thepoetryman

She moved rapidly over the ground, alongside the Salween trench where hell dogs slathered their steel lips in conquest, beasts collecting the night’s wordless skies. She fell hard upon the scorched ground, her slender legs slapping the stony loam. I cradled her wet face against my chest to gentle her howling heart. She smiled and stroked my face, then her mouth leapt upon mine and our hands curved into flames as we pushed deep into the brush. Wordless, we spoke of our hopes and fears, the beasts hard upon our backs, the children and their mother’s shriek, the lifeless weeping stirred by the heartless. The sick and the dying were with us, between our moving lips and fingers, upon our union of sweat and flesh underneath the forlorn heavens. And within our merger of silence we knew, at long last, there was no more need to run. © 2007 mrp/thepoetryman