War Poem #3 - Violence in Me

There are some truths we hold in he silence of our hearts. I'm speaking mine.

Why the War Poems?

When the bombs started falling in Ukraine, I turned to poetry. I hammered out a series of War Poems—“The Woman at the Wall of St. Michaels” and “War Poem #2” (crossposted at Fathom Magazine). Those poems have been my examination of the current madness of the world (the “Era Absurdity” as I’ve been calling it) and the place of humans within it. This has not been an exercise in cathartic scribbling. In a very real sense, it’s been an exercise in waking up, which continues to be a theme in my my writing, though I do not mean this in the Q-Anon-sense way. So, what do I mean?

In the Era Absurdity, we see the first blooms of global conflict. But there are also shelves full of anesthetizing agents and illusions, things to keep us from examining both the global conflict and the conflict within ourselves. And when I discuss anesthetics, I’m not just referencing about booze and bouncing bodies and whatever else serves as the distraction du jour. I’m referencing, too, the latest kerfuffle between Will Smith and Chris Rock and the orgy of opinion about Hollywood happenings (among other things). We watch the circus, opine on the circus, get worked up over the circus, and for a moment, we forget about war and widows and the appetites of deranged dictators, which is to say the appetites in the bellies of homo sapiens, which is to say us, which is to say me.

I am War

After my last poem, a reader wrote to express appreciation that I wasn’t beating war drums and calling politicians to set foot in the Eastern European quagmire. Her comment is true, but it’s only partly true. An honest examination of my own conscience shows a fuller truth. At the end of the day, I’m no less violent than Will Smith or Mr. Putin or whomever, and there’s that little voice between my ears that whispers: Maybe a well-placed fist could finish the fight or Perhaps a bullet or a bomb could end the Era Absurdity. I am not proud of this, but I’m not exactly ashamed of it either. And this does not mean that I support a fist to the face or the assassination of a world leader or armed conflict in Ukraine. But when I watch the news, when I listen to my own inner dialogue, I still hear the small whisper of my own violence because I, like most of you, am the offspring of the Era Absurdity.

Today, I’m sharing War Poem #3. It is a poem about my more recent dreams, which include both the dreams I have when I’m sleeping and the daydreams I have while waking. This is the truest way I know to capture my own wrangling with the way of a world that’s turned suddenly hot. I hope you see yourself in it.

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War Poem #3

My dreams: A black-eyed woman and a blue baby stroller of golden grain; an accountant whose gray beard matted with blood and dust, whose pencil now machine gun; my son whose finger on detonator; gasoline, bags of bread, evaporating values; colors and clouds; flowers and fire.

Last night: The eighth floor collapsing into the seventh, and the seventh into the sixth—and so on and so forth. Who distinguishes one home from another? All lamps, chairs, photo albums, wedding dresses, prayer beads, vodka bottles at the bottom of the same altar. These dreams an elegy for those things, the thing’s owners.

Tonight: Dreams of bullet cutting through skin, through bone, through brain; metal moving through maniacal matter, silencing war drums of Era Absurdity; the vacuum of death; a white space; a chance to rebuild what West wants. This reminder: Some silences are broken in dreams—I am animal instinct.

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