poems.pdf

Unknown Soldier
Unknown soldier,
blown to smithereens
oh, so young.
Was it your desire,
so very young,
to become a fighter?
To be cut down unsung?
Dust to eternal dust.
Ashes to perennial ashes.
Sacrificial lamb.
Offertory
in a strife woefully mired in escalating
dividends and swelling bank accounts.
Prematurely-bereaved-mothers relive
labor pains, as future beacons
are raked to ashes to fuel oil
democracies that line a handful of pockets
and hold the rest of humanity ransom.
As long as mothers—reawakened
by birth pangs—reclaim wasted loin-fruit,
the premature deaths of unknown
soldiers will not go unsung.
Alive, our paths may never have crossed.
But tonight, our pains entwine
as I listen to your life story, compressed
into a one minute tribute on Eye Witness News.
Dust to eternal dust.
Ashes to perennial ashes.
Before you were cut down so hastily, you were
primary caretaker of your ailing mother.
Was it your entering the jaws of death—
a mere sapling—that catapulted her,
like a meteor, plummeting down to earth,
to follow suit in breathless immediacy?
Now with Mother ashes
sprinkled onto young graves,
Mother-love will rock too-soon-bereaved
Offspring in eternal sleep.
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