He is a dead verb. Was. I used to say
a prayer each night to God, hoping
he would die because
what else does abuse ask of us? : Looking for something
to replace the grenades inside of
him : Heroin addict. Dope sick.
When he learned parts of the Spincourt Forest are still so dangerous
the French sealed them off,
ground littered with unexploded
shells & strewn with barbed wire
and filled with arsenic:
his emotions : a rifle on the wall
gone off.
Shells & iron buried in ground : He—made into ground.
He—seed bearing organ.
Shells & gunpowder : The pistil the ground the seed
holds life, or
the brown spoon or just his body.
I carried life for him
juxtaposed his dead : my landscape collecting
all of these bodies.
Caused by men, their made-up wars : Caused by heart war.
Unexploded shells : His artilleries bleeding me white.
Ground filled with barbed wire and arsenic : I suffered
the threat of
ripened shells.
Farmers are still turning them over. Over. : To the white mares who listen,
shell-shocked. : Shell-shocked.
In a ground dotted with bodies of nothing but dead bodies,
with more to say.
