Bullets from Bones

“Indifference, Year of Peril, 1944” by Thomas Hart Benton

 

we are that species

who numbers cadavers

more wardead than

died-in-their-sleep

since antiquity more

bloody years rent with

combat or suffering

siege than at peace

knowing war begets

war we make beautiful

bullets from bones

to recycle their valor

reconstitute sacrifice

crumbled in graves

of both soldiers and

citizens lost in the

billows of battle-fog

all of which pale against

whole populations

entire generations

erased by the wickedly

punishing sword

flame or slavemaker’s

brandiron victory often

takes into its hands

asserting its dubious

rights of immoral

barbaric revenge

oh the genocides

staining each century

back through prehistory

utter depravity

strangling humanity

with our pretensions

to power that mock

the theology vested

in principled ethics of

jus bellum iustum

we know the right

thing yet continue

continue continue

to do what we know

to be wrong leaving

open for all our black

bloodied millennia

questions of whether

or not our apparent

intractable flaws

are perfectible

 

 

 

From my books Bullets from Bones and Legacies (vol. 1)

Remember Tomorrow Today

 

“Tomb of the Unknown Soldier #10” by Axel Ventura

 

halberds and hubris

hatchets and hatreds

armaments dragged

through the terrible

tides of repetitive

ignorant histories

killing fields run with

red wave after wave

humanity’s bloodshed

collected in morbid

black pools in which

drown and dissolve

tragic sacrificed

white bones of youth

reft of innocence

whole generations

the best of us

taken from time to

their premature tombs

stolen links from

the past to the future

great violent gaps in our

means of becoming

more noble more wise

and more civilized

casualties number

the holes in the soul

of society leaving but

evermore woebegone

chance to attain a more

peaceful posterity

Disarticulate History

“1st Minnesota at Gettysburg”
Painting by Don Troiani
From wikimedia.org

set piece arrangements

put army to army

formations of infantry

long-gunned and lined

face to face across fields

unaccustomed to death

the blue and the gray

dropped like flies under

withering mutual hail of

the cursed new minié ball

long bones and linkages

shattered and splintered

would macerate slowly

in battleground blood

till the sawbones

came round to his

grisly sworn duties

and made of young torn

ragged limbs ugly piles

the terrible waymarks

of principles pressed

to their ultimate conflict

and cost without daring

to leave us with proper

stone monuments

chiseled with arms and

with legs given up by

one lost generation to

a history fraught with

beleaguering consequence

Wounded Warriors

Wounded Warrior Project
Stylized Logo

tell them you care
broken bodies
who stood your defense
broken spirits
who minded your sleep

joes and janes
fellow citizens moved
by a sound
few acknowledge
the whisper of duty
come calling
with liberty’s voice

janes and joes
fellow citizens stirred
to make sacrifice
honored to serve
under colors
they willingly took
dire risk to preserve

now returned
fellow citizens
needing of healing
call out in whispers
tell them you care

(Please consider supporting the Wounded Warrior Project at http://www.woundedwarriorproject.org)