Still crumbling down.
We never waltzed,
But my ears still scraped your buckles
Still hear wry chuckles
I inherited from you.
I never had to kill you,
But we settled for a Cold War
Divided by that eyesore
Of a wall dividing true.
You dance and fight alone, now,
And I, conscientious objector,
Wage preemptive campaigns,
Shadowboxing forms and follies
My slight frame's yet to cast.
I still can't say
What metaphors to squeak,
For I've written this a thousand times
In blank curse, prose,
Wail, shant rhyme
And nothing does enough for me
Without doing too much to you.
It's all too literal.
I can't separate it, distance far enough that though I shout
I'm still crying
Just what I mean.
I resort to crass allusion
To combat the blithe delusion
That I can, without contusion,
Say
Every so often, religious-like,
I return to pay my respects.
We don't say much,
As the woods creak,
And if, by chance, we do
I'm another in a stream of shades
In my wide-eyed reprise.
We chat the fables of the day,
Idols in the aisles
Myths for the mantle
Dust on the demigods
That we still pay homage to
In the untidy corners of our minds.
I've lost much of that bad religion.
I no more make the perenial sacrifices
Or cower when the church door slams.
And although I do not flagellate
On behalf of sins not mine,
The stares of those grim gods
See through my anemic atheism
To the frightened theist
Hiding, praying silently
In a familiar foxhole
While their holy wars rage on.
I once heard,
From a reliably unreliable source,
That after an African genocide
The West wanted tribunals
To punish and provide
Justice.
(As if justice washed the blood
From ivory hands.)
The Africans, who had seen
Families kill one another
In the bright daylight
On unabashed, blood-red streets,
Wished to forgive.
Or perhaps we wish it were forgiveness
Because our own guilt lies
On a bedrock of blame,
On an Indian graveyard,
Haunted by the ones
Who came before.
No, perhaps they don't forgive.
But violence fathers violence
Furthers violence
And further violence does nothing
But salt the wounds
So nothing new can grow.
The ruins of our crass colonialism
Linger in sullen shrines to such mythologies.
We pass by them every day,
As our hands cross our chests
By habit or by hope.
But pass them by we do,
And, when we look over our shoulders,
We see the now familiar hints of green
On a scarred tree once thought dead
Creeping over an old fortress wall
Still crumbling down.
But my ears still scraped your buckles
Still hear wry chuckles
I inherited from you.
I never had to kill you,
But we settled for a Cold War
Divided by that eyesore
Of a wall dividing true.
You dance and fight alone, now,
And I, conscientious objector,
Wage preemptive campaigns,
Shadowboxing forms and follies
My slight frame's yet to cast.
I still can't say
What metaphors to squeak,
For I've written this a thousand times
In blank curse, prose,
Wail, shant rhyme
And nothing does enough for me
Without doing too much to you.
It's all too literal.
I can't separate it, distance far enough that though I shout
I'm still crying
Just what I mean.
I resort to crass allusion
To combat the blithe delusion
That I can, without contusion,
Say
Every so often, religious-like,
I return to pay my respects.
We don't say much,
As the woods creak,
And if, by chance, we do
I'm another in a stream of shades
In my wide-eyed reprise.
We chat the fables of the day,
Idols in the aisles
Myths for the mantle
Dust on the demigods
That we still pay homage to
In the untidy corners of our minds.
I've lost much of that bad religion.
I no more make the perenial sacrifices
Or cower when the church door slams.
And although I do not flagellate
On behalf of sins not mine,
The stares of those grim gods
See through my anemic atheism
To the frightened theist
Hiding, praying silently
In a familiar foxhole
While their holy wars rage on.
I once heard,
From a reliably unreliable source,
That after an African genocide
The West wanted tribunals
To punish and provide
Justice.
(As if justice washed the blood
From ivory hands.)
The Africans, who had seen
Families kill one another
In the bright daylight
On unabashed, blood-red streets,
Wished to forgive.
Or perhaps we wish it were forgiveness
Because our own guilt lies
On a bedrock of blame,
On an Indian graveyard,
Haunted by the ones
Who came before.
No, perhaps they don't forgive.
But violence fathers violence
Furthers violence
And further violence does nothing
But salt the wounds
So nothing new can grow.
The ruins of our crass colonialism
Linger in sullen shrines to such mythologies.
We pass by them every day,
As our hands cross our chests
By habit or by hope.
But pass them by we do,
And, when we look over our shoulders,
We see the now familiar hints of green
On a scarred tree once thought dead
Creeping over an old fortress wall
Still crumbling down.
posted by Ophelia at 1:12 AM
0 comments
