Of so many bomb-shard blistering winds,
would you laugh amidst new debris,
make concerts of carrion, skin & other organs
as deathless madness frees you of familiarity?
Might you bend into the cup of a river,
disbelieving your reflection, cursing the you
that waits, forgiving the one already vague within?
Or has sunlight been lost to you?

Remember well the eyes, green with algae.
They suckle at the stagnant dreams
where you live blindly, have no need of stands
to take in the absence of a moral dilemma.
They're so like home, filled with safety
in conscious nightmares, venial meanderings
caught like graying stars. & the bullets
respect your walls, the boundaries of your nation.

If you had news,
you'd wear it like a shroud,
symbolic of nothing
as is blood silence
on the battlefields you cannot walk,
beneath skies that moan
& continue. You know this now: eventually
we breathe the same dead air.

("If You Had News" first appeared in Black Bear Review)