Tiptoe (In A Quiet City)

the creaking floor
unbrushed dust under husks
of dead bugs in the window sills glistening
wind blows, quiet / mercy / set for sailing days
little boy dreams if freedom
instilled with science
sirens, always sirens
in the dark hours
the bodies fall
like clock points
like victimless heroes
laid out to be weathered by the caustic rains

peaches gleam
in the repetition of harvest
captured in this painting
creatures scurry by in the measured hush
of the silos
the pomegranates crushed under
hooves of horses marching in random figures
ghosts of cowboys
riding leather and burlap carpets
dancing in the sky
in ethereal antiquity
riding into silence
sun forgotten trees.

autumn early
here now to earth
any one thing
kept in stasis
too long
left for
forgetting
laughter
running
jumping
standing
barely
quiet
eventually. /

Dual / Process For Explanations Of War

man is on fire / goddess in the rain
tires screech / underneath the street
futile attempts / cynical vents
troops in fury / military accidents
truth down a hole / manufactured consent
deep in the valley / in the past rutted out
light shines like a beam / cracks form in cement
sky changes colors / gas filled bombs odors
thunder comes down from above / nothing left standing
the post war grove / kill for freedom
no disease more virulent / ivory tower observation decks
for the affluent / to cheer for lions
cultivated destruction / for damaged prions
god minions wreak havoc / in the paranoid silence
their violence out of sight / to be found later
no victim of fate / in the bomb's blast radius

(Note: To be read in a call and response pattern by an iraqi child and an american child while they face one another but with two televisions in between and facing them from which they read the lines back and forth to one another, hiding the other child while they speak-at the end of the first verse the readers flip and the child reads the other half of the text to the other child.)