| After the Storm Poems from the Battlefield a work in progress Copyright 2005-2008, K. Mercurio Gotthardt |
 |
 |
 |
 |
| View from Behind the Hill From here, the view up on the hill is blind; across the street dissolves in hectic days as every driver inching through the line obstructs the passage back across that way. Travelers trapped in traffic frown, distraught-- the cell connections here are always dead, and as you crawl in transit, speeding thoughts race me to the highway in your stead. Roads rise like mountains, monuments still stand; sepulchers, relentless, grimace gray. You've been grounded like a ship condemned to land, your stillness painful as I start to move. You sit cemented, and of course, I'm torn-- you barely idle while I am transformed. |
| pg.3 |
| War Preferred apologies to Langston Hughes What happens to war preferred? Does it pile up like steaming mounds of dung? Or pierce like buckshot through skin, to bone and lung? Does it dress itself like values, truth or need? Or does it stand alone and lavishly bleed? Maybe it just devours our every sense of self. Or can it become something else? |
| For questions, comments, or usage requests. |
 |
|
 |
| There is one I am obsessed with. The white one. The young one. The one that feeds with the herd. She (for I think it is a she) shatters the monotony of torpid browns, breaking the bevy with an arctic nudge, animal artillery barging through bush and weed to feed on abeyant buds. By all rights, she should be dead. By nature's rights, she should never have outlived last winter. Still, the angry spark of survival fuses mind to mouth to lips to mouth, nourishing primordial need, inhered, spurring the unfettered advancing into fluttering brush, the wiping of wet nose against chill leaves, the gathering of vital vines, the glimpsing up, the understanding that they are staring at her. And then, she resumes her lunch. |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
| Battle Hymn When the world has all forgotten why it went to war, and when the cannons cease to pummel anymore, I will return to you no matter my condition, and howl the hymn of victory for our fateful mission: Tears and swords and sweat, my dear, haven't scarred my mind so deeply that I won't trample through these thorns to loose my love completely. |