Unfathomable War


Rubble.

Bombed out buildings.

Old man straddling atop his tire-rim-chair,
rocks back and forth,
his stub of a pencil
scribbling across scorched paper.

He needs little for writing “’Optimism In War,’
as it could only be a short book,”
mumbles this bent over man
heavily caked in war’s residue.

In what is left of the street…

Mixed flesh litters the rutted surface,
now but a carrion fancier’s feast,
swarming with blue bottle families conjoined,
the decaying corporeity catching the eye of a limping cat
and a battle scarred rat as well,
both lustfully eyeing the yellow-gray putrefaction,
animal and human carnage indistinguishable.

Soon…

An old woman in threadbare robe
hobbles through the ruins,
seemingly still in shock,
her sixth year healing,
her stump of an arm still thrusting
toward the sky’s barrel-bomb memory,
her good arm waving its habitual “shoo”
to the buzzing rainbow-winged intruders.

Ignoring cataract eyes,
the writer’s mind seeks out and finds
skies of blue,
rhapsodizing clear images of lovers
in a meadow of yellow flowers,
a moments respite from reality.

But…

He turns his ear toward the smoke-filled sky…

Cataract gray engulfs his vision again…

He peers down in acceptance
at the blanket of metallic fluttering
and whispers, “Some days my clouds
are so dense, my eyes can only weep a tempest
of war’s undefinable dust of horror,
where only shadows appear
while groping for words
that need to come,
that won’t come,
that…

He listens…

Other life listens…

His sad-flooded eyes lift to follow the blurred shivering wings taking flight
as the shrill screech of an “incoming” disrupts their feast and all the life left.

The cat and the rat remain transfixed,
Fresh carnage is about to be heaped atop yesterday’s al-Assad-left-overs.