Brief Notes From a Long War

-

 BRIEF NOTES FROM A LONG WAR 


If victory entails the sure elimination 

of weeds, the battle’s already lost, 


the city besieged. These roots run 

deeper than the shoots reveal, 


deeper even than the bottles claim 

to combat, which even if you resorted to that 


would wither you as well over the course

of generations, its bile biting the hand


(or the tender off-shoots of the hand)

that sprayed it. If, however, 


you define it as a bit more room 

for what’s good to grow, than yes, 


victory is complete and eternal, so long 

as you sign off on being completely 


willing to eternally return to the front 

lines, snapping the hydra’d neck 


of whatever head rears up from your soil 

today, seeking to leech the nutrients 


from the part of you where the flowers

cluster in buds, awaiting the signal.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Holly

-
  HOLLY             — a yellow labrador One day you'll say your childhood  dog’s name and it will sound  a bit odd, flat , as if it  were someone else’s pet  who wandered its way  like a hair into your mouth.  You haven’t thought about her  much the past few years,  but still, you didn’t expect she’d just disappear like that.  The scary part isn’t that she’s gone— you loved her, but it’s a given dogs will run away, true  to their nature. What haunts you,  rather, is the crowd of other constancies milling about your house, the question of which will slip out next if you forget  and leave the door open,  even just a crack. The girl lying next to you? The name of your homeroom teacher? The drive home, those turns you know in your bones? And then  what really troubles you is how   you’ll go on living without them around anymore, how you might even do just fine at it.
Read more

Over the Know-ledge

-
OVER THE KNOW-LEDGE  Take a geometric shape, a space.  Eliminate the edges, then once  again erase those stubborn edges that your mind—like so much loose sand—insists on filling in.  Forgive it this propensity, this in-born  habit of fencing in to verify what’s what. It likes to know  what it’s dealing with, but for today’s  exercise we’ll need to exorcise  this hard-wired love of lines and open the cage if we're to meet the one we're after, the one who does the dealing. Now look at what you’re holding. Nothing?  Everything? Are you even sure you're the one doing the holding anymore? Hard to see, or say. On second thought, why look? I f you look it goes away. Welcome to the turvy-topsy, your intro course in dyslexic theology in which you meet the one in whom we being and whom and have. The textbook's wild and illegible as a dog—no wait, a God—unleashed, so your best bet is to ride it out, the way you would when your insides want out, hunched over the toilet and all of
Read more

Discovering What's at Stake

-
DISCOVERING WHAT’S AT STAKE When I hear the hollow thump of their boots on the front porch, and that night at last arrives when they bang on my door with the butt of their torches,  an eager light in their eyes  as they regret to inform me  that it’s my turn to be cinched to the stake, the one that— yes, I know —I picked  myself to die upon, may my tongue melt  before I can scream out  for mercy. Let it flare up bright enough that—if for a moment and from afar—some restless pilgrim  mistakes it for a star and packs a bag, at last arriving   to the long road home.
Read more