Leonard Schwartz

War Poem

What of old Mrs. Shea sprouting a beard, arguing with herself in the kitchen?

Oh, don't be alarmed, she's always that way, been daft for years and years, can't even hear her own voice.

Am I at home or in exile? All of us living in Baghdad now. (Stop this war with your ear.)

Certain villagers deep in the Vaucluse believe that a snake skin placed on the stomach will cure what ails you. She wouldn't know, she's from Amityville.

Judy halted in front of the birdbath. Its basin was half-filled with the unnameable.

The mind should be kept independent from the thoughts that arise within it.

Impossible. Sleep impossible. No more than the next thought is possible.

When my thoughts experienced a precision strike, images fell out of them at random.

A mobile kitchen had been set up not too far from there. The site was chosen at random. Whichever lucky refugees managed to make it out found the kitchen, seemingly god sent.

A cormorant stood on a piece of reef far out in the Dry Tortugas. One was black, one was red, one was a darker red.

Words continue to arrive from monitors stationed at highly equipped tracking stations. The networks are excited, they are people, they enjoy attention. Generals speak in abstractions when obliged to speak, real philosophers in thoughts. The pots and pans bubble with poison. Do you hear them bubbling?

In big cities and little cities big people and little people pretend not to pause from their work. They pause from their work. (Stop this war with your ear.)

No sooner had the pleasure given me by certain books aroused the demon of wishing to write then another demon rose and swallowed up the first. There was simply nothing to say.

My body tumbles into the ditch of language I've been forced to dig.

Let us not mince words, the letter the birds delivered was supposed to be a reminder of origin, a promise of salvation.

The act of simple naming the whole message itself.

The ringing of the other phone.

Primers of sound deposited in the marshy soil rise to the surface.

What of old Mrs. Shea sprouting a beard, cackling in the kitchen? Don't be alarmed, she's always that way, been daft for years and years, can't even hear her own voice.

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