ARMS

(Greetings from Darfur etc)

 

a transcontinental missile

made up of glossy magazine pix

silently slips into my hands

and explodes in my face

 

a one-armed child throws sand in my eyes

with his missing hand

and another child

armed with a Kalashnikov

sprays mosquitoes

at the armchair cradling me

 

cruel is the god of our modern times

his most effective weapon of oppression

is not a rifle pointed at a child

but a rifle placed in the hands of a child

 

a dove equipped with rapid-fire claws

cannot even see whose blood he draws

he’s but an instrument of the pale desert

and a timeless thirst that  needs to suck

the  blood of the living

willing or not

 

armed with an armchair I shut my eyes

to keep the unforgiving sand out

 

maybe those children

both the armed and the unarmed

will understand and forgive me

 

            (First published in Solo magazine, 2006)

 

                 * * *

 

POEMS FROM THE WAR ZONE OF FLIES

 

don’t tell me what shade of green tinted the flies

            exploding around the tragedy –

only how many and what size they were –

 

don’t tell me what figures they inscribed tunneling

            through the baked-solid air over the scene –

only what diseases they carried –

 

don’t tell me what tune their buzz

            reminded you of –

only how loud it was –

 

don’t tell me how the smell slid down your throat

            into your stomach and what it did there –

only whether you’re still alive

            and how much longer you have to live

 

how much longer you can tell your story

            about the flies crisscrossing

the raggedy silence gathering over

            a fresh wound of history –

 

let those who follow you there

            on the safe boardwalks of tomorrow

fill in the colorful details

            and mount the big meaningful words

 

            * * *

 

 

CIVIL WAR RITES                                                                                               

                                                                                                 

Terror: a self-contained universe,

a snake biting its own tail,

a cat licking its angry anus,

 

terror: a god dispossessed and

stripped of his creatures’ faith

and let loose on a world he once

nurtured in his lap,

but now his naked power can

only ravish the flowers of his love

in a world horrendously complete where the end

and the beginning are made to meet --

 

where the anus blooms as a sweet fresh wound;

the blood of monsters feeds the laughter

of a drunken god as he rubs his two hands

together: heaven and hell.

Between them grow ash-pile moans,

incapable of guilt or innocence.

 

 

Paul Sohar lives in Warren, New Jersey. Paul’s poems and translations have appeared in more than 200 publications and eight books.

 

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content © - Paul Sohar
Music: © - National Anthem Project (Swaziland)
image ©DRDC (http://www.darfurcentre.ch/ )