4 Poems by
Janet Buck
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Anthems & Anathema
Apocalypse and Holocaust.
Armageddon, Devil's Island.
Eagles shot and fifty stars in lurid smoke.
Shock and bitter play their shaking violins.
Our leaders must be Ludwig,
Mozart, Lincoln, and assured amour
striking back at violences,
making music from these deaths.
Anthems void without a voice
that stirs the conch in cups of deaf.
The tower was an obelisk
and I ignored the passage
of the brilliant light.
We used to whine
of traffic in the city streets,
of urban's thick incessant hum.
I strolled the sidewalks
thinking of the traffic jams.
Perhaps more song was there
in granite way beyond the sewer grates.
Navy fleets and green Marines,
Army boots and Air Force One
I once considered bills to pay
are now the stamps on envelopes
of freedom's could be, will be,
gone.
This Armageddon
This holocaust of bodies
in caldera ash
settles in a frigid urn.
I wish to give a bag of blood.
Words aren't triage
for these wounds.
Verse a shoelace fraying
in the razored hour.
You speed the streets
and turn the knob.
This Armageddon ain't a film.
We're all in shaky silences.
You tell me of a couple holding
clinging hands upon the tower,
jumping to their open graves.
Grisly mushroom clouds of smoke
render gritty thunderheads
white cameos of innocence,
their pearls coming loose from prongs.
In harbors 'cross the Great Divide,
the sea around a statue sits
in search of tossing bitter salt.
Will chisels of this terror win?
Raw rubble of the hideous
is ripping fire across the screen.
The domino effect of hate.
Danger of writ black and white.
Messy chalk of human error
is calling out for leaders now.
The craziness of certainty
when someone thinks
he knows the truth --
owns the fabric of a god.
A Letter to a Poet in New York
A season's terror too vile to watch.
It rides as if those bullet planes,
their stolen bellies,
raped the tenderness of grace.
We are writing in a furious weep
of willows on the breaking edge.
Commas are a useless twist,
a sperm in wet emotion's flood.
Penmanship is a trite stroke
on a canvas of horror.
Anger's kettle whistles
'til it starts to scream.
In sleepy, rural Oregon,
an ice-cream truck rolls calmer streets.
Its kindergarten tinkling
underscores a song removed.
I wish to cool the heat with ice.
Copy/paste this georgic peace
like towels on a sweating neck.
Rumors of those callous bodies
gathering inside a mosque,
their hate in petty tribal dance,
working a jig around our graves.
My retort is almost voting for the worst --
bombing all who court revenge.
Black tattoos of darkness frame
the coming of the ivory light.
You speak of rotting bodies now
rendering the city smog
a squirt of Eau de Joie perfume.
In armpits of a tragedy,
hair grows into bristled thorn.
Your pride erect. Mine
inside your tattered shroud.
Paper shred wrought liberties,
leave us coupons of the dead,
you will see a spirit rise
from ashes into pertinence.
Petty Fingers
My fingers feel petty today
tapping under a sky of blue chalk.
Somewhere else, across
a stately mountain range,
body bags are catching limbs
and a Brooks Brothers Store
is doubling for a morgue.
Rubble is a hailstorm
that violates the autumn flesh.
Inconceivable and firm,
set fast on sorrow's acreage.
I check the Dow and
hate the shape of dollar bills,
my shiny dimes of selfishness.
All who shed their dreams for ours,
plummeted to granite slabs,
perished in atrocity
will be remembered in their graves.
Wreaths of jasmine line the streets.
"Why the risk?" reporters ask a fireman
who came so close to losing limbs,
drug a flock of slaughtered lambs
to cherished urns on mantles
of un-chosen grief.
I listen for the hummingbirds
of steel planes and zipping swords
of our defense that circle in the quiet air.
All the dead are Aslans on the altar block.
Its pale marble never pure,
aching to unload a wound.
Justice brews like chicken stock --
strips mittens from a mountain lion.
Men will stand in breadlines
of a just revenge, become
the crumbs of sacrifice.
Freedom's cello tightens strings.
Some orchestras must play their scores
with cross bows of our skeletons.
These heroes are our tourniquets.
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