Poetry in Fragments, Unfinished 4 Jun 2014

1. A Dream of Treason

My thoughts are treasonous.

I look at the morning
shadows and here, 

in the afterthought of a sip,

I think of betrayal,
dark, hot, terrible. 

It is the brew, warm
and reminding

of home.

It is the mountain fastness

where high up in the air
is the downtrodden feeling
of being broken
like the earth under my feet,
crushed, hard.

Rain softens the earth.
A bud grows.

Becomes hope, this.

This dream of treason. 

2. A Meal for One’s Death

War does not know its friends.

Nor its foes.

In the language of crime and murder,

it is the gun speaking
what we cannot utter.

Like fear. 

Or, hunger.

I heard they give him a meal, says

A soldier at Iwo Jima.

He surrendered, 

gunned down,
his right hand
gripping a white cloth.

It is a verdict of death. 

Or, it was. 

Now, he is absent. 

3. How to Build an Empire

'Is this still Japanese soil?'

'Yes. It is still Japan.'

Two soldiers of Iwo Jima said
those imperial syllables,
their emperor in his secure palace.

Empire knows no boundary.

It owns dreams, people, soil, land. 

Possibilities too.

The contours of a song,
a dirge or a happy one. 

Like this constancy of claiming others, 

their language of hope.

Or, the lyrics of their dead freedom. 

4. Bury me so no one will find me.—

That was a request.

Faint. 

Fading. 

Like a chorus now, this solitary utterance,

said in the dark, in the shadows 

of the afterlife of a sweet command.

Bury me.

Bury me nice.

Bury me well.

And no one will find me.

Not a trace, this life.  

HH/