Salt

Lot's wife disobeyed
A command of God.
She looked back.
Most likely yearning
For a final glimpse of her home,
The land that held her parents' bones,
The land where she fell in love,
Where her children were born.
Her refuge
Her nest
Her garden of memories.

She was turned into salt
A pillar of hardened crystals,
Like the sleep in one's eye
Multiplied from mote to monolith.

How cruel of God to punish one
Simply for choosing to look back
Upon one's roots, home and nest;
The past that made us all what we are.

Don't look back!
How can we help but do so?
To deny our history
Is to deny ourselves.

A sailor asks his messmate
To "pass Lots wife"
As though she's a whore
Hauled up a hawser
To be hidden below deck
To be shared among them.
An old salt's spice of life
Perhaps worth one's salt.


Yeah, pass Lot's wife.
That shaker laden
With tears of regret
Tears of longing
Tears of lamentation
Tears of frustration
Tears of despair,
and rarely, too rarely
Tears of joy..

Any man worth his salt
Knows that the salt of the Earth
Is derived from tears.

Collateral Damage

We were the beasts of your farmyard and fields.
We meant no harm, wanting nothing more
Than to graze on green grass and rest in clean straw.
Why was it necessary to send evil men to steal us,
Or cast thunder, lightning  and fire down upon us
Simply to win a wager with the Devil?
Why should the restoration of our master's fortune;
Twice blessed in beasts and progeny,
Be a cause for us to rejoice?
We who were slain in order for faith to be tested.

We were the sons and daughters of Job.
Looking forward to love, marriage and children.
Why was it necessary to bring forth a great wind
To collapse our eldest brother's home upon us?
Why sacrifice us to prove our father's faith to Satan
Whom you can vanquish at any time, but won't?
How can we help but resent and envy the existence
Of the progeny given later to twice-blest Job?
How can we not yearn unceasingly for the lives
Wrested from us that were bestowed upon them?

I am the chastised wife of Job.
Bereft of our livestock, our riches, our children,
Having to witness my husband's undeserved suffering,
Was it weak of me to question God's plan?
It certainly was not loving of my husband
To reproach me rather than try to console me
In my grief.  Is it wrong for a mother to rage at God
When he takes her children away from her?
Does he think that giving me a new family means
That I won't still love and mourn those whom I lost?

"Have faith and question not the wisdom and works
of the Lord, for his ways are wondrous and strange."
For those of us who suffer his collateral damage,
We pawns sacrificed to further some Divine Plan
That we feel removed from or can't comprehend,
Are we to submit without a protest, without a curse,
Without a raised fist, or at least a questioning "Why?"
Job was well taken care of.  His faith was rewarded.
Why were so many candles extinguished though, their light
Snuffed out, just so his could illuminate more brightly?

A Night to Remember

The “Unsinkable” proved not to be so.

                                           When White Star hubris was punctured by an iceberg,

Life or death suddenly hinged upon lifeboat access.

                                            Ship officers such as Murdoch, Lowe and Lightoller

Became the arbiters who determined death or survival

Cowed into submission by a bully with a gun

     Or culled by the rigidity of “women and children first”

                                                      Protocol by callous authority without pity,

Heart-rending scenes of families sundered ensued.

                                             More like sorted by class.  The line’s Director was saved.

Only one child from the first class cabins

                                                                          Fell victim to the sea.

Poor folk were dealt with harshly however.

                                                        Steerage passengers were kept at bay

By locked gates, and by doomed seamen

                                                      Ordered to make certain the travelling poor

Remained behind with them.

 

Charles Lightoller, the ship’s Second Officer,

                                                Survived as well, and smugly attributed it to God’s plan.

He confessed later that what haunted him most

                                                After the grand vessel reared, then took its plunge,

Dumping its passengers into the frigid Atlantic,

                                                     Wasn’t the shrieks, the cries, the curses;

     The panic of those suddenly immersed in icy water

                                                       With death by hypothermia ahead of them.

 

No, it was the soul-searing, disconsolate cries of

                                                                                     “I love you!” 

                                                             A last desperate attempt at a verbal caress

            Shouted by some of the doomed into the chilly night

                                                                 In the hope that their loved ones,

             Safe in the lifeboats, would hear them.

 

You’re Captain of the Ship of State now, President Trump.

                                                         Will you as well, someday remember

The anguished cries of “I love you!”

                                                  Uttered by those you’ve wrested from their families

             To ship them back where they came from.

                                                 Their dreams of freedom and opportunity denied them

Too poor to pay to remain here,

                                                          Too powerless to pull strings to stay;

        Wrong creed, wrong country, wrong race, wrong time.

                                           Returned to the strife that they’d endeavored to flee from;

Banished to regimes that may imprison or kill them.

                       
                                                  Will you remember their anguished cries of “I love you!”

Mr. Trump?  Will they haunt you?

                                               Or will you just scowl, grunt and tweet “Serves them right.”

Triffid Seeds

"The Day of the Triffids"
A "B' movie at best, if remembered at all,
But when the screen's images took root
In my ten year old mind, they deposited seeds
That coaxed forth frightening nightmares.

Capable of communicating with each other,
These plants could form packs, co-ordinate assaults;
Walking on their roots like evil Ents,
(though I hadn't made the acquaintance of Tolkien yet)
They would pursue the terrified humans,
Using the poisonous barbs on their tendrils
To paralyze and kill with stabbing thorny attacks.

I would suddenly awake, shaking in silent paroxysms
Of fear until my eyes adjusted to the darkness,
As the shadows that seemed so threatening and evil
Morphed into the comforting sanctuary of my room.

A next door neighbor, knowing of my fascination
With the movie, brought me home a promotional packet.

 "Triffid Seeds." 

God knows where he'd gotten them.
I accepted them from him with trepidation,
An emotional jacket of fear, curiosity, and pride
In possessing something of great power enveloping me.

It must have been akin to what Pandora felt
When she accepted the ornate box from the gods.

  Deep in the woods amongst tall pines, secretly,
 I cleared the ground of needles and I planted them,
Perhaps hoping that the dark shade of the woods
could camouflage my lust for power and hide
The evil that I'd sown there.

I'd go out daily to check the progress of the seeds,
Secretly hoping that I'd find their green shoots
Emerging threateningly from the shaded ground.
Armed with a sickle in case I did.
But nothing ever came of it.

Sure, by now I've figured out that they were just
Sunflower seeds, recast as a slick marketing gimmick,
In this case doomed to failure by my not planting them
Where the sun could summon them to life.
Doomed to remain dormant in that sepulcher of earth
Beneath the shed needles of a stand of pines.

Perhaps their failure to bear fruit are as simple
As a young boy's misapprehensions.

Failure to understand the properties
of a gift he'd been given.
Failure to comprehend how best to put it to use;
Fear of the consequences of sowing in ignorance.

The Clown

The garish pasty visage of a corpse;
Greasepaint smelling more like formaldehyde;
Red hair reminiscent of Banquo's gory locks,
Lipstick that's been smeared on too thickly,
As though applied by a drunken mortician.

Clothes that don't fit.

Is it any wonder that we recoil in horror
When a clown in its oversized shoes
Fixes its hideous gaze upon us,
Then clumps its exaggerated gait toward us;
Grotesque goosesteps of malice,
Hands outstretched like a zombie
In search of brains to devour.

It's a visage that is meant to entertain us,
Yet it's the face of death that we recoil from,
The unnatural rouge of funeral cosmetics
In a carnival setting.

As the horrible harlequin lumbers toward me
I laugh, feigning the mirth that's expected,
But I have all I can do to restrain my impulse to

RUN!

Child's Play

Had I known
When I was a child
That as an adult
I would have so little time to play

I would have reveled in my time
As a child at play

I would have spent fewer
Of those irretrievable moments
Pretending to be
Or wishing to become
An adult.

To His Civil War Comrades

Andrew Koon's tribute to his comrades in arms
Stands watch in the Vermont, Illinois cemetery.
The bronze sentinel leans on his rifle silently.
The bivouac of the dead that he towers over
Isn't likely to be roused til Judgment Day.
The white Grand Army of the Republic markers
With their curt Joe Friday "just the facts, ma'am"
Inscriptions are mustered in obedient ranks
At their positions in block, row and lot.

"The war years were the best years of my life,'
Andrew Koons would sigh, longing for his lost youth.
His practical farm neighbors in rural Illinois
Measured success by harvest and crop yields,
Relegating the War to Independence Day.
They laughed at old Koon's yearly ritual.
He'd fetch his uniform down from the attic,
Struggle to squeeze his bulk into the faded blue,
Maybe pop a button or two, polish up his boots,
Then go to march with the vets in the big parade.

The sword has been sheathed, and the tempered steel
That had once made Georgia howl has lost its edge.
Garrulous ancients now talked of the War of the Rebellion
With affection, as if, on the brink of entering Valhalla
They've reshaped what had been a youthful commitment
To serve their country into a lifeline tied taut
To an outcrop of youth and camaraderie.
The testosterone-driven adrenalin of confrontation
That they'd felt in combat still surged in their memories;
Easing their inevitable rappel into the abyss of death.

The old vets harbor an affection for war.
It's the fat old Rebel General Joe Wheeler
Waddling up a Cuban hill with the U.S. Army now,
Wheezing "Come on boys, let's get them damn Yankees!"
It's the bitter, asthmatic old gringo, Ambrose Bierce
Heading south fifty years after he fought at Chickamauga
To seek his youth again by fighting with Pancho Villa.
It's Johnny Clem, the drummer boy of Shiloh.
Now seventy, begging President Wilson
To let him serve in the ranks, a decorated hero
Who longed to fight again, this time in World War One.

War is the rejuvenation of old soldiers.
Who cluster round the rumbling medicine wagon
To purchase Doctor Mar's Feelgood Tonic.
They pass the patent remedy concoction among each other,
Believing that they've rediscovered their youth by bellowing
Like young bulls, cavorting warlike and howling for blood.
The audience works itself into a frenzy to buy,
Waving the lives of their and their neighbors' children
Like dollar bills as they vie to purchase the patriotic lie.

Andrew Koons tried to sell us the lie as well.
He came back from the war alive, unmaimed;
And on the victorious side of a struggle
That had cost his Nation a half million men.
The serene pose of a sentinel at ease one sees
In the serenity of an cemetery, can't be found
In the smoke, cries and chaos of a battlefield.
Walk over to the statue.  Examine it closely,
Then give it a rap.  It will resound,
Depressingly hollow.
As empty as the rhetoric that urges men to war.