by Jon Wesick
On the jetty waves thunder by, while I search
for an image to hang my understanding on. Awareness
floats with glittering ice crystals in the stratosphere.
Each a unique hexagon frozen from the contrail
of a bomber pregnant with a cargo of ruined bridges,
severed limbs, and bawling orphans. Only the safely dead
escape the rumble of Katyusha rockets and 500-lb bombs.
Who assigns good and evil? And according to whose interests?
The president plays liar’s poker with the Washington press corps,
while minions dispatch cans of brutal aid. “Want Jesus with that?”
Business paints the rainbow gray. If you don’t like it, join the hungry
watching Paris Hilton stub out a cigarette in uneaten cheesecake.
Back in the courtyard of hurt feelings, poet’s words limp in iambs –
drag, step, drag, step, drag, step. How hard it is to sing,
when I must sing of terror. Yet I light candles in sacred dances
cursing the raven to come forward. Eyes soaked in the blood of tears,
I will print no line before its time.
Jon Wesick has a Ph.D. in physics, has practiced Buddhism for over twenty years, and has published over a hundred poems in small press journals such as American Tanka, Anthology Magazine, The Blind Man’s Rainbow, Edgz, The Kaleidoscope Review, Limestone Circle, The Magee Park Anthology, The Publication, Pudding, Sacred Journey, San Diego Writer’s Monthly, Slipstream, Tidepools, Vortex of the Macabre, Zillah, and others. His chapbooks have won honorable mentions twice in the San Diego Book Awards.