SAME OLD MOTIFS, SOUNDING OFF AGAIN

by George Salamon

The Washington Post, April 22, 2018

Only old folks and children
Do no harm to the present
By thinking of the future.
In the corridors of power in Washington,
In the bunkers of Pyongyang
They plot our future
For which we'll pay the usual price
In corpses, cripples and orphans,
In poverty, disease and despair.
During our long march of folly
We have rarely allowed history
To become our teacher,
Preferring to gulp the snake oil
Of one ism or another.
Like fireworks on the 4th of July.
Teachable moments soar and sparkle.
And then, in a puff, they are gone.

George Salamon would like to be but does not expect to be surprised by headlines. He lives and writes in St. Louis, MO.

TRAP DOOR SPIDER

by Devon Balwit

Image: windowlicker by M0L0D0Y at Deviant Art

Distraught at the news of machetes and truck bombs,
shooters and hostage-takers, scrolling through death tolls,

searching out agency, this man mutters, kill them all,
mutters round them up.  He curses and bangs, yet

flees the first splash of film carnage, protests I am too
tender, faints at the needle tugging blood.  He looks

no different than any other man, sleeps with his feet
tucked beneath his dog, goes any distance for a friend,

caresses his wife, hugs his children.  He’s a man as
ordinary as the leaf litter around the den of a trapdoor

spider, but trespass there, even lightly, and out he snaps.
What darkness in him awaits its trigger, what holds him,

palps at the ready?  He swears it isn’t bluster, but I
deny it, hoping that the humanness of his prey would

disarm him, that compassion would leave him hungry.
Surely, the cunning of his design was not made for this.

Devon Balwit wears many hats in Portland, Oregon.  Her poetry does likewise. Some homes it has found: TheNewVerse.News, Leveler, drylandlit, Birds Piled Loosely, The Fog Machine, The Fem, Dying Dahlia Review, The Yellow Chair, The Cape Rock, The Prick of the Spindle, Of(f) Course, txt objx, and 3 Elements.