Bridging

Hastening Apocalypses

At first it was a distant word disturbed,
a voice at door ajar at end of hall:
after a spiel, her soft, 'No thank you,' curbed -
but Mamma didn't see my deep appall.

All night I shrugged and wriggled in my bed
waiting for the world to end, tightening throat,
teeth biting down on angst, thoughts deep vaulted,
when dawn came I slept on the blackbird's note.

Then from the books so solidly arrayed,
that tightening, that beating, in-drawn trill; 
till, gun against the head, we all fell dead
and burning napalm screamed of the world's ill.

Now so up close no screen can separate,
the retina streams horrors to relate.

....................

Re mediated apprehensions.
The first two stanzas are about my reaction to Jehovah's Witnesses saying the world was going to end that night, which I overheard when I was four. The third stanza hurries through book learning about the world to the horrors of the Vietnam TV coverage - to truncate into the couplet, about the present horrors seen with such immediacy on Twitter on cellphone.

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Bonus poem:-

Freedom of Speech

From the crowd, young black and white taking a knee,
gracile, silent (facing padded blue line
of paunches and bull necks, guns out but down),
one voice spoke quietly and rationally,

putting the strong case, indisputably.
As soon as brave speech ceased, from out the line,
two cops rolled up to cuff him, take down town.
'Why? Why arrest him?' called the crowd on knee.

The boss blue, biggest bulk in line, shook skull
'Why? Why? he mimicked Oh, you know full well .'
'Command Control' tattooed his tiny mind:

arrestable offense, is speaking out;
besides, the guy was black, so there's no doubt.
We didn't beat him. See how we are kind.

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This at fifteen.
'Ubi' means 'where', in Latin, I hope. (I failed my Latin.)

Ubi?

Where does it go,

tangle-shadow, entire,
the world was made of once,
each million breathing of the wild grown by,
echo of all still moments, followed down
like moon-fed ripples deadening into black,
that once held their own light?

Bones, shells – we may grieve,
listening at pearly doors,
the wave of the way ago.

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