Prose Poem

The aviator ponders the strength of birds.

Silver regret, like the plane Enola Gay; my mind filled with rocket fuel and the whistling sound of that bomb; silver, a mirror to catch all light – burns the synapses with dreams; a magnifying glass upon the ant I am. I am haunted by the massacre, feet stomp in my veins, duty soldiers that march and march as if my heart still beats; attach themselves to every blood cell, every corpuscle and white cell of defence, the inner rivers of my body putrid with radiation. That bomb fills me, a coffin sunk by the waters flowing from the Styx - the stench of death like a misplayed note. I am the b flat, the broken string, the trumpet in the mouth of the babe. I cannot shed enough tears no matter how many days and nights I spend abed, not a million emperor moth cacoons, emptied and crushed to make a pillow big enough to soak up the tears needed, even if tears could be made into wasps to sting my cheeks endlessly, still it would not suffice. I carry with me, like blisters from the too hot sun, the children, parents and my actions; the lever, the button, the flight plan.

There is choice! Even if fate lends us a hand, blinds us with duty, with roots that entwine our hearts, squeeze us down the only path. Even if we are ignorant, or worse, think we are doing what is right, still we have a choice. We can do it eagerly or we can do it because that is as it must be. It is my eagerness, my passion, my lust to show my worth I hate most of all. It exists still, like lead, fills my flesh, when my death comes they will not need bury me, merely toss me upon the earth and I shall sink.

There is choice: a hand on a child’s head, a hand as fist or friend. Yet we move like the honey eaters, sucking up what nectar we find, obligated to fill the needs while the far off mountain tops where we should sit remain cold and empty as love between a leper and a pilot. Did I cause her sores? Can I burn them away with a better bomb?

 That plane: I am that plane. In some shadowed field where the dreams of men rest, their thoughts spread like B-52 wings, their words propellers rusted, still - a field of all we get wrong no matter how high we aim.

I have no blood, no movement, no waters, no chance to explode.

I have that flight plan eroding every action, have the distant smell of flesh. People aflame, like a thousand burning matches, their spirits the smoke after the puff of my Goddish breath.

My bed is nailed to my chest, my cross - my dreams and memories, and choice. Yeah I say from this ravine, ‘We have choice!’ As water has choice, the easy paths through limestone and granite, or as the bird - to risk the fall and conquer the elements by sacrificing weight.

There is strength in hollowness.