- Things That Were Hidden
by Neil Philip
May the Muse inspire my song
of things never told before
of Chaos and Time and the Night.
What singer has ever sung
such words of power
to counter the songs of the sirens
or sung the mysteries
of twice-born Dionysos
to teach us how to flee the wheel of sorrow.
On my wedding day
the torch of Hymen sputtered and smoked
and flat ...
- The Cycle of “Bomb”
by Neil Philip, Kijima Hajime, and Margaret Mitsutani
I took care of Hiroshima victims
as a student of seventeen years old.
Defeated and broken. Unrestorable.
Who’ll tend the bombed among you?
– Kijima Hajime
My mother saw her childhood bombed to ruins,
her hometown in flames night after night.
Halfway across the world, my father
was burying his friends with his own hands.
– Neil ...
- Idbury Morris
by Neil Philip
Each footstep in the claggy soil pulls the
booted foot half out of his hip socket.
The plough is so heavy it could pull you
over like a kick from a horse. He does
not notice these things, following the furrow
with a jaunty snatch of whistled song
up and down the slope of the open field.
A cuckoo calls, ...
- In Loki’s Cave
by Neil Philip
The poison slaver from the serpent’s mouth
falls with the drip-drip-drip of a stalactite.
Faithful Sigyn catches it in a bowl.
But when she slops out
drops of yellow venom splash my eyes,
forcing me beyond the blindness of this cave
back into the world of light and pain.
Each time I tell myself
I will not flinch,
but I cannot stop ...
- Not Fireflies—
“green stars, or the faulty strike of a match;/ not as you once imagined” | by Daniel Lawless
- My Brother, Solar Eclipse, 1965
“But for now, your half-smile says, relief — to be eleven” | by Daniel Lawless
- Funeral Services
“he’d be so perfect/ if you could only convince yourself that/ he’s just a terrorist, not a human being”
- [Now we remember: janitors and the night-sellers of bread]
“we got to soak in the rain/ on cars/ loaded with the unemployed/ like magazines with cartridges”
- [someone stands between you and death-but]
“my heart whispers: Death, he hasn’t ripened yet/ he’s still green, nothing in his life has been/ sweeter than unwashed strawberries”
- [we swallowed an air like earth]
“some of us exhaled cherry pits/ some bullets”
- [people carry explosives around the city]
“people carry explosives around the city/ in plastic shopping bags and little suitcases”
- [Buried in a human neck, a bullet looks like an eye, sewn in]
“But the children feel as strong as their machinery,/ mass-produced, with plenty of seamstresses for repairing:”
- [A country in the shape of a puddle, on the map.]
by Unknown
A country in the shape of a puddle, on the map.
Any country is an easy target in March,
in June, July, August, September, October,
as long as it rains
and maps litter the street.
Stop, who goes there, General Oaken Knees.
The Red Square of his naked chest shines the way.
And behind him, a half-shadow, half-man,
half-orphan, half-exile, whose mouth ...
- [The whole soldier doesn’t suffer-]
“just dreadful losses,/ just the day with a dented helmet,/ just God, who doesn’t protect.”
- [This is a post on Facebook, and this, a block post in the East]
“I’ll make you a gift: a camouflage case for your tablet;/ time is earwax, peddled in alleyways, under the table.”
