The Poetry of War […Syria]

PUBLISHED IN : THE PEREGRINE MUSE/ POETS INTERNATIONAL

http://www.theperegrinemuse.com/PoetsInternational/sergio-ortiz/The Poetry of War […Syria]

If I could catch up

with the rhythm of things

I'd stop talking

and sink into a deep

historical silence—

poetry of the dead.

Ghosts and gyres,

sages and tyrants,

expressions of longing

for a lost world.

The misplaced shoes

of a gassed girl.  

Silence studies

the unregarded floor,

the effect of Sarin

on our lungs,

the involuntary

twitching of the legs.

Yet we must dig

deeper into earth

to find the epiphany

of these actions.

Perhaps the temple

was a defective construction.

Or “Nothing” is more

than an absence

whose advent is to be welcomed.

“Nothing,” a furiously

crossed-out “Something,”

 Absence, whiteness, silence.

The Poetry of War, Part Two […USA]

This is about waiting,

shifting from one foot to another,

the fog thickening the high branches

of the sycamores.

This is about combat, the last one I'll see

if I walk barefooted on a wooden floor

with a month's supply of pain killers

in my pockets

lying to myself about

the secret of life being

the resurrection of a worm.

This is about the writing in the air

of swallowtails and the armed forces

of destruction waiting underground

from Syria to Mexico.

—A moment is a warehouse

where armies are stacked

to the ceiling—and there’s no other way to say “No.”

This is about soft porn, masturbation, invasions, and nerve gas,

and children, and food shortages, and coffins,

and the right to pick plums from the Emperor’s courtyard.