Have Blue
The
tattoo artist’s window illustrates
available
designs: classic dragon,
exotic
birds whose plumage demonstrates
a
fix on the surreal, a scorpion,
or
scroll of waves in pin-pricked, briny blue.
A
serpent’s convolutions chase the sun –
beneath
the hand, a pattern, mapped sinew,
a
creatured ink, coiled in blank entreaty.
The
role is emblematic, and the zoo
of
fabulous intent, the hue, the sea
transcribed
to indicate a spirit’s place,
reveal
the contours of reality
in
ritual detail: encoded space,
the
beasts that rise, and scour the interface.
Tour of Duty
My
son returns from duty incomplete.
Sniper-fire
declassified the cowlick
and
the stammer. The honour guard’s drumbeat
instructs
our pace, slow… slow, but still too quick
for
him to manage on his own. The flag
folds
neatly to a nebula of hick
towns
shining with these soldiers. If we brag,
it
is as the papers note, “died bravely.”
(A
holy war presumes a body bag.)
These
lost nations, compressed into TV
debriefings,
seared, a theatre of war
for
belt-strap bombers – Allah vis-à-vis:
the
tour of duty ends along this scar
of
road we follow in the mourners’ car.
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