the unborn

the perfect people to love
if you claim you love Jesus
but dislike people who breathe

They never make demands of you

unlike the poor

they don’t resent your condescension

unlike widows

they don’t ask you to question patriarchy

unlike orphans

they don’t need money, education, or childcare

unlike aliens

they don’t bring all that racial, cultural
and religious baggage that you dislike

they allow you to feel good about yourself
without any work

and when they are born
you can forget about them.

It’s almost as if by being born
they have died

to you.

(From Dave Barnhart on Facebook, June 2018)

War and Peace

A huge vista of life and suffering humankind 
which makes the present troubles easier to endure, 
and the loneliness of death a little thing.

Siegfried Sassoon

Clouds came down and blotted the landscape 
and we squatted in a vineyard and smoked 
our pipes by the blaze of dry olive-branches. 

In the cloudy weather after rain
the clearness of the hills and glens 
shifted from shadow to gleams of watery light 

and the skylines were clean-cut 
and delicate-edged. The hills looked green—
there was a look of Ireland about it.

And when we got home to camp 
I found a letter from Dorothea, 
the good soul, full of Limerick hunting, 

and hounds flying over the big green banks.
Our padré rather drunk to-night 
after all the communion wine he’d blessed

and been obliged to ‘finish up’. 
And the news from remote France 
grows more ominous every day.

(From Siegfried Sassoon’s diary, 1918)

cats tendtoexist

cats
tendtoexist in your

per
iph

eral
(vis)
(ion
and
after (a while
you move)
around the house

in a manner that
accommodates
the expectation of their

PRESENCE

waiting
to trip

you

up

on the stairs
or suddenlyemerge
from no!where
andstart s l o w w a l k i n g
in
fro
/nt
of
you

as you try
to get
from         room

to
room

(Remix of Like Ghosts)

Three good pictures

My life is a short, intense celebration. 
With almost every breath I take, I get 

a new sense and understanding 
of the linden tree, of ripened wheat, 

of hay, and of mignonette. 
I suck everything up into me. 

When it’s warm and I’m tired, I sit down 
and weave a yellow garland, a blue one, 

and one of thyme. A reaper in a blue smock. 
He mows down all the little flowers 

in front of my door. I know now of two 
other pictures with death in them.

(From Paula Modersohn-Becker’s diary, 1900

Turned to glass

The bodies in the container 
partially thawed, moved, 
and then froze again 

— stuck to the capsule 
like a child’s tongue 
to a cold lamp post. 

Eventually the bodies 
had to be thawed to unstick, 
re-frozen and put back in. 

Cracks appeared,
cutting through the skin 
and subcutaneous fat, 

all the way down 
to the body wall or 
muscle surface beneath. 

The organs were cracked. 
The spinal cord was snapped 
and the heart — was fractured.

(From Horror Stories of Cryonics)

The last supper

Looking back, 
I think the regret about the fruit salad 
was stronger than fear of all being over.

Nella Last

All the day, the tinkle of glass 
being swept up and dumped in ash-bins 
like wind-bells in a temple, 
together with the knock-knock 
as anything handy was tacked 
in place over gaping windows.

I look at a tin of fruit longingly, 
now that fruit is so scarce.
Little sparrows had died as they crouched. 
It looked as if they had bent 
their little heads in prayer.
Not one falleth that He does not see.

Poles, Czechs, Greeks, all sparrows. 
I’ve opened the tin of fruit salad, 
and put my best embroidered cloth on, 
and made an egg-whip instead of cream. 
I’ll not take my clothes off tonight. 
I’ll give the animals an aspirin.

(from Nella Last’s World War II diary, 1941)