The Big War • For Safety's Sake
the big war
is coming as sure
as the last sunrise.
stand still and listen
to the breathing
of missiles waking
in their hard-skinned silos,
the quiet jabber of sharks
in underground bunkers,
Recommended for You
planning first strikes
and survival tactics
in a world curtained
in death, while deer clattering
across midnight roads
already know what’s ahead.
for they know who we are
and what we’ve done.
For Safety’s Sake
The mouth doesn’t work as it once did, lips puffy,
rubbery, words flowing slow sometimes like lava
easing downhill, a stutter barely discernable
flutters across the thick tongue, logic of meaning
slightly confused tumbles into thin air, all within
a split second, hopefully rectified before witnesses
notice and turn away. Aged brain signals sputtering,
wires corroded by time and distance, decades
burning the connections. Walking, too, re-ordered
as trial and error, the gate careful and delicate like
a child first learning the walk, hips and knees
ground down, internals sparking in the stinking
darkness, near the end. But you need to keep that
job even as 70 yanks you towards the grave, all of it,
all the fear and pain must be kept hidden. Because
you need that job to pay rent and the rest of it. To keep
the wolf from the door. To die with a roof over your head.
Paul Lojeski
