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Aug 2022
Given the nuclear weaponry arsenal today
August 6th, 2022, our collective ability
to lay waste major metropolitan areas
would make unleashing atomic warfare
synonymous with the ways and means
to annihilate, decimate, eliminate, et cetera
avast swath of the biosphere, nevertheless...

Once again, I take momentary pause
to contemplate horrific event
regarding unleashed atomic warfare
activating nuclear brinkmanship,
hence time to trot out a poem
written initially some years ago
courtesy yours truly.

Robert Oppenheimer manned
"The Manhattan Project", 
a top secret World War II mission,                   
which constituted "Little Boy" codename
for a uranium gun-type
atomic bomb dropped at 0815
exploded 580 metres above civilians
with 15 kiloton blast yield
reduced 400 year old city to dust
Colonel Paul Tibbets,

the pilot/ bombardier
of the Enola Gay,
(the Boeing B-29 Superfortress
unleashed nuclear warfare
seventy seven years ago today)
gives cause for this baby boomer to revisit
mentally, the annihilation,
extermination, incineration, obliteration...
when the first of two storied Japanese enclaves
pulverized vividly underscores

how trifling my current bout
with dysthymia, hysteria, melancholia...  
(from figurative northern exposure
courtesy twin peaks)
contrasted with sinister
thermonuclear reaction
malevolent evil tower ushered
thermonuclear age epitomizing
coup d'état nada so graceful
spelled maximum radiation fallout,

viz collateral military mutilation
though unwelcome vision wielded hell,
instantaneous maelstrom poised
mankind to be cured, roasted, skewered
analogous as burnt offerings
subsequent generations of victims
who survived atrocious, egregious, hellacious,
judicious slaughter can only
poorly be described
by this mortal with curable

bacterial/viral infection
aghast at such wanton killing, more-so
via weapons of mass destruction
more devastatingly grisly
than those "experimental" bombs
loosed upon the innocent population,
whereby 75,000 people killed or fatally injured
with 65% of casualties
nine years of age and younger,
whence offspring of survivors

evinced excessive genetic anomalies 
with fiery windy surface
(think towering infernos)
temperatures topping 4,000°C 
upon terrain hallowed by ghastly
horrible deathly dominance
impressing silhouettes of victims
analogous to dark shadows
amidst razed structural remnants
ground zero birthed sinister mushroom cloud
wickedly, ominously, and eerily loomed.
Written by
matthew scott harris  64/M/schwenksville, penna
(64/M/schwenksville, penna)   
86
 
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