I plunge into the cold water on that warm July day
no goggles, only the loose-fitting swimming trunks
I swim through the blur of chlorine
pushing through the water
when a familiar tune I heard hours earlier traps itself in my brain
and I suddenly become weightless, a plane high above in the air

The water is pure blue sky, below me the clouds
And at the bottom the city in ruins
I take my plane and dive down below the clouds
past the blur, until the city is in view just below me

I level the bomber and let it soar low above the ground
Over the pale white shells of buildings
I remember the museum exhibit that inspires this flight

I walk through, studying the pictures and the uniforms and the weapons on display
when in the distance of the room beyond I hear the familiar tune:
Brian Eno's "Ascent (An Ending)". It brings me closer, and I move past the exhibits
at a quickening pace, past the slow browsers
glancing only briefly to read, to catch a glimpse of an object, a photo, a map

I keep going, "Ascent" on a loop, its minimalist beauty entrancing me
until I find a large television in a small corner.
A few people are gathered around, solemn,
the television entrancing them, the music washing over the room.

First the white words centered against the black screen: "The Bomb".
The come the white-and-black photos and footage of the mushroom clouds hovering above Hiroshima, then Nagasaki,
standing tall like ungainly trees in an empty field.

The soundtrack to the short video before me is "Ascent",
or rather an excerpt, a piece of it, stirring strange emotions
Familiar ones that I give attribution to when I listen to it on my own.
Yet it feels different coming from this;
on the screen a few photographs of corpses and burnt victims flash by.
And then the screen fades to black, a moment of silence
before it all starts again

I hear this loop and see these images before me as I fly above
the imagined city in ruins
And for a brief moment I am the Enola Gay;
I will only know it at the bottom of a hotel pool

Lucifer, to the Enola Gay
by Michael R. Burch

Go then,
and give them my meaning
so that their teeming
streets
become my city.

Bring back a pretty
flower—
a chrysanthemum,
perhaps, to bloom
if but an hour,
within a certain room
of mine
where
the sun does not rise or fall,
and the moon,
although it is content to shine,
helps nothing at all.

There,
if I hear the wistful call
of their voices
regretting choices
made
or perhaps not made
in time,
I can look back upon it and recall,
in all
its pale forms sublime,
still
Death will never be holy again.

Published by Romantics Quarterly, Penny Dreadful and Poetry Life & Times. Keywords/Tags: Hiroshima, Enola Gay, atomic bomb, explosion, mushroom cloud, death, Lucifer, Satan, Devil, chrysanthemum, sun, moon, voices, choices

Trip over the high density of our constant lies
We're all out to break and hurt the non-elite
Words and phrases they never meant a thing but to lure you in
This facade of love that we send soldiers like cattle
Down an assembly line to build and protect
A fake America, burning towers tumbling down
Bellowing the sweet sorrows of victims
Whose screams we replay the audio over and over
To divert you from seeing the real culprit  
We are sick minded human beings with the thirst for enemies
We'll kiss everyone we meet on the cheek
And continue to fake what we tell you we'll be
We prefer a stabbing to the back
Never a full frontal attack
And we have puppets
We'll always find someone to replace the current like the forty four before
The people's memories will fade and burn like corpses caused by the Enola Gay
We''ll drop a bomb to wipe out everything mankind has worked for
Because in the end we do not need peasants
We have everything and everyone else has absolutely nothing
And 99% will lay to waste and ruin in the ruins we leave to burn
We'll pity so we can mislead to false hope
Send small portions of rations to schedule feeding underlings
Flouride in the drinking water to better control
Corruption in the oval office classified, uncovered, never shared
Always kept underwraps, never revealed just a hoax.
Lips to ears do the whispers carry.
A promise for a better tomorrow but a date will never be set for peace
So we keep telling you that it only gets better
And we'll think apologies fix everything
Truth is we meant nothing in the first place
Because we'll keep remaking mistakes that we apologize for
Misery is our job
Eating and breathing and surviving on the pain of lower humans
Like clothed animals rampaging through a corrupt society
So we'll let the people let their guard down for a quick second and us, vultures
Will devour them quick in that moment
To find you are empty inside,
We've starved you of what you've needed
Because all along, and everything we've ever done
we never realized once you've all revolted
this 1% would surely fall to pieces.