"wadis" poems
this place is silence
roaring silence
helicopter blades chopping through
the whine of incoming mortars
silence deafening over the
shuffle of boots kicking gravel
barely holding together the grit
that covers the ground
the grit
that covers the toyota hiluxes
the radios the windows the lights
the beds
the grit that fills our mouths
as we whisper in the dark
rustling silence as we whisper
dark secrets
movements and code names and equipment and
just how long were those explosives buried
this place is blood
a decade's worth of
my brother's blood pouring
through the wadis in the desert in the dark
ten years of my brother's blood
dripping from our fingers
every death a stain on our fingertips
as if we pulled the trigger ourselves
a millennium of blood
dried on these mountains
the geography screaming secrets of its past
begging us to go
Nov 14, 2013
Nov 14, 2013 at 8:27 PM UTC
What will become of us
when sons inherit hate?
Will we be proud?
Will we offer spirits, weighted
with every detail and derision?
Yes, there is blood and grief,
there are tears enough
to salt these hills
and fill our wadis;
Yet wadis squander
all we spill out.
mzf
Mar 24, 2013
Mar 24, 2013 at 5:01 PM UTC