A Plain and Fancy War

I’ve made
Notations
On the weather
Even risking
A mood
Based on the same

While all the hundreds
Are new victims
Anywhere there’s war
Or war
On deck
As if to step up to
The devil’s plate
In a game against a team
From hell

And this is stupid
Reasoning
So far
Foolish metaphors
Of weather
And of games

While in the east of east
From here
And west in Asia
So much is brewing
Like
The witch’s
Stew
That at this time
Is also fanciful

All because
I do not want
To face
With my face
And what's behind it
The real death
The ghost of war
(un-
metaphor)
Come
To haunt again

And everything
That schemes with it
Famine
Hopelessness
Annihilation
Of the body
And the spirit
To win more souls
For hell

Though for now
It’s destruction
Literal
Destruction
That matters most
And
Yes
The devil’s work
In strategies

And I can’t keep from this
I guess
The rhetoric
The discourse
When we have no mouths
And if we had
What we would have said
Gone ignored
And then frankly
Horribly
Set
To detonate
And then
Explode

The tangling
Of war
The limbs
The lies
That both must soar
In gruesome pieces
Through the battlefield
Certainly before
And after
Without doubt
When
Generals and presidents
Defend
Without forfending

And this is one place
And there is more
In more
Places
With all the consequences
To the body
As we say
And the soul
Cliché for closeness
And the truth of things
We must have one
And have
The other

Losing one
Or both
A battle
On the plains
Or any parts of middle Earth
With all the forces
Human and human-like
Divine and like divine
Assembled
Frankly
Like Megiddo
And now
To consider
What shall happen

C L Couch


Photo by Zihao Wang on Unsplash