after Nagasaki
we had learned to bomb
the world
war ended by avatar
of I am death to
cite
and
secularly
to benedict
by us
to bless an industry
of
products that should never
be employed
and so
inutility
as the market must stay glutted
with inventory unused
by
desperate hope
bad for business
bad
for sickness
bad for all the death
from
skin softened from bone
all senses blinded
and
then
a memorial to haunting pain
the ghosts of one by one
and of
the nations
we could claim ignorance
we did not know
or
appreciate the scale
we only wanted victory
a conclusion
if
at a cost
of febrile Earth
c l couch
photo by Sajan Rajbahak on Unsplash
Art in Anxious Time
I’m anxious and it’s
hard to write
art expressed in pain:
I don’t know how
those artists do it
maybe it’s big fear
and nihilistic agony
that keeps them
going, that prompts
expression that might
change the world
and everything
beyond
the gardeners at
Hiroshima and
Nagasaki must
accomplish this
I have small pains
and many things that
trouble me—yes,
sometimes they are
bad as in raw—
unformed, unfixed,
though I think the
only one that might
be changed through
treating these in art
is me
still, through all
the small-town
clay-house conflicts
I might strive to
express something
new
something that might
relate to you
(the teacher and good
sport in me should tell
you that clay house
is a Puritan metaphor)
clcouch123 
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