A glass eye shattered when a claymore tripped
Glass dreadlocks dropped in hardened mud
The sky had gone glass, so rain softened
To snow, fell on landmines
Like a finger on a child’s lips
To say Hush…soldiers are sleeping
Like children pretending to be dead in playgrounds
Holding onto their guns given female names
I wonder…how many times
Anessa blue
Has perforated hearts with perfumed bullets
Let light peer unashamedly through
Vietnamese helmets in claret conceptions
For freedom, for fields to be clear under Vietnamese skies
Blue as the eyes of the enemy
All falling, yet charging forever
With blue eyes and silver bayonets
That is the sound you hear when it rains
I think
Of men camouflaged in explosion like so many
Dead stars
Thrown into the grey and red of a film noir
A snuff movie never seen
And in the aftermath
Nevermore
Beautifully silent
As when the last shell settles
_
Then I think of your eyes
Picasso painted, jazz tinted
Stained glass sainted
Beautiful and mad
As when the world is playing dead
Buildings sleeping as the sun creeps up on them
Everything forgotten
But the routine of dawn, and the sky
Astoundingly
Already blue
His eyes, two stars keeping their composure
to the very instant before exposure
Unchanging, an old harbour
His eyebrows like the lifting bridges
Full of conceptions
Doves, rivers, bullets
During and afterwards
Stained glass, all blue
Somehow he is holding it all together
Holds his breath
A train pulling into its stop,
Underwater swimmers in their lengths
His vision aims through grey bodies
Into the stillness of the sun
Like a child peering through a grid
At a dropped coin
As the bullets hit everything but his calm
Held you in his arms
Anessa blue
Looked through your sights
You were different, a bullet not amongst the carnage
wouldn’t let your shell be cast off
..pulled the trigger, released a sigh
Shot at the sky
To be as far away as possible
-
.
.
.
.
It started snowing
fell into the upturned helmets
Like a mothers hand on a feverish child
Fell into bullet paused mouths
Like a thumb shaping out the dark mouth of a clay model
There was no distinguishing the uniforms
Fires were extinguished under shards of snow
(even you kept your mouth shut)
Your automatic .50 cal birth cry
That could make any man wince
Grey bodies, amidst the shells
Like slugs found on pavements suddenly lit
Armour-less
In red not silver trails
When the snow cleared, everything was gone
And then your shriek, strained, shone through, brand new
From a crumpled red face, like stained glass
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