If that morning could have been any more perfect
I would have sent it to you postage paid
For you to open with your tea and toast
In a bright shaft of sunlight, dust dancing
It would have been the last happy moment
One light and insignificant second, beaming
Before the skies turn grey and your house burned to the ground
Life put on hold grasping for a bigger meaning
Those bombs steal the wet pavement and a leisurely stroll
Placing the body politic and heretical values on parade
Eating finely ground snippets of life to be blown forever up
In a direction that stinks of soot and broken families
And the wasted moments….
© 2011 Crowley
This is just wonderful...love how it starts out with the perfect morning, tea and toast, just before the cataclysm.....how politics turns ordinary lives upside down in a nanosecond. great writing!
ReplyDeleteThis is so real. Watching the news last night on the bomb that killed so many in Syria. so many, many children too.
ReplyDeleteSad, sad, world we have fast become.
So many things change so quickly in a second. Everything is perfect, then a bomb changes it all. Forever. Your poem captured this horrific suddenness masterfully.
ReplyDeleteThese words brought tears to my eyes. It is easy to write about war, but not so easy to bring it to the level of heart, to make us understand the depth of devastation if we haven't been there ourselves. The idea of a last happy moment before the house burns down, skies grey, pavement blasted beneath our feet... broken people, broken families.
ReplyDeleteaw.... can't find words for this. just aw.
ReplyDeleteThings seemed ok but it can happen in a split second. And things changed in a cloud of dust.
ReplyDeleteLife is cheap these days! It is sad! Good write!
Hank
This is an incredible piece. thematically strong and meaningful, but I can't be more impressed by the style and composition. Great read. Thanks
ReplyDeleteI just love how you grab the reader's attention from the get go... this is amazing!
ReplyDeleteNice contrasting images of perfect morning, then the ashes and broken families ~ Things can change with a cloud of dust ~
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, I got your recording and started writing about it. I have to wait for the opportune time in RT to post it. Last Monday wasn't the time, maybe next week. Still fine tuning it and have browsed thru your blog for inspiration ~
"Those bombs steal the wet pavement and a leisurely stroll" SO very true this line and SO many of the others you've penned on this topic. Pilferer of life as it should be. Excellent writing!!
ReplyDeleteA moment can change everything, that wish that we could save just one, and sent it back to ourselves is so good...love this write!
ReplyDeletedamnit, corey.
ReplyDeletethis is solid and moving. savors somewhat of graham greene. there's brutal ugliness told in flat tones, but underscored with these vast oceans, alight with meaning.
it has the quality of holding something in tenderness, and the delicate nature even of dark things.
the first and second stanzas, in particular had me holding my breath.
You planted a seed in my mind...and then it exploded, and I will never be the same.
ReplyDelete