PRECIOUS

PRECIOUS

I was confiding
in my friends
the insects

all the true scientific
horrors of nuclear war

when you came down
like a missile
from up
   on high

demand that I shut
my mouth, cut
all such nonsense

speaking through a translation
device
     this being a head, a father’s
head attached
to a stick

and then, since our debate,
was going nowhere
you opened up
on my tiny
friends
with a state-of-the-art
multi-
   barrelled weapon

firing
     millions, billions
of rounds ripping up the landscape

but fortunately
my friends being so small
took
   out such precious
few of them.