Civil War – poems 2 die for

ENDGAME

smokestack lightnin’

wild side
other side
flip
side

bit
on the side

I hears you
can’t do nothing
when twelve bar slide
or blow
that blues harp

so much death in that ocean
under that mud-brown river

hell yes

I’ve studied that time
saw how
it lost
its colour

all that
glorious grey

war never over
till its over

divide outside always
first inside

ROSE?

is that
a rose

or is it
a bullet hole?

red rose
red rose

so many of them
slaughtered in the snow
days of
York and
Lancaster

tried to stitch those
wounds together

but blood still leaking
through that tapestry

carnage
somehow still
in your
poetry

freeze
framed you thought
for all
of history

not forever displaced
from theme to theme

cotton
burns

is inflammable
set fire
to North and
the South
of
North America

blue men
grey men

black people

on a flaming merry-
go round
harum-scarum

sins
of the fathers

shadows
cast forever

as you sow
so reap

as you sew
leave it to posterity
to unstitch