Tag Archives: nuclear

SUSQUEHANNA 2

SUSQUEHANNA 2

there are ghosts
in your country
I saw them dancing
in the mist all
along the Susquehanna
one cold January morning
just after 9/11
a couple of miles upstream
from Three Mile Island

and we were talking Civil War mlilitary,
myself and this kindly
African American
Professor of Sociology from
Harrisburg Penn State

him detailing how the Federals and Confederates
were criss-
crossing this territory
playing this cat and
mouse game
only to crash headlong into
each other at a
place called Gettysburg

of course neither of us
back in 2002 could have imagined
twenty so years on this
land would
find itself of the brink of
such a division
where the spectre of such
horror looming again

and those precious
twenty or so days
my sole experience
of America

of breathing the air of
its liberty, if
such is your belief

something the ghosts
trying to tell me, their
cold touch
    alerting  me

a new world and
forever graveyard

tension
in the spirit world
it seems far-fetched to bridge

the river
      with its
       Native American name

flowing with the forever
waters of such secrets

leaving
    the old lies, the old lies
to spread, make
good trade,
do good business

what ripples outward here I fear
ultimately chain
       in its reaction

EXCEPTIONAL

EXCEPTIONAL

death will not
be satisfied with
simply thousands

death wants
millions, billions,
that’s the price
that was set
and will be paid

if this
were not so
why do you think
death had to invent
comets, supervolcanoes,
meteors, rogue asteroids?

to supplement the vast varieties
of weapons of mass destruction
its most beloved
of all
   species
happened to event

including, not exclusively,
the vast thermonuclear arsenals
huge stockpiles of
megaton, kiloton
missiles and bombs

sheer numbers here
dictated by the laws
of necessity
    of supply and
demand

and exceptional theory,  but
sadly it ends here
with the demise of
its authors

of whose disappearance
the rest of the Universe
could
    not give a damn

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.

STORM

STORM

the windows rattle
it is a slight storm

the windows
melt

it is
a nuclear showdown

thousands of years
millions perhaps
into the future

our descendants (much
altered) or
another species
must decide
(after finding the
bits and pieces
putting them
together)

what hatred brought
these two antagonists
to, as matter of
security and
deep principle,
uncontrollable hatred,
impossible fear

to equalise everything
in mutual suicide

windows melting
across the whole globe

FLAME

FLAME

so committed
to the horror
they ignore,
overlook, suppress
the flame

Oh, brief terrible candle,
do you not know
that it is possible
for the atoms
in your body
to reach critical mass?

that you could blow
like a regular backya
plutonium warhead
take out a street, a city,
a neighborhood

and even then
they would not listen
would find
the spin to
cover their sins
hide their complicity
deflect all blame

but you burn small
tiny, a brief candle,
your death your own
no spreading
no lingering

sign of how deep
it runs, all
the refused shame

BACKYARD

BACKYARD

I did not sweat
through the missile crisis
I was too young, had
no idea where Cuba was
and it was too cold

testing an old siren
outside our school
fun
   sitting under my desk
practice
making perfect

that cold cold bipolar
war
    one wromg move
could get every bomb
from Kalinin to Siberia
heading for
my face
  every American base
.
but that’s geopolitics
and the worst of ideology

Oh
    beast, non-
                beast

bestial, non-bestial:

    wish there were a switch
to flick or dial to turn
to shift us, bounce
us between polarities

would be good for my
Mars in Aries issues, get
my return
      blow in first forgo
and concentrate
on kindness
     and diplomacy

and not stacking my missiles
or my anti missile missiles
right in
       your back yard