Poor soldier Andrew Jackson who
Attacked the British after peace
Was signed three weeks before at Ghent.
Unnecessary bravery
Is no less admirable for that.
He waves to patrons eating their
Beignets at the Café Du Monde.
Astride a horse, saluting with
His bicorn hat, and stern of face,
He looks less menacing than if
They cast him brandishing a sword.
But who can blame his victory
(Redundant though his conquest was),
The English might have occupied
The Crescent City, New Orleans.
Between Lake Ponchatrain and Gulf
Of Mexico the land is boggy here.
Once rains would pelt Orleans and make
A flood enough for fetid pools.
Pine coffins bobbed and knocked aloud
Discouraging the patronage
Of all the working girls for weeks.
But that was long before the war.
And British and Americans
Were mostly buried on high ground.
So no unnecessary dead
Were ever disinterred by rains
And washed some parishes away
Without their names on coffin lids
To now or ever be reclaimed.
Categories:
disinterred, america, character, funeral, history,
Form: Blank verse
When they disinterred his corpus
they kicked up quite a sizeable rumpus.
for they found no slight trace of toxin
in what remained of Rasputin.
His end must have been gory,
but this news from the grave makes me sad
not so much on account of the madman
as the disproof of his end-of-life story.
Categories:
disinterred, death, gothic, sad,
Form: I do not know?
You ask me what powers I want
that I'm not sure you have.
I ask you what we want
that could never be our power to give.
At first I thought of health
and not just unwise stagnant wealth,
But deeper still
I long for clear and true integrity
for me
for you
for us
whether together
or disinterred apart.
It's not my obscure dull worry,
as you might later restory,
this issue history
and physical mystery
that all life falls apart
like energy
when closed
and just in parts,
left hemisphere reductive.
And wider still
we belong within resilience,
not fragility
Where fragments suffer cynics
afraid to sacredly remember
we were once all of one part,
matriarchal ability;
It's my start,
resilient integrity,
not fragile mendacity,
my health discerning path
to polypathic wealth
with less pathology
not yours to give,
but ours to learn
Together,
or disinterred apart.
Categories:
disinterred, health, integrity, peace, wisdom,
Form: Free verse