Turnspit Poems

This Twinning Set

this twinning set,
of urchin's smile reflected,
by stale fathers turned to murk,
knapping flint saturated by eons,
gripped saltwise in bitter steel neglected,
     high voices cry "banal!" and flow red tears,
     weeping while maxims roar,
     at last this abattoir's necessary cut,

eyes rimming rise,
along dross to swirling bones,
as banners once crowned a shining wall,
tattered now on midden in lonely heaps,
crumbled in sieves by millennial crones,
     turnspit dogs with hanging tongues,
     forward marching back again,
     pounding the echoes,

now, polymeric brains,
studied to exalt virtual reasons,
longing to challenge abstract perfection,
as those doomed anguish in tidy archives,
wincing at rhythms of civilian seasons,
     nock the future, quiver the past,
     into a terrorist leaks a tale,
     while a nation rots through a soldier.