Small wars are
fought daily, arson
is our flag, conflagrations
our gross national product, smoke is
always rising somewhere,
look for its sources and you’ll find reason
brittle and blackened in the embers,
compassion remnants scrap metal hot
in the embers, the bones of children
in the embers. Constant scent of meat
rising from the embers. Gag reflex
would seem the only sane discourse left to us
once we see the embers, and yet
we start new fires, toss the same fuel
into them, stagger home to survey the sky
and go out again the next morning
to mourn over the same deathful embers
as if we expected things to be different
simply because we wrung our hands so strongly
over the deathful embers
we saw the day before.
March 17, 2014
In The Embers
About Tony Brown
Dark Matter 
March 19th, 2014 at 2:26 am
A realistic and powerful poem. Thank you.
March 17th, 2014 at 2:41 pm
This reads so fluently – beautiful x
March 17th, 2014 at 2:45 pm
Thanks.
March 18th, 2014 at 4:59 am
*fluidly, not fluently 🙂
March 17th, 2014 at 2:36 pm
Love your style!
March 17th, 2014 at 2:39 pm
Thank you so much for reading and commenting.