Brand new poems

Every Generation

Every generation gets at least one war.
It's just one of those things.
A gruesome milepost,
showing just how far they've come,
weapon-wise, and a
puncuation mark
at the end of their hopes and dreams.

The sons and daughters
of every generation
get their own
flag draped coffins,
their own mass graves,
to prove they have participated
in their designated war(s).

Every generation gets at least one war
to acquire for themselves
assorted ideas and other things;
freedom or selected gods,
gold or oil,
land or water,
and other engines of sacrifice
to the certainty of
still more war.

Every generation gets at least one war;
builds armies,
breeds soldiers,
never knowing where their souls may go,
or if they were issued souls at all.

Truth be told,
none of us can tell
where one war ends and the next begins....

Every generation gets at least one war,
even though war logic is fractal,
difficult to measure with only
esoteric quantities of
death and destruction
to calculate the degree of commitment
to their particular war.

Every generation gets at least one war...
Its just one of those things.


Mike O'Connell
5/1/09
#2
Dear, Dear Death

I flirted with dear Death one time,
but She wouldn't have me,
don't know why.
Perhaps I was not worthy,
not commited enough
to love Her and to die.
....and so, on I go,
though I know where She lives still.
Up the hill on Cemetary Road,
lined with headstones,
chiseled by Her will.

Death lives up the road from here,
but I never stop to see Her.
(She keeps nasty beasts, I'm told,
with sharpened fangs and bristling fur!)

She'll break down and come my way,
visit me someday,
take me up and bury me,
then go on Her way.

Mike O'Connell 4/09