Good, I Detest Flamands

Somehow I ended up on a battlefield, Ypres I suppose,

though the year is now two thousand fourteen.

Like firecrackers or gunpowder,

at rare occasions in the night

a long forgotten bomb smiles at the air

and gives up the ghost.

Which explosions are the good ones?

Surely the ones that kill the other men, that fire

is the fire of god.

Asking one question asks another, it is said,

the opposite,

but that is a question that I cannot answer

without other questions.

God will not come in fury from the earth for me,

God wants me to eat olives and grow old.

Carmen 47

She lays on her side, her breath a smokestack,

A raincloud or a powerplant, and what am I?

I could sing a nursery rhyme, one hand

On my heart and the other on her hip,

But my voice changed and I forgot the words.

I walk through a forest with reddened eyes-

Death is a woman, so kiss me, my dear,

Tell me the things that a man likes to hear.