Hiroshima – seventy eight years since August 6th, 1945

About fourteen and a half years

before my birth,

yours truly not even a twinkle

in the eyes of his then

young father and mother

the former born April 9th1929,

and latter would be turning eleven

that upcoming November 13th.

Given the nuclear weaponry arsenal today

August 6th, 2023, our collective ability

to lay waste major metropolitan areas

would make unleashing atomic warfare

synonymous with the ways and means

to annihilate, decimate, eliminate, et cetera

avast swath of the biosphere, nevertheless...

Once again, I take momentary pause

to contemplate horrific event

regarding unleashed atomic warfare

activating nuclear brinkmanship,

hence time to trot out a poem

written initially some years ago

courtesy yours truly.

Robert Oppenheimer manned

"The Manhattan Project",

a top secret World War II mission,

which constituted "Little Boy" codename

for a uranium gun-type

atomic bomb dropped at 0815

exploded 580 metres above civilians

with 15 kiloton blast yield

reduced 400 year old city to dust

Colonel Paul Tibbets,

the pilot/ bombardier

of the Enola Gay,

(the Boeing B-29 Superfortress

unleashed nuclear warfare

seventy eight years ago today)

gives cause for this baby boomer to revisit

mentally, the annihilation,

extermination, incineration, obliteration...

when the first of

two storied Japanese enclaves

pulverized vividly underscores

how trifling my current bout

with dysthymia, hysteria, melancholia...

(from figurative northern exposure

courtesy twin peaks)

contrasted with sinister

thermonuclear reaction

malevolent evil tower ushered

thermonuclear age epitomizing

coup d'état nada so graceful

spelled maximum radiation fallout,

viz collateral military mutilation

though unwelcome vision wielded hell,

instantaneous maelstrom poised

mankind to be cured, roasted, skewered

analogous as burnt offerings

subsequent generations of victims

who survived atrocious, egregious, hellacious,

judicious slaughter can only

poorly be described

by this mortal with curable

bacterial/viral infection

aghast at such wanton killing, more-so

via weapons of mass destruction

more devastatingly grisly

than those "experimental" bombs

loosed upon the innocent population,

whereby 75,000 people

killed or fatally injured

with 65% of casualties

nine years of age and younger,

whence offspring of survivors

evinced excessive genetic anomalies

with fiery windy surface

(think towering infernos)

temperatures topping 4,000°C

upon terrain hallowed by ghastly

horrible deathly dominance

impressing silhouettes of victims

analogous to dark shadows

amidst razed structural remnants

ground zero birthed

sinister mushroom cloud

wickedly, ominously, and eerily loomed.

Weapons of mass destruction

defined as a chemical, biological,

radiological, nuclear, or any other weapon

that can kill or significantly harm many people

or cause great damage to artificial structures,

natural structures, or the biosphere

an inescapable fact of life

and potential looming fait accompli

as one antagonist could annihilate another

contaminating, decimating,

obliterating, pulverizing...

sabotaging great swaths

of webbed wide world

in the process.