Hiroshima

The ramshackle train of what could have been

Is lost in night’s eel tongue spread,

Where the sparking charge

Licks soul leeched blood

Off auburn acid tracks,

Charting a doomed course to the faraway mirage

Of once upon a time’s dust shelf kingdom,

Where every sacred minute, we wait for tomorrow’s dusky calling.

The whistling lamentation

Carves its stinging sonic tattoo

Into our slouched defeat of dreams

Between station to station,

As we rave towards the bullet express,

Our cheerless protest

A broken legged gait.

And the chattering residue

Of spectral echos along the grief anchored tracks,

Fall as a rain of war cry hyenas,

The erupted levee’s clapping doom

Shunting the path

And devouring our past,

Her storied page

Worn away

By the rusting belt

Of Hiroshima sun.

The bronze capped trees

Collect volumes of disintegrated memories;

For the distance to home cannot be measured on a scale of tears.