The Same Refrain

I wrote this poem in 2022, but it feels very relevant as I type this in 2024. Too relevant. So relevant it hurts. I've never published it anywhere before, mostly because I was saving it to send out to some literary magazines, but that doesn't feel right anymore. Writer’s note: This is a “partially found” poem. Some words or phrases were extracted from existing poems about war. This is not a new story.

I’m tired of writing about war.

Because the fallen walk

across dreams of pale battalions singing

the empty song of loss

boldly into the jaws of shrieking,

fear-winged birds

Hundreds and thousands of words

written by others, long turned to ash.

How the centuries pass

and nothing changes.

This war won’t end.

It hangs over us,

a tired, iron sky

echoing the innumerable, pointless questions

like fire kites tumbling angrily

over the walls we’ve built

to keep them out,

to hold us in.

As if we don’t recognize

our own flat indifference

running like blood through the streets.

As if we don’t rule this kingdom

blinded by all that glitters

the adrenaline of blood-rush

and nothing else.

How the word civilian

sounds both mechanical and fragile,

like a child’s makeshift plaything

a doll made of tinfoil

broken and discarded in the infinite

black scrawl of a 24 hours news cycle.

We are told not to weep,

We are told war is kind.

We stroll and scroll, endlessly

our eyes always unseeing

blind even to the knock at the gate,

the empty names of a thousand generals

leaders, statesmen, regimes

grim-faced, presiding.

Buildings can be rebuilt.

Roads can be repaved.

People can be unborn,

waves sweeping away the faces of newborns

polished and anonymous.

The unforgiving tide

howling in prayer

answers for us.

We’re in love with this war.

We carry the silence like stones swallowed

the way a serpent bites its tail,

sinking down into the cold dark

until we meet sky.

We say we must remember

but we are far too good at the refrain

repeating the same lines over

and over

and over

until we forget.