Sub-munitions

Roll-up, roll-up, hear the Stalin organ
Katie is still playing after all these years
whistling away with all the new kids -
an anti-electrical mesh, this anti-personnel flute
(chewing up soft targets) -
crude like napalm
with seductive duds
failing to kiss the sky with death
- at least until those tiny fingers
prize open your deadly green buds
or suck on your depleted heart
to feed the emphatic cancer in their spleen

no longer to be shrouded and shamed
brave bomblet, sister, lover
hold your head high like the bullets do
you are needed at the front back and sides
of terror, working your hot metal magic
in postmodern swirls, in shrapnel dancing
in keeping the fire stoked against evil

but I find myself wondering about meeting you
what would you really be like?
I enjoy gathering blackberries, sweet grenades
of autumn, but to you they’re exotic weeds
in need of the pesticide drench –
so I wonder – when will you open
without going off? When will your
hi-tech style recognise its reflection
in this puddle of blood, shit and tears?
When will you slip bananas into
the starving mouths of my cousins?
When will the order come for you to sleep?


Kh
11.8.06

IMAGE: 'Munitions Over Morals' (2004), anonymous illustration for performance of the George Bernard Shaw play Major Barbara by the University of Wisconsin College of Arts and Communication.