Delete This
I am but ASCII to your board
Mind bytes finger-printed by my breath, living
in electrical decisions
Read only?
Hand Brain
wires
modem to meaning
existing second emptiness and blinking
glassed death,
or but sleeping
File?
I am software transmission
vanquished thinking, your remembering
final touches of key-stroke living
PC-ed in human coils beating
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| YES | NO |
Remembrance Day
The poppy man sold me his history today.
For $2, blood silk pins, twisted on stems,
lay still as factory cenotaphs across his plastic tray.
His baggy-suited eyes bayoneted my lapel
with lessons I won't ever properly say.
Today my retreats are from traffic smoke
and budget meetings, but my olive-coloured shirt
now bullet chesting this communal flag, displays
a search for man's vindication or God's retribution,
yet I forget
scooped out by what other's can't share
War is the first murdering of my first borning...
I worry the fabric flower as my child would pull her hair
Distracted in the safety-catch of what must have been
for these khaki heroes clotted in tattered air.
What is my suffering worth?
Nightly blackout.
Bombing flashlight.
Malignant twilight.
But for the graceful petals of the poppy men ...
My daughter saw me wearing this crimson flower today
I must remember to tell her tonight of
the sacrificed men and that everything is O.K.
There will be a time to learn of what is soon forgotten.
"Is this for the war-men, daddy?"
She twisted the wire poppy in her hair and started to play.
© 1997 by Paul Kloppenborg, all rights reserved
Paul Kloppenborg works as a Librarian at a University Library in Melbourne, Australia. He is in his late thirties and has been writing "to discover himself" since his late teens. Published in a number of journals and newspapers, he lists his influences as cummings, Crane and Lowell. You can view more of Paul's poetry at his own Poetry Pit-Stop and at Athens Avenue Poetry Circle.
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