August 6th 1945

A new way of seeing needs new eyes.

Our old ones must vacate their sockets

and surrender them to this new light

that fills them all with brief and bright

irradiance from a single burning bulb 

for a fraction of a second and forever.

Some call this way of seeing blindness.

I see the blind gather by the river

to rinse the old world from their eyes,

its old light thickening with ash

and time itself a twisted wreck

on which upheaval drapes itself. 

Our eyes now hood a common candle

carried in their separate sockets

to shed and share that self-same light,

for there is now only a single sight

to see, all things collapsing into one

beneath a sudden, unforgiving sun.

August 2020

We make artifacts now,

not things to use today

but things to be found

in an archaeological dig

once we are all long dead,

so that people can marvel

at what we were capable of

given we were all mindless thugs.

We fashion jewelry now

so we can swallow it

with the other valuables

in the hope someone finds it

among our anonymous ashes

in some future excavation

and we are remembered

in a museum label at least,

and if we are seen, as we polish

some precious stone upon our sleeve 

we are told that we are mad,

and the gem is seized and shattered, 

and ground down to form mortar 

to bind the unremarkable bricks

with which they build the walls

that surround us now, within which

our remains may one day be discovered.