Our Cunning Enemy

[Leafstorm]

I awoke in a battlefield trench. My comrades and I tried to retreat to the west, but a sleeping tiger blocked our way. White butterflies – no doubt sent by our enemy – fluttered above him and settled on his twitching nose and long whiskers. I scratched the stubble on my chin and prayed that the butterflies not wake the sleeping beast.

I gazed down and watched droplets of sweat launch off the end of my nose and splash into a languid rivulet of blood that lapped against my bare feet. Some one had stolen my boots again. And again they had left what I needed the least: my weapon, my memories.

From the east Lieutenant Rizzio returned covered with snow. “Blizzard,” he said. “Could be a trap.” Our cunning enemy once caused an earthquake while we slept. Ninety yards of trench slammed shut. Peterson, Lavinsky, Macleod, the Borcher twins, Graves, and Flint – all crushed in mid-dream.

Around noon a rabbit peered over the north wall and sniffed. Probably concealing explosives and sent by our enemy – un lapin saboteur. Belcher, who hunted as a boy on his family farm and never dreamed of being our top sniper, dispatched the rabbit in such a way that he dropped into the trench at Cook’s feet – dead, skinned, and cleaned.

Gonzales, the youngest, spent most of the day gazing over the south rim – at our street, our houses, our just-washed-and-polished cars drying in the sun, our wives reading paperbacks on our front porches, our children, laughing and screaming, playing ghost-in-the-graveyard and smearing fireflies on their arms and faces. Periodically I warned Gonzales to keep his head down, lest the Angel of Nostalgia put a butterfly between his reveries.

[scorpiomoon]

WOW this is excellent writing. Drew me in and did not let me go. thanks

[Leafstorm]

WOW this is excellent writing. Drew me in and did not let me go. thanks

Thanks for the nice comment, scorpiomoon. I'm glad you liked it. It's one of my favorite pieces, too. Even though it's absurd and darkly humorus, it has a bass note running through it that always moves me when I read it. I don't mean to go on about my own writing, but sometimes when I read something I've written it's as if it came from someone else.
Leafstorm

[scorpiomoon]

On writing, what I've noticed is that my poems become children with minds of their own by that I mean whatever meaning they have depends on the reader at any given moment. I wrote many small poems years ago after letting them go,& coming back to them my attachment is different my ability to cut, to edit them, find meaning I did not see before, and yes there is music and painting too
vibration and intention hope and despair full spectrum art. Mine actually are often written with drawings around them or accompanied by collage or sketches ----an idea of where conception takes place ---