WANDA COLEMAN - THE WAR OF WARS

the twin plagues poverty and hate endure century upon

century upon century. hope crumbles like the twin Buddhas

of Bamiyan, or the great horns of Satan in the light of rapture


neutralized by shadow malignancies, and the learned cowed

by authorities who enlist religious tenets to serve oppression


citizen worth taxed then interred in acid earth/the dismissed


history of slavery-based racial dislocations and lynchings.


empty their vaults to the needy? the converted wed amens, candles

& hymns to bone sacrifice? when will the armchair poets rise?


Johnny, your gun in exchange for citizenship & scholarship?

Johnny, your heart for the invalidation of your being.


where are the reparations in culture & coin?

how, then, can the mending of our nation take place?


grandstand rhetoric and flaccid protest do not a power make. 


there is a never. there is a too late