* Flipper's Fate Poem by Terence George Craddock

the after image
exhibiting flipper
haunts me

lying on a cot
his hygienic hospital bed
bravely

waving his stump
armless
at television camera...

while I sanctuary sit
in safe sitting room
imagine...

agonizing
pain repeatedly
slaying
phantom limbs
3rd degree

burns
biting
pitilessly
painfully
into 13 year old

male flesh
of innocent suffering
personified...

A bombed victim
typifying modernized
war painfully dying?

This stump
of smart weapon youth
clinging to life

already stripped
from Iraqi relatives
corpse parents...

In this time
in this place
would I

trade
my life yet unlived
for you...

This child
is your child
this child

is my child
every child
every born child

dying
lying here today
by stealing death dealing degrees...

Where
shall I
offer up
ghost chance?


That militant
monetary tyrants
may fall eternally?

My still
unsevered hand
has
already been

anointed ceremonially
with prayer
faith
in sanctified oil!


Copyright © Terence George Craddock