The Fall Of Providence Poem by Frank James Ryan Jr...fjr

In the center of a Dak-To paddy-field
laid the last of the dead...smoldering
like a box of lit Corona's, strewn.....,
and the scent was mundungus!
Suddenly a stir o'er the pyre split the clouds,
fresh air blew hard and fast;
the touch-down was deafening.

Negotiating the napalmed soil by matchsticks
camouflaged men carried out the charred flesh
into the grey metal birds,
while a woman standing on the field gasped;
young village woman, painted, sweating,
....shivering from the heat stroke about her;
never stood so close to carnage before,
though she'd seen it from afar in Da'Nang,
looking up from between bamboo shoots,
supine and spread in prostitution-
a fair exchange for food and air?

And in a flash...all was gone
but the indelible stain of horror.
And the woman waved at the burning brush-
in the empty field around her,
symbolic regard for the lost;
was all she knew to do.

Respect comes in myriad emotions...,
that was one of them.
Tomorrow War will carry-on
somewhere, everywhere,
in different style....arena.

Still, we continue to boast about
how we'd die for our children,
want to leave them a better world
to raise our children's children.
Yet look at the bloody chaos
they've been earmarked to inherit?

Sometimes i wonder if it's all a twisted reality-show to find out-
just how so damn ignorant we can live our mortal lives.......yeah.


-Work Written By:
F. J. Ryan, Jr / FjR
On July 28th,2010
Typed & Posted By:
Lauren Marie Ryan
On July 29th,2010