Ballad Of The Baghdad Blues Poem by MARINA GIPPS

Over sanguine seas
where the waves are entrenched
in the static hiss of hallucination.
Where the uniforms wear adherence
to the simple regimen of detonation.

Where the man in the corner does not move
for his wife and children are strewn
lost love-letters of blood; he graciously sighing,
preparing in prayer, to meet his wise maker.

Going beneath the veil of a willowy dream
believing the world shall absolve you with buttery palms;
No stopping the faint heart bleeding for those
who decompose for slippery oil in their wistful sleep.

Where you can only strengthen your presence
so much before evolving into the crass Devil.
Where you can target practice so many
before sun-rising as a decorated podium hero.

God is watching you, proudly, sad soldier,
while this eternal war marches onward…
safeguarded by post-traumatic stress
as you wait to fly home with torn, teetering wings,
dragging the landing gear of prosthetics.

Soon the hearth of home is a boxful of shrapnel,
delivering you peacefully, fine pacifist,
to Heaven for Iraq metamorphoses slowly
as your Purgatory, your blind, mute Hell.

All this, deeply depending on whether you saw
the fired borealis of Baghdad imploding;
the glass half empty, conspiring limbless,
filling your void with somnambulant civilians.