Ex Post Facto Poem by MARINA GIPPS

i. Prologue Ex

This forever war is flowing somewhere…
A ballad of the blues over sanguine seas.

The baghdad blues:
a man in a corner does not move.
His wife and children, strewn: lost love-letters of blood.

Beneath the veil of a willowy dream,
as if the world shall absolve you with buttery palms.
God is watching you, sad soldier,
dragging the landing gear of prosthetics.


ii. Post En Medias Res

In this land of no escape,
Take me to Walter Reed,
The privatized foothold of rats,

Birthing future breeders
Of post traumatic stress,
Oil oligarchy disorder.

To spend limbless days,
basking in the sun’s rays, enlivened
with particles of biochemical warfare.



iii Facto Epilogue


I hear America crying:
politicians as war heroes,
priests as common criminals,
bards at the podium.

And where are the philosophers?
Destined to the peeling wail
of a teetering helicopter,
Small mosquito in the eye of God?

Listen, America, dry your tears,
don’t bask in the permanent grandeur
of abandoned radio halls

As we walk on water like Jesus,
Apprenticed for Armageddon.