Wake
I am nearly dead this morning,Weary from cubicle work.
Limp from routine.
The unfolded newspaper
Brings casualty to breakfast,
Silences my usual cheerio crunch.
The headline shoots me in the chest,
Deceased Soldiers.
The bullet lodges deep, next to my heart.
I can feel the cold led with each breath.
I focus into a face,
On a checkered page of ghosts.
Names, like numbers-
Listed, ordered, ranked.
I count.
Last name, first.
Last name, first.
The cold gray of the newspaper is the color of ash.
It stains my hands.
Somehow, my face is his.
He is the one stirring coffee,
Weary from cubicle work.
He is staring at the ash-colored faces,
Dead from war.
Life is
Collapsed into caption.
Into a box.
Into Sunday Morning Edition.
I stare into eyes,
A page of eyes, and I listen-
To degrees.
To careers.
To sibling names.
To ambition.
I dump the remainders
Of morning into the sink.
Soggy cheerios tunnel the drain,
Like lifeless bodies floating the river.
I could be dead, I think.
I could be ash.
Poetry by Shawn Monahan
Read 1038 times
Written on 2008-02-01 at 21:47
Tags War Soldier
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