"Stricken" (3 of 20)

The Red Wing

They say that down there it's 3 floors

Of tightly woven cellblocks, secret doors

And that every cousin, sibling, parent lost

Is down there, huddled in liquid shit, grime

Grim prayers of the final faithful rising up

Light the torch, heat the quartz, drop it in

Watch the wax turn to liquid steam at once

Inhale, blood pressure drop, back to it again

The morgue was hazy with sewer gas, grief

Doctors taking photos of corpses, families

Looking for flesh and blood finding Faust

No happy endings here, unvarnished truth

Red scabs round the necks, on its face now

There's no face left to use as identification

Limbs gone long, labeled parts one to three

Everyone forgot the Internet for just a moment

Real death entered the room peeling oranges

Sat down, swayed to the mothers' keening

And in the halls above, yellow paper unfolds

Little Arabic letters covered in plaster walls

While the fathers murmur about the Red Wing

Held deep in Mother's arms, under all soil

Alluding to Virgil, deepest circle of some hell

Drones buzz and missiles hiss before hitting

The leftover arsenal on the corner, popcorn

Bullets in the afterburn keep the tension up

Like wet hardwood in the bonfire, splinters

Of hope, the Call to Prayer drowned in it all

Rick Simpson and ghosts of all the war for oil

The Plug forgot the strains name, strong mids

Like surgery when you drop it in, portal fluid

All around the mount, sermon goes unheard

Car alarms and a thousand voices asking God

"Why?" Except for the calm murmur in truck bed

The prayer mat on swept plastic, tears on fabric

Dust sticking to the bead until it finally collapses

At the same moment as Yeat's chimera walks by

On his way out of Bethlehem, a proud beast

In its prime, no longer hunched over but striding

Across the land with confidence and ownership

Dust swirls in eddies across the desert, through

The broken windows where they will always see

Those lost and never found in the Red Wing