In order to view this poem with the line breaks the author intended, we suggest reading it on a computer screen or in the landscape orientation on your phone or tablet.
All day long the world is going
Graham Murtaugh
All day long the world is going
about the work
of ending.
Every day
the pockets of fathers
in line for milk are
exploding, bombs
falling effortlessly from
the clean mouths
of bosses, from warplanes,
in terse text messages
btw…
even you at the end
of this line
will be emptied
of all particularity, lost
in the infinite moment of
exhalation—
what devastating openness
to welcome
the ungentle plume
of dust, to lick
from our lips
the ochre rose
blooming
in the devastated heart
of impact
as she cries god
no! or good
-bye, as we say why
must it be so?
—
Graham Murtaugh is a licensed psychotherapist and unlicensed poet living and working in Tacoma, WA.
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Have you read these poems:
Fugue by Susan Blackaby
The Voices in Our Heads by Fred Carroll
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