Intervention

Surging herds of metallic beasts
sneering storm-darkened steam through flaring orifices,
clouding the air,
stealing from the living,
spurring anger in a faraway land.
Deadly instruments of destruction are thrust upon them,
warriors and innocents are spirited to higher ground.
Fawns of war stand blinded and disordered by the arrhythmic white flashes.
Survivors elicit fiery diatribes against those responsible,
the pagans and deceivers and nonbelievers.
Hatred swells beyond the magnitude of its cause,
identities and skins diverge,
voices go unheard.
This was for the subjugated,
to share the wonders of our making.
To savor the fruit without planting the seed.
To task others with our design until they become our equals.
But they cast off the truth, see not the future.
The blackened, burning manna beneath this cloud will succor us, empower us,
and long after these broken machines turn to glimmering flecks in the soil beneath our feet
we will offer guidance to those whose bonds we have loosened.

And They Will Show Us How to Prosper

They descended from peaks of purple cumulus before the setting sun,
their arms adorned with bars of pale and scarlet
that fired spangles of bluish heat before them.
We cowered under glares
shaped through the eons to lines and hues of condescension.
We idolized, despised.

They offered themselves to us:
palaces of finery and empty spaces;
sprawling black-ribbon pathways on a palette of greenery;
cushioned chariots powered by mighty steeds.
With craft and cunning it will be ours, they say, as it was theirs.
Unfettered by the past or future,
or by the anguished sounds from sunless edges of our world,
we advanced through bleak beginnings
to the blessings granted those who divine polished walls from wasteland.

Yet amidst the gathering plenty there remained a want for things unknown.
Venturing from idyllic gardens to the shadowy fringes
I see stains of discarded life on tarnished expanses,
where ambition was long before bartered for trinkets
from those like me who embrace only the present.
And so the children huddle together,
hoarding filmy rations of water
near a heat-crusted seascape
that once swelled with pleasure seekers,
and the Motherless stare through stiffening doe-like eyes,
unaware of the theft of what was to follow by those that came before.

In This Way She Returned

Her innocent face, texture of orchid petals, pink and still,
resting on glossy fabrics that forge tiny needles of silver from the solemn afternoon light.
Dewy blossoms sweetening the air,
candlelight etching fleshtones of life into her clasped hands;
wing-flutter whisperings of faraway voices rising and then fading away.
I kiss her cheek
and sing to her of cottontails in the clouds and lavender ribbons and ponies waiting to play,
and I see the beginnings of her dreams traced into the familiar curve of her lips.
She chose a path where mighty stallions bolt at ribbons of flame and black-tempered clouds,
where hopes converge in a swirl of fortune good and ill.
She stole like a satiny mist through spartan towers of spruce,
laughing at the crack of the wind and stirring all around her with the airiness of winter blossoms.
But great machinery felled the phalanx of pine,
and scattered the mist into frenzied wisps that flittered to the sky like frightened sparrows.
She crossed endless worlds to join me here, this sleeping child,
her stillness the mystery behind the stars,
her countenance the elusive grail of the masters,
her essence returning to me as my soundless melody is breathed into her ear.

Sons and Daughters

We survey the fiery ground through eyes of glass
and feel our skin heated by unuttered cries
as we return to our paperstacks.
A mother's son,
shredded by fine metals,
spends his last moments begging to not exist,
as the horror is translated to pulses
and sent hurtling toward the tinted screens
that we quickly turn to black.
Heroes, we call them,
and we erect monuments if not too dear,
and credit to their labors
our cathedral foyers
and conditioned air,
and comfort their mothers with tales of bravery,
and thank unknown entities for our deliverance,
as the heroes did the day before.
And the newest among them
raise widening eyes to silent masters
whose self-imposed statures
are branded in practiced lines upon their brows;
who dress their charges in the accolades and medals of future days,
who mold trembling foals into stallions flaring with winter-morning vigor,
so that their hooves might trample perceived evils
and steam from their bodies douse the fiery ground,
until nothing remains but the few shreds of human reason not sacrificed to the inferno.

Paul Buchheit is a professor with the Chicago City Colleges, co-founder of Global Initiative Chicago (GIChicago.org), and the founder of fightingpoverty.org.