Soldier Words

Instead of screaming I swallow them

My hard warrior words:

And down my throat they fall, stabbing wildly

Grabbing for a catch

Kicking, futile, scrambling to climb up and out

But I swallow and they clatter into my gut

Then sublimated, ooze

Into my blood, navigate blindly through treacherous seas

On tall ships with dark sails, lost

To the tips of my fingers

Curve round the Cape of Lost Hope

Through a channel once tightened by a diamond

Marooning in the right atrium.

Every beat would guide them in their forward tread

But they've become lost in the jagged tundra ice,

They who soon reach a deep ravine

Who rappel down to cross

Who nearly make it to the other side

Of my broken heart

Before the red tide of time washes them away

Without rope or raft

Down, down the secret channel to my desert womb

Where they tense and turn from one another, delirious in heat

Repelling each other like water and thirstless rock

A miracle in reverse

Scattering, running their hands along the walls

Coloring cave paintings with forsaken blood

Of you and me with spears and daggers

Poised in the air, forever frozen in feverish space

Until they are expelled with halves of my unborn children.

Then I’ll be empty – the company gone, flushed away

The battle won but the war lost.