Life rivals a piece of art in perpetual change

exposed daily to the grim social elements

your face accepts its mandate of wrinkles

as the days paint you into significance

the feminist credo humbles the great artist

scumbling the clouds of heaven forever

existing in a prejudiced mind of sexism

other visions ascend from spanning bridges

to see the clouds erupting into timespanned

portraits of earthly revolutions where

survivors wait remembering the fallen

one impaled by the intolerant atmosphere

victimized by invisible windshear signs

littered with carnival tent show trash

& shredded sonnets by Shakespeare

perhaps their lives are heralded beyond

that choice aery mind & vision-full

drawn like the breath of luminous swans

we depict in cyberlinked thought-placards

in spirit we are all sexually equal chalk artists

scrawling our unique visionary art for all

over sidewalks a million feet can’t smear away

—

When Susan Sontag Wrote About Women In War

They had to revive (& remake

holocaust tactics like a bad propaganda film)

in Bosnia & Kosovo in order

to rival the Jews of their possessive heritage

& condemn a neo-Christian generation

of Albanians to the same treatment.

Beyond possessiveness there is only war’s evil

& it belongs to everyone

or every

being trapped by Goyaesque disasters

uprooting bone, flesh              & unregenerate

spirit matters.

Those unrelenting tears           & blood drippings

of refugees

beyond any means of escape, like listening

to radio ads for mass consumer products

again &

again.

Dispossessed, also, from the Zion-connected

thread of cultural traditions, the refugees have no

temples of mass communication to benefit

from any prime-time holy business

or sweet salvation,

& no blessed camcorders to self-document

their own ethnic cleansings

for purgative, & other worshipful, purposes.

… Mother, please hear them: I cannot bear

to see your long marching through red seas

— mud-clogged with misery —

nor listen to your singsong lamentations over

women & human rights:

Now that you’re heavy with

the dying child

of just History.

About the Poet

Peter Magliocco writes from Las Vegas, Nevada, where he’s been active in the small press as editor, writer, and artist for several years. He has poetry in I Am Not A Silent Poet, Ink In Thirds, Literary Yard, Harbinger Asylum, Midnight Lane Boutique, and elsewhere. A multiple nominee for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, his most recent poetry book is Poems for the Downtrodden Millennium from The Medulla Review Publishing.

The post Poems by Peter Magliocco first appeared on Prachya Review.