Somewhere On This Earth

A shell will flatten a playground

Photo by Dan Meyers on Unsplash

— a man drives a tank
over the playground fence
of an apartment complex.

A man pulls the lever
of a slot machine, a man
removes a blood pressure cuff,

from the arm of his daughter —
wipes the sweat from her brow.
Each day you wake up in one world,

go to sleep in another
and not a single bomb
or gunshot or sharp edge

is required to travel.
My fascination: heavy things,
the speed of a falling stone,

the sound of a landing,
the taste of novel soil,
the lure of a surging river.

Today — a knife will remove a bladder,
a slug will puncture a womb,
a shell will flatten a playground

full of strollers into sand,
and not a single word
is heeded by the anger of man.

©️ Trapper Markelz 2022

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