Member Poem

your sheets have you in strangle hold
something burns – ah that cigarette
you failed to snuff is laughing to itself
its snidely glad it caught your hair inside 
the ashtray where its brothers lay
its smoky, smoky ceiling dance
its feelings hurt like children’s hands
in black sleet filled with oil and tar
harpoon the whales for oil lamps
and shred the trees for postage stamps
on paper coffins made of flesh
in rusty hulls and salty stench
and fleas and flies and death’s-head lies
on transit through the stormy skies 
the guns smoke like your cigarette
one wonders whether they have met
their interests seems so well aligned
and there’s that broad with iron thighs
I wonder where she’s going

you look out at the falling snow
the man there on the street below
does he know he’s not alone –
he’s being watched

crooked on a battered cane
he wonders if its snow or rain
Death looks down and says of life –
“this too shall pass”

oh the bombs rain down on fair Milan!
and a woman’s face is hung with lines
her back is bent, her life is bare
the sirens cry and bombs rain down!
once her hands had snuffed the sun
but bombs rain down and still she tries
to shield her face – the siren cries!

just the same the church-bells ring
to call you to the bunker…
as bombs still rain on fair Milan,
you shift among your cover.