Somewhere in the narcotic blur between the smoked
oysters, brewed back out in a sea of bile, and when
the tube fell out of my right lung; somewhere
in the expression, in-between pleading her to
drink, gather friends, be well, happier than I;
when I wished a god to blame for my congenitality,
something beyond frozen chromosomes and effect
cause, effect, cause–

He gave, sometime then, a two-year warranty, stainless
steel staples fresh in my chest. Two years for
two lungs and too many holes, old cracks sealed shut
with laser putty. Next time, he said, they’d have them
melted to the wall with some agent, more painful
than gallstones or migraines or pregnancy, bullet wounds.

And I imagined those children in the Viet Kong,
dynamite strapped to their bare chests; and the soldiers up
above, dropping barrels of napalm like mint candy, the little
boys and girls screaming like they just cracked open a pinata,
until their tanned skin melted and they fell silent to the earth–
looking from above like gum on the pavement, to those soldiers
that forgot why they were there or who sent them.

And then their little chests exploded, just after they stopped
wondering why, the little boys and girls, they were ever there,
glued to the earth, crying, napalmed. And I wondered what it
would be like, when my warranty ran its course, and the bubbles
began to pop! pop! pop! on my lungs again, like
the burnt corpse babes of Vietnam, Ticking like a minute hand,
like the beat of my heart, metered routinely just two years ago.

This is the most eloquent and stirring poem ever to grace this board.

__________________
Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.

This is fantastic.

__________________
On ne voit bien qu'avec le cœur.
L'essentiel est invisible pour les yeux

Jesus Christ..

Toothlessjoe, you are the shit.

Well thanks for the response! This is what I love about poetry, the way we all interpret each poem. You guys seem to like this one, where for me, it's not one of my particular favourites that I've done.

I like. I like particularly the last two stanzas. I thought they were laden with particularly awesome black humor.

Especially

it made me smile.

You smiled?

...

Yup. Pretty damn big.