LOST IN IRAQ by Stephen Jarrell Williams

Never free
in the arms of the ice queen,

mopping the floor
with the back of your head,

you're grinning in ecstasy and pain,
humming that tomorrow will stay away.

You're flawed
with the war in your dreams,

your old outpost still
in the mountains of the penniless,

falling forever
into her eyes,

she keeps your stick swinging,
fingers cold,

unpromising,
multicolored in the spin of your room,

your uniforms in the closet
hanging above the sniffing rats,
they snuck in
nestled in her purse,

as she steals your nobility,
snuffs out your fire.



Published in Counterexample Poetics- 2009

In A Dark Time by Stephen Jarrell Williams

In a dark time
within us and here,
we smooth ourselves over
with oil and gossip.

Beating our heels into the floor music,
paying more with less
awareness.

Whistling old songs
like they'll save us.

Give us that shot,
vaccine against swine
boiled in the underworld.

There's not enough
lighthouses to cast light over the dying sea.

The fires are burning California.

Where's the great Kennedy from yesterday?

Only Dylan still has a spark to share.

We should march for something...

We're in a vacuum of overpopulation,
soulless mass,
lost

in a dark time.



Published in protestpoems.org- September 2009