I brought the war, by Callista Womick

Repost from tiltfactor:

The following is a response, or perhaps companion, piece to Olia Lialina’s My Boyfriend Came Back from the War. 

---

I didn’t go- none of us did.
They thought we went, but we didn’t. 

Here. 

We were here.
They didn’t think so, so they screamed at us
and shot at us
and wanted us to die.
“Maluus zebr” they said about
each of us in turn. 

But here it is, I still have it. 

And this- see the dust
still caked into the fibers?
I shouldn’t have it, they have rules about trophies,
but this is from when we were bombed
out of bed-
well, I wasn’t in bed. 

I couldn’t sleep, so I was bare and wet
in the cement shower house.
I knew I was going to die.
I sobbed under one of those
crummy metal sinks, waiting for the walls to cave in
on me or a mortar to drop into
my lap or my crazy heart to just explode. 

But they didn’t and it didn’t and it didn’t,
but maybe I still did. Die. I feel dead.
I’m not a man anymore. 

Please don’t look like that.
I don’t mind.
I’m good at what I do.
I’m a killing machine.
I’m a god. 

This is what they make of us, and they’re damn good at it.
I was in basic with this
scrawny, nerdy wimp from
Minnesota.
Ethan. Ethan Brown.
Most boring-ass name ever.
He’s a sniper now.
He could hit you right between the eyes-
equal distance from each-
from 2000 meters.
You wouldn’t hear a thing,
and then you’d be dead.
How about that scrawny nerd from Minnesota? 

Babe, don’t cry. 

Yes, I like your dress.
But you know I like green on you
so much better. 

White, hell, I don’t know how tokeep anything white. 

I would touch you,
but you look so beautiful.
My hands are dirty.
Yes, they are. Look at them.
LOOK AT THEM. 

I’m not shouting.
Ok, I’m sorry. Please don’t cry.
The dress is beautiful. 

Then why are you crying? 

…HIM?! 

THEY KNEW?! 

You didn’t write.
I wrote to you. 

No. 

No. 

No. 

…I remember.
I’m not sure than I can, either.
Not since. 

Please don’t ask
me now.
I’m so tired. 

Who knew that the dead slept?
I always imagined we would torment
the world of the living after nightfall.
Who knew that it was the other way around? 

I’m tired.
I’m so tired.
Here, hold me.

Visit the Last Real Net Art Museum for more works inspired by My Boyfriend Came Back from the War.

Saving Time

Dance barefoot on the ice.
Feel the ice.
Slip.

Roll in the snow and wash it all off.
Wash it all off.
Forget.

Epistle to a Night, In the Morning, On It's Migration South

The Night descends upon the world
and perches on my windowsill.
It looks like ink and sounds like spring
but I know it for other things.
The Night has known me all my life,
has stayed around through thin and strife;
Night knows me more intimately
than you, myself, or family.
Like clockwork it comes and goes
carrying my dreams, which grow
upon its back in fertile down
of exotic, wondrous, deep dirt brown.
Tap tap upon my windowpane:
flighty Night has come again.
A dream, a dream, and fluttered eyes
recreates my ceilinged sky.
To love means little 'less one can
know that 'yes' will come again:
The Night has known me all my life,
so you may know me as the wife
as one who's spread one's love around
to every city, shire, and town
without e'er breeding jealousy
in the breasts of them or me.
Although I don't excel at sports
Night's taught me well how to deport
at the most crucial game of all
(in play, in love): I play hardball.
I swing. I miss. I hit and run
and sweet my words, 'Tis all in fun,"
stream down my lips like salty lines
which outline my curves from heels to eyes,
for I know Night won't come again
unless I secure a win
for my team, contrived of one:
The ease of strain, labor for fun.
To dream, to dream, to be held tight
in the vast, unspoken night.
Every eternity or so,
winged dreams may come, the sun may go,
but for now Helios climbs
the stairs to his throned sky.
Alas, but then I knew it, too.
I knew he would, and so did you.

Epistle to a Flower, On Her Leaving Me, In the Autumn

As some shy fledgling, whose sense of life's unrest,
Does move to stretch the wing upon fair Zephyr's crest,
To fall into the sky and then the sun,
To do it all or in her quest be undone;
With many fruitful seeds to sow,
But na'er the time to stay and watch them grow:
Thus away from me did this fair lover slip,
Without the sweetness of a single kiss;
A pleasure never had and oft deferred,
For she was shy of me, and I of her.
Away to nighttime, smoke, and prose at best,
Breathed from another's stale-air breast,
Away from words, and walks, and flowers,
To silent, stagnate, smothering hours;
The which are filled with further discontent,
Through knowing that her time is idly spent,
In waging tongue, curling lips, and feigning gay,
For yet has she known gayer day;
Still, she may keep false hearts aplenty,
And with them dust bland hours four and twenty;
Also with dull tomes, tight shoes, and brackish water,
For such things are equally pleasing one and other.
One such heart yourself may 'specially please;
Whose brain is numb and whose passion a soft breeze,
Who makes you gifts of someone else's rhyme,
Wields prepackaged love and thinks it fine.
Who, when your humors ebb and flow,
Responds not when they come, nor sees them go;
But has a loyalty fast and true,
Albeit to many things above you.
On some dark night mayhaps a vision comes,
Of marvelous moments spent in dazzling sun;
In dreams you shirk Time's authority,
To stand in Africa, with me;
Air hung with sundry thoughts unsaid,
Yet sketched in smiles, by one another to be read;
Sights which when you slumber wax immense,
but with your opening eyes, condense.
Thus away songs of love and days of Thor,
to thrift store romance evermore.
So when I pause to think of you,
(And am graced with company by my Muse)
Lending neither eye nor ear,
to those about me true, and dear:
Seeing shade caress your curves,
and growing bold, I taste your words,
am cut short by my friend, Reality,
I swallow them and watch you flee;
You seek your truth, and thus do roam,
but having mine, I'm always home.


*Thanks to Alexander Pope for the skeleton and the inspiration.

?

If stringing words is to no avail
then why do I pick mind's oysters bare
to fail?
For, in truth, you make up little time
spent by the bankers
of my mind.
I think not of you when breaking fast
though wood and stone weigh
on my wrist.
Nor think of you when passing flowers by
whose kind, for you, once lived
and died.
And truly, oft it slips my mind
that these darkdrab halls you once
lit sublime.
Even when I drift to sleep
you're not by my keen mind's eye
seen.
I know not why I yet choose
to hope to write and
write to lose.


Old sentiments, newly posted.

There's food in my pantry, air in my lungs, and ground under my feet. Things are pretty good, but they could be much better.