POEM A DAY – January 29 – VANESSA SHIELDS

This one’s been ruminating for a couple of days. I was…curious about a certain person’s interior, and so I did a little intuitive visualization…and what I see is…a haibun. Another…can’t seem to stop writing them.

Intuitive investigation results:

his interior is abandoned husk
but for the blonde child
playing with weapons
in the quivering shadows
of a shrunken heart
he learns that the sounds of fury
make the adults proud
attention is tossed paper
another round of bullets
a mansion a building a city
a country a continent
the world is transactional
dysfunction and fury weeps
a wounded animal biting
off its leg to escape the
pain it insists on avoiding
the nonsense of his choices
are as real as the missing
remorse: it’s everyone else’s
fault everyone else’s fingers
pulling triggers another man’s
power-surging vileness
the child enjoys a party
builds a ballroom
uses it to erase history
bulldozer, blue-balled bigot –
the child is the weapon now
but believes he is a king
and the adults crawl around
him infantile and fragile
weak with the delirium of
denied dignity or else –
death. The child evolved
during wars fought in disordered
battlefields causing structural
damage to his self –
these facts froth falsities
falling from his lips like
lulla-lies. Poisoned and in
a position to punish, the man
is the child who never learned
true love.