What Didn't Burn Away
Ben Stivers
4/3/06
What Didn’t Burn Away Has Managed to Scar the Earth
And here again my breath seems lost on
Joining lives in miserable marriage.
Scraping the bottom of the well for water,
Fed through filters, blood and oil streams.
The scars from a blade, filleted tact and skin;
Burning, scarring, opaque motions,
Marked by fire and sought by thousands.
They left wounds on children
To claim their weakened protests.
Charred by sun, hung to dry,
We play with guns, hand to eye.
To relive the cycles,
We spoke about “better days,
Better years” spent in undone woods,
By crystal lakes, under clear skies.
Before the ghosts haunted the nights,
When this place wasn’t a desert.
Before the birds fell into their shadows,
Before smoke and fog took the air
And left us starving. Left us to die.
Famine rapes the greenest hills,
Drought burns while heat distills.
In repose, hands take a knife
To hearts that crave a better life.
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