Misnomer

I couldn’t write today
in the face of that bomb
which makes me wonder
how we ever can but talking
to ourselves & each other in poems
is a manner of coping

When I am angry that poems
do nothing I am angry
& poems do appear to hold it
I run over the brim of the bowl
I hold my arms out to the trashed earth
& all its frightened & ferocious people

I make no space for that man here
who means biggest best most fantastic most lethal
when he says mother but he grabs my space
nevertheless headlines airtime theoretical lives
he doesn’t bother to imagine spreadsheets
full of numbers numbers full of awful profit

I’m awful as a prophet but I know
poems will burst from us nevertheless
know that Moab was both brother & son
to his mother whose mother turned back
for a final look at the burning world Maybe she
is the mother meant Mother of bombs
Mother of brother-sons Daughter-mother of a lot
of fucking woe who burst as we burst

our damns our horror our burst in air