Morning breaks without bombs

Morning breaks without bombs.
The sun's sharp rays invade this little room,
Where lies our son who will not go to war
Unless he wants to. Who will not starve.

And still we worry -- criticize each other
In perfect safety, relative tranquility
We feel besieged, by sharp words wronged.
We all were bred for battle.

When sleep deprived he whimpers,
My frustration fires. A father
Who's held his son raggedly dying
Can't have a night like  this.

The drunk fool enthuses

Haberdashery,
Absurdly froofy name for hat store
Grandiloquently calling forth pomades and handlebar mustaches,
The drunk fool enthuses, laying into the surf-pounded sand brick after brick of unlikely truth.

The little man who should know less than his father but knows more anticipates failure even as he desperately longs for daddy's scheme to pan out. It never does.  The dust in the pan never even covers their expenses.  It never will, will it?

Epigram

1.
I got an app for my cell
To remind me to be mindful
It chimes me on the stroke of every hour
Tsk. Tut. The censor swats.
Another way I make my phone my master.








2.
New England Patriots football squad
Bearer of scorn and adoration
of intensity unrivaled by zeal for God or country
Champions of America's paragon sport
Damn they're smug.

Bonus

Grave markers are a sort of sculpture.

Totems borne by believers against death.

They speak of the dead but not for them.

Haibun 2

Black Sheen, Olive Green

Black sheen, olive green cicada flaps.

Floodlight flips on. Crickets pulse out, a thousand miniscule glass stoppers spun in bottle necks.

Cicada buzzes. It's twitching on its back, its wings pummeling the composite decking, its pale underbelly defenseless.

Cicada flips right-side up again, its clear wings still furious.

Man grips hard a stick,
Six feet away from wasp nest
clinging to railing

Haibun

Oxygen Apparatus

Light stays steady through the day's phases, through the night. The rectangular gunmetal door handles show every fingerprint. On the foamboard ceiling, a metal track describes an arc around the bed. A plasticized fabric curtain is suspended therefrom on rings, bunched at one end of the track, near the glistening porcelainesque sink. The woman on the bed, soaked in sweat, grunts and strains. From behind behind a McPainting that a 20 year-old nurse slides aside appears oxygen apparatus: rubber hoses and plastic mask.

The doctor pulls, one
hand on the device, one braced
against stainless steel