Poetry feature: Masada

Swirling, striking and by blunt force piercing the littlest ones. Shards. Shrapnel. Dust that rolls into dirty glooms which make plaster casts. In this cloud, people lose time. Space is meshed together, breaking against skin and bone. Children unable to move. Mothers bursting, then dusting off and with all courage, letting the carcass be seen by all eyes.

The boy’s arm shakes. A barrel, heavy enough to be a burden. A trigger, rigid and hardened so that the blast becomes an effort. Not a slip of the finger. The weapon twists him to make a conscious decision.

And the men play their part

And the men play their part.

False gods way up there. Gathering bits of hell to throw from up high. Oh grand home in the sky!

Clouds become blackened. Lords, Dukes and Earls throw down incendiary and clusters, splitting these charcoal screens. Most are precise, some slip through the exchange of careless hands. Bombs fall from nowhere but hit at everything.

This home is a castle. A rotten Elsinore, where no sanctuary can get in and nobody can get out.