Copper Loaded Love

A green barrette, a gun.
Good-bye, my lady.

If I cut my hands off, my lucky gun would fit.

I gave three seconds and died
happy, life is just a lesson.
You are thirty seconds to the grave,
I am just a prison.

You’re Irish season swallows poison,
we terrified your liver. Good-
bye, my lady,
I am drowning in a river.

Everybody is looking,
I have your money here.
You cheat! You’re a cheat, painting courage over
with fear.

My white girl, I love you,
with a dark and heavy gun.
I shot you up, a million shots
with copper loaded love.

Drink your dark poison,
swallow your tainted love.
Good-bye. my lovely lady,
your green barrette, your gun.

The Charge

Hard back

pages, stained with time and
an aged aroma.

1915. A battle is painted.
Acid slashing,
spitting.

Direct eyes leap from a tiny cliff
onto young bodies. Bloodied. Abandoned.

Somewhere, some mothers stand as sharp
as shrapnel,
bullets piercing their wombs,
their children’s supple homes.

Trembling hands
find a gun
and
a buddy. A soldier. A boy.
Death has no time in
these fields. He is hurried.

Frontal attacks sweep
unprotected spots. Blurring instinct.
Blinding the Earth with a scarlet bath.

Burying dirt with
young boys,
men.

1915. Hard back pages, stained with
memory and
the scent of suffering.

And this….
just the beginning.

*About The Charge by W. Douglas Newton.