... at the gate once again. Two Poems ... "A Dead Drop to Hell" & "... to see what comes"

 Reflections on June 21, 2025 ... by jeanne rene 

 

Julien Bryan/WWII Photographer/invasion of Poland 

 

A Dead Drop to Hell  

Lest we forget.
The sum
of our conceit,
encased in fear, suckled on greed
delivered by decree.
A dead drop to hell.

For the name
of each man, woman, child,
flesh to a cinder
from one flicker
of the flame.

For the beast
who dines
on the maggots.
A dead drop to hell. 
  
For the land left
with no seed.

For the city
erased.

For the sons
and the daughters
left living,
bound by the sins of the fathers
I beg we shamefully bow.

Let us be humbled.
For we have harnessed,
understood
but a blink
of the truth …

And within our arrogance,
in our failure
to embrace a brother,
we package our gifts
for destruction,
attempting to reinvent
His law with a dead drop to hell.

I beseech thee,
Lest we forget,
the price paid
for our vanity.                         

 

******** ********

 

... to see what comes  

A child
squats in the ash
listlessly fingering circles
Watching

Balancing on toes
dug into the dust

Circle over circle
Circle over circle
Circle
Over … Over …

Watching
his fathers falter
among the ruins
Beseeching the deaf stones for hope
Balancing on toes …

Circle over circle
She sees
her brothers
drowning in manhood
to devour the fathers’ rage.
Brothers vomiting stones heavenward.

Circle over circle
she watches.
Silence watches.
Watching
the mothers’ shadow
unflinching
cast over her shoulders
dumb to its woe
Balancing on toes
lost in the dust …

And the wind exhales
casting the earth into eyes of the child
blinded by shields of furious locks
 … and he stays, she stays 
Unflinching 

Toes digging into the unforgiving
They stay.
Circling in the rain.
They stay.

The children stay to see what comes.

Ahh, humanity!

by jeanne rené

photo jeanne rené

They’re bruised and bony
but …

I’m down on my knees today
to converge upon the living
who scuttle between the common garden stone
and shelter under forsaken rose petals,
Focusing my manufactured lens
on the honey bee zig-zag
or zooming in and out on the finer, more intricate subtitles
of scaly appendage or iridescent thorax,
I try to find the gleam, glint of fragile wings
capture it, post it, paste it
segments of sanity
membranes of memory to linger upon God’s finer points of creation.

I’m down on my knees today
looking for my prayers,
God’s finer course of dialogue
for I grow gray and cracked, as time shuffles haphazardly
between yesterday’s perception and today’s reality.
I need the camera, its shameless sight
to clarify my personal perspective.

Outside the camera my garden agonizes,
blundered, burdened.
The hydrangea withers, its flower-head bent.
Untethered the dahlia snaps.
Barren,
I cannot heal my children,
cannot exhale after inhaling.

… I covet the compound eye
lenses in triplicate times triplicate
mankind in mosaic medley 360 degrees composition
I beg,
let me hover with the house fly above brow and bed,
and squeal … antennae twitching enthusiastically “Ahhh, humanity!”

Today I cannot heal my children in portraits black and white.
I’m down on my knees
digging for daylight.


jeannerene 8/2010