“To find a form that accommodates the mess, that is the task of the artist now.” – Samuel Beckett

Fat Man Little Boy

A new day breaks

The earth forever changed

Turns with an awful ache

And again the sun upon

Frosted morning fields

Roads lined with pickup

Trucks jeeps and vans

The animals flee from man

Boys play with their toys

Zoom focus boom god

And country beer broads

And banging this is the

Endtime winter coming on

The human hunting season

The newspaper reports

The arrest of two naked

Hunters in Michigan

Bare except for shoes

Saving I suppose their souls

The fat man opposite

The one with a gorilla’s gait

A teacher of the ancient

Tongue of Latin relates

Not Vergil’s rosy prophecy

Of an incipient golden age

And a savior’s birth

But the tale of his father-

In-law and how yesterday

Way up behind his old

House up on the mountain

Side he somehow shot

Gunned himself in the back

Of his meaty thigh

Or was shot by some

Unknown deer assailant

No one knows who or why

Later in another news

Paper a report reveals

How the cops barely

Could drag him out

Of the thick woods so

Fat was he enormous

Overwhelming too much

To bear unimaginable fact

Fat Man Little Boy

It wasn’t a toy

That shattered your world

Set blood dripping guts

Hanging carcasses to carve

Skin blackened in a flash

Everywhere everywhere no

Where to run escape flee

Forevermore forevermore

The animals are at it again

Flash run Fat Man Little

Boy the dear victims lie

Still eyes staring nowhere

Blood trickling from corners

Of gaping mouths victims

Before the deadly thrust

Of the great hunter’s

Perverted lust

Fat Man Little Boy

A new day breaks

The earth forever changed

Turns with an awful ache

The animals are at it

Again

Little Boy 6 August 1945 Hiroshima

Fat Man 9 August 1945 Nagasaki

Edward Curtin is a writer whose work has appeared widely.  He teaches sociology at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. His website is http://edwardcurtin.com/