Waltz or pass a cradling caress
Frown or prance, test in tenses past
Thickest orchestral glorying
Ghosts of war’s transmigrant memes
Customs undressed, immolated, effaced
Magical stitches, maddening wistful douleurs
Panic pickled, swirling hemorrhaging
Harmonic goose steps, stiffened spines
Smiling boots glistening in Prussian violins
Recidivist frivolity, for a grand dance or grosse pause
Perturbed, blind soldiers hobbling past stretchers
Kicking the contours, counting the dead
Mustard gains
Acid gargles
Yellow vomit
Mass graves
Worlds of war wedded arms merchants
Virgin tails plucked from the sky
Moulins Rouges or pink butterfly
Dreams and screams in pews and trenches
Scar fountains, penny operas
Empires somnambulant, plagued and black
Genocidal vengeance sputtering us all
In Faustian borrowed beard disguises drenched
In noisy endless macabre rising madness
Bedros Afeyan
Davies Symphony Hall
With Ravel, 2-28-2009