Somewhere Out West.... Hiroshima

Somewhere Out West......Hiroshima 

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Outside of town 

Naked and endless 

Rose at 4 am

Jumped out of his skin

Ate up their brains

Left trail of death 

Under the bridge

Crazy widow 

Jumped into filthy ecstasy 

Grandpa expelled from Academia 

They all got naked

Jumped the Southern Pacífic 

Dancing flesh bags

Singing nursery rhymes

Riding the rails out West

Moloch disappeared into war

Visions of omens

Wall Street dying 

Burning poems and manuscripts

Nake widow and grandpa

Dancing in the ashes

Drinking cold chicken noodle soup

From the can 

Jump back on the Southern Pacific

A shadow of a Band

Sings lofty incantations 

Under the blood red moon

Heading West 

He dreams of angels

Lost in Lodi, NJ

Bodies on a mountain top

Tumble rigid to the sea

Crazy widow and grandpa 

Naked cook them up

Grandpa grins under the stars

Widow chews bloody flesh

Spitting bones at grandpa 

Who naps in catatonia

Widow wakes him

Kicks him in the balls

Widow with dead eyeballs

On the run from the madhouse

Electrified brains 

Forgotten life

Riding the rails

Following the sunset

Heading to the promised Land

Somewhere out West

Widow and grandpa chew eyeballs

They lost their names

Free of fixed identity 

In the Land of the Free

Cry tears of stone

Stunned government officials

Sent off in meat trucks

Doctors of insanity 

Eat lamb drink whisky 

Widow throws eyeballs

No one sees anymore 

Blind government officials

Fall into a concrete void

Grandpa vomits eyeballs 

On children playing in dirt

Metal smokestacks belch filth

Widow naked dances free form

Necklace of entrails and eyeballs

Train whistle blows

Heading somewhere out West

Grandpa is sleeping deeply

Crazy widow lights him on fire

Roasts eyeballs

Grandpa goes up in smoke

She howls at sexy smokestacks

Clocks fall from the sky

Death blow to time

Machinery of night

Tree radios ecstatic play Elvis

Beneath shuddering lightning clouds 

Skeletons dance as Jerry plays guitar

America the beautiful 

Sea to plastic shining sea

All see the Pacífic ocean 

Journey coming to an end

Train misses switch falls into the sea

Bubbles and floating eyeballs

America so blind

Sinks beneath the waves

Somewhere out West

Then far off on August 6, 1945

The land of Freedom

Drops "Little Boy" on Hiroshima 

Blast rips burning flesh from children

Old woman holds her eyeball

70,000 instantly killed

Ultimately 166,000 killed

Only 10% Military

Crazy widow and what's left of Grandpa 

Energe from the sea

Mushroom clouds in their eyes

They see so many dead and dying

Screaming pluck out their eyeballs

Sinking into the sea their final words

"America why are you so blind?"

Then just for fun on August 9, 1945

The US drops another atomic bomb

On Nagasaki named "Fat boy"

High command is pleased

Their eyes devoid of emotion

"I have become death, destroyer of worlds."

Only nuclear bombs ever used

This happened 75 years ago

Somewhere out West

***

Woke from a nightmare being chased by blind eyeballs draped in flags, government officials, a naked dancing crazy widow, grandpa on fire, smokestacks, meat trucks, doctors of insanity, and the Southern Pacific heading West. 

I came to a decision. I don't think there is a promised land out West, gonna stay here in Vermont. 

Written around the time the US dropped the first nuckear bomb in history on Hiroshima 75 years ago today in 1945, today is August 6, 2020. Can still smell flesh burning, civilians murdered, nearly 166,000 dead in Hiroshima. 

I say some prayers that the children of the world have a future. I ponder the potential extinction of the human species and species and ecosystems across the globe. 

Humans make the same mistakes over and over. The weapons just get bigger.

But erring on side of the positive hold out faith in the Love that liberates and then fall back to sleep dreaming of puppies.

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David Arndt 2022

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Artwork by Hideo Kimura who was in twelve and in Hiroshima when the bomb detonated.