Issuing a Ceasefire - Martin

 

Milo Martin

ISSUING A CEASEFIRE TO THE DESTRUCTION OF LOVE

My heart is a goddamned ever-exploding rose

billowing smoke shattering thorns

striking deep within this cage of fractured ribs

reloading recoiling rejoicing grimacing

the inner metal spring mechanism

of a broken toy gun firing ad nauseam

discharging red velvet petals out of a circus cannon

My heart is a goddamned ever-exploding rose

a perpetual hand-to-hand bayonet firefight

frustrating the muzzle of a rifle used in a godly war

wounds soothed only by ampoules of morphine

dabs of cool water from a glass pitcher

applied to the forehead by a gentle dishwater nurse

in an ad hoc infirmary tent in the Swiss Alps

My heart is a goddamned ever-exploding rose

a shrieking black cat with its tail caught in a car door

a cherry bomb going off in a garbage can

blistered into smithereens by that neighborhood punk Emo girl

detonated secretly by the lit wick of a smiling witch

blasting the ill-fated crucified stigmata

straight up the splintered planks of a dry and ragged throat

My heart is a goddamned ever-exploding rose

its stem standing dutifully in the dirt

like the frozen night watchman

waiting for the troops to arrive home again

awakened by the ambush of affectionate weapons

now thawing flaccid and sad

the smooth green necks of dead mallards

My heart is a goddamned ever-exploding rose

a flowery grenade destined to blow me to kingdom come  

its shrapnel puncturing hundreds of tiny black holes

into my thriftstore cotton shirts

its blooming center a confused rocket 

spinning wildly off a launch pad

careening into the bleachers of a horrified crowd of cheerleaders



Milo Martin is a native Californian poet originally from the San Francisco Bay Area who found his way down to Los Angeles in 1995 coming up in the now-legendary East Hollywood poetry zeitgeist of the mid-late 90s.  He co-founded the original Hollywood poetry slam team, touring the United States.  Martin has also toured Europe extensively on five different occasions, his work translated into Italian, French, German, and Croatian.  He is the author of Poems for the Utopian Nihilist and is currently finishing his new collection entitled Sublemon/Sublime. 

Milo contends that birds and insects are manifest angels.