Metastasis.

Metastasis.

Foreheads of men have bled where no wounds were

Wilfred Owen. “Strange Meeting”.

War courses through

the arteries of the world,

flowering in dark lumps,

lodging in tangle of wire, 

muddy trenches, gas, 

acres of green grass,

neat white crosses,

bleak eyes staring

behind razor wire

or skeletons uncovered

from shallow pits.

Young men, going home,

carry one cell or more.

It wakes them at night,

hisses in pills and booze,

flames in white rage

that scorches all

who stand too close,

shrinking wife, 

sobbing daughter,

son trapped

between anger and love.

It evolves in corporations

grown swollen and fat

from feeding on corpses

and is then sold 

by snake-oil salesman

who, salivating 

for power and wealth,

offer it to the gullible

wrapped in a flag

or the promise of greatness

or the gross deceit 

that the necessary cure exists

in multiplying the tumours.

First published in Verse-Virtual, July 2017