“But Havel,” said the woman doctor, “as if you didn’t know that ninety-nine percent of all statements are idle talk. Don’t you yourself talk mostly just for the sake of talking?”
—Milan Kundera, Symposium
When war’s no longer hell on earth,
The catalpas on the college
Campus will drip with mead all year.
We’ll tie one on and the knot in
A hall that’s wall-to-wall good cheer
When war’s no longer hell on earth.
I sip my viognier and make
A face like a ruminant fed
Piffling alfalfa. The Walla
Walla flows imperiously by—
When war’s no longer hell on earth,
The sound of a million muffled
Tones will be the sweet onion’s sex
Life coming to an end. Death, you’ll
Wrestle with drafty restlessness
When war’s no longer hell on earth.
“There is nothing so terrible as the pursuit of art by those who have no talent.”
—W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage
Humans can’t imagine humans,
They imagine gods; a constant
Arenaceous tendency, like
Time. The moon’s the color of pain,
Of a rare, towheaded towhee
Humans can’t imagine. Humans
Vintage every scene . . . My vision’s
Bad; is that a band of boys with
Muskets or guitars? The wah-wah
Bawls in a load-bearing way that
Humans can’t. Imagine humans
Singing a trigger-happy song
On Red Mountain. Rat-infested
Memories drink assiduity
Any old how. Flames can’t be fooled;
Humans can’t imagine humans.
Jake Sheff is a pediatrician and veteran of the US Air Force. He's married with a daughter and a crazy bulldog. Poems, book reviews, and short stories of Jake’s have been published widely. A full-length collection of formal poetry, A Kiss to Betray the Universe, is available from White Violet Press. He also has three chapbooks: Looting Versailles (Alabaster Leaves Publishing), The Rites of Tires (SurVision) and The Seagull’s First One Hundred Seguidillas (Alien Buddha Press).