Lorca
by Salvatore Buttaci
after his murder in the courtyard
his body was sent to the cellar morgue
where men of science dissected his flesh
in search of those seditious words unsaid
that waited for the right poem
in the depths of him from which
they might one day metrically sail free
all they found were not unlike discoveries
made in the battlefield autopsies of heroes
who lie gut-wrenched, organs exposed
to the elements of snow and ice and time
while their filmed eyes like cameras
indelibly capture life’s passing
which the souls of them carry away
he wrote poems in his Spanish tongue
danced them down paper roads like village songs
meant to be sung if only to rally the listless
but those unversed in the art of sweet language
those whose iron hands wield iron guns
can only rattle destructive syllables of fire
can only murder the poet but never the poem
can never hear the language that trilled within him
those sweet birds with so many stories to tell
about sharing the expanse of land and sky
Note: Written in response to Red Wolf Poems, Prompt 296.
Salvatore Buttaci won the $500 Cyber-wit Poetry Award in 2007. His story collections, Flashing My Shorts and 200 Shorts, were published by All Things That Matter Press. His work has appeared in such publications as The New York Times and The Writer. He and his wife Sharon reside in West Virginia.
AWESOME