War

There are the bombs again

Buildings crumbling

Pictures of tanks

On the evening news

So we watch it all

This is how it’s waged

Tanks clogging streets

Crushing any hope that

Might have been left

Left over from before

This is how it’s waged

The latest weaponry

With uniforms everywhere

The grinding sound of battle

Goes on and on

Bullets and bombs at their best

As we watch it all

 

People fill the roads out

The displaced fill trains

And border crossings

Cameras are rolling

So we watch it all

Halfway around the world

From all this

We watch it all

This is how it’s waged

Numbers of the dead and

The wounded tallied

As if we’re keeping score

While we watch it all

Half a world away.


         Moving On


We move from pandemic to endemic

just a slight change of words,

of spelling, a change in prefixes,

a change of attitude.

It’s like turning a page, like

closing one door and opening yet another,

like turning a corner and

finding ourselves on another street,

a street that looks oddly familiar

with the same traffic,

the same pedestrians and

the same litter and lines

the same distance to travel to get where we

would rather be.

We move from plague-like interference

with our lives to

a thing more flu-like.

People still get shots, still get sick, and

still will die,

but we’re hoping, expecting a lot fewer

as the endemic kicks in

and the pandemic checks out.




                Taxes


How much we make

Then where we live

And what we consume

They all play their part

Become taxable

Someone, someplace

Keeps track

Tabulates, measures me

Next to the others

Assumes I’ll pay

And I do

Never think much about

It/them

What do they say about

Taxes, death and taxes

Will be with us

So we will pay

So we will die

They’re the cost of living

What we pay for this vague

          Privilege. 

J. K. Durick is a retired writing teacher and online writing tutor. His recent poems have appeared in Third Wednesday, Black Coffee Review, Kitchen Sink, Synchronized Chaos, Madswirl, Journal of Expressive Writing, Lightwood, and Highland Park Poetry.