Love Letter in Times of War

Love Letter in Times of War

Day 14, February 11^th year, WWXXIII

My beloved,

I am still alive, but I don’t know for how long.

How long can one live with a gas mask on?

The allied forces are still bombing the peninsula

Our soldiers are being killed by friendly fire

and tactical errors too numerous to cry about.

To cry about the blood on our hands

I need a ritual for the blood on my hands

And I need you for my heart to endure

For the strength to stay alive amid chaos and fear

My heart is filled with memories of you

and my mind holds the cape of good hope for peace.

To hold any other thought would be folly.

They tell me to pray for our troops.

But what kind of prayer?

To pray for our troops to bomb and raid a lot of villages

from another nation with another religion?

Pray for our troops to kill to win to come back alive?

Alive and well in Kuwait, Syria, and Saudi Arabia

Alive and well in America and Russia, and Panama

Alive and well in East LA and Southeast Asia

So few of these places exist anymore

Alive and well in Dante’s Inferno.

Where are you? Can you see like I do 

the ocean on fire?

Yellow flames lick the sky black with smoke

They say it is burning everywhere

From the Pacific to the Atlantic, Oceans of fire.

We must be looking like a star from afar

Only the evanescent morning dew remains

On the bare ground

To quell our ever growing thirst.

I can barely remember Spring

Except for the mimosa tree

Paix sur la terre comme au ciel

Paix dans le cœur de ces hommes mortels

Peace on earth as it is in heaven

Peace in the hearts of these mortal men

I speak to you every night in my dreams 

I know I am only dreaming

But when I am awake

It all l seems like a nightmarish illusion

And I want to run away

but there is nowhere to go

I want to see the Mimosa tree

In the circle of your arms and stay there

For a hundred years

under its green and yellow splendor

It has become unsafe to look like a woman

I have shaved my head of all those brutal beasts

And I wear a suit like men do in the city.

Je me suis rasée la tête de toutes ces bêtes brutales

Et je porte un costume comme les hommes de la ville

La rage plus meurtrière qu’animal

Nous change tous en cannibales

A rage more murderous than animal

Turns us into cannibals

All kindness has been forgotten 

So I hide it behind my heart

Until the time comes

Until you come back to me

Il n’y a plus de place pour la douceur

Alors il faut rougir de l’avenir sans espoir

C’est une route sans retour

Mourir sans tout détruire devient

le seul destin qu’on recherche en vint

Et que l’on voudrait bien

There is no room for tenderness,

The shame of what we have created

A future without hope and no way back

To die without destroying everything

Becomes the only destiny

to seek in vain and to desire well

Truth is being held tightly on a rein

Behind televised lies

Newsworthy fabrications of entertaining facts

I have no idea what is going on

Except for what I see with my eyes

And feel in my body

If they could I believe they would shred our souls in a paper mill

Send them through a fax machine to nowhere

Or better yet into the cloud

Safely put away on a google drive

I have told them I am not a patriot

I cannot be a patriot of hate and rape

and death and bloody victory

And narcissistic power

I told them their television should be called Televice

They didn’t like that

And I am a patriot of peace

I am a patriot of stars and stripes

and sickles and crescent moons

I am a patriot of eagles and doves

of red, white, blue, yellow

green, purple, and black 

and all the goddam colors of the rainbow

They didn’t like that

I do not want to lose my mind to war

So, I write to you instead, to speak 

Of what is constant, what is eternal

What makes miracles and thinks nothing of it

What makes heaven on earth

Like a new source sprouting

between mountain and valley.

C’est l’amour qui désarme la peur 

Et chasse les juges carnivores

De nos propres pensées malades

It is love that disarms fear and chases away

The carnivorous judges

Of our own miserable minds

C’est l’amour qui guérit l’enfant blessée

It is love that heals the wounded child

Here I am standing where we stood before

Writing with little rocks, messages on the ground

that you may never see.

Do you remember the mimosa tree?

Do you remember the trail we followed

and the mimosa tree in bloom in January?

Do you remember the picnic, and the bees above us?

Do you remember the laughter

when we realized we had forgotten the sandwiches

and ate only cookies and chocolate?

Do you remember the kisses in the sunshine?

Do you remember the lengthening shadows in the afternoon

and how we couldn't leave and vowed to return every year?

O my beloved, they say that what is in the way is the way

But this is the way to hell 

When the world has died and been reborn

Meet me here under the mimosa tree

And let’s kiss like it’s the first time

Even if it’s the last time.

Your beloved, Mary of Evenset

14^th day of January in the 11^th year, WWXXIII

PS Je renie et je défie tous les missiles.

Dans ma pensée ils deviennent des étoiles filantes

Et toutes les étoiles filantes sont des baisers d’un dieu meilleur et de moi.

I deny and I defy all the missiles and blow them out of my mind,

And turn them into shooting stars. 

And all the shooting stars are kisses from a better god and from me too.