*POEM: Violent Leaders and Me

Jackhammers are pounding at some nations' foundations

The dust of morals being trampled under foot

With workers who scramble from fear of retribution

Beams to be placed with a new plumb-line-whip.

But there is a pickaxe raised also in my own house

A man's boots of hubris tread through my wife's garden.

He saws with rusted words to clear space for his new walls.

Building a fortress for myself in place of our warm marriage home.

The hammers of violence that I blame for destruction of our world

Even now drive the wedges into my own promises.

Though I blame men formed by years of sooty machine motivation

Will I even re-form my axes into shovels to irrigate our own garden?