• HIROSHIMA, a Poem by Alice B. Clagett

Image: “Wrecked Blue Car in the Desert Near Madrid, New Mexico,” by Alice B. Clagett, ca 2010, CC BY-SA 4.0, from “Awakening with Planet Earth,” https://awakeningwithplanetearth.com .. 

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Dear Ones,

Here is a poem about atom bomb explosions, whether out there in the real world, or just in our hearts …

This account is entirely fictional.

HIROSHIMA
A Poem by Alice B. Clagett
17 July 2016

This poem is entirely fictional.

There’s a man I’ve known
for over 30 years

His wife died recently
and he’s a great healer

so I went for a healing session

He ended quickly,
and shooed me away
because of the many
strands of darkness
wafting round
nearby

He loved me all these years
… of course, not like his wife …
but like the great yogi that I was
and because of the greatness of
his yearning
to know God

Push came to shove
and he surveyed the scene

Said, I want a woman with more up here!
and he found one

. . . .

四 Shi
is a Japanese word
oft avoided as
the sound shi
has two meanings …

し  four  . . . .  死  death

On those islands
people say yon instead
like the Hindu word yoni
woman part
not shi

. . . .

I heard of a couple:
She’s Caucasian, he’s Chinese-Japanese

He’s a Hiroshima survivor

It was morning.
Mr Sun was begging him
to open up his sleepy little eyes
but he wouldn’t

He was four years old
four miles from ground zero

His mom was napping too
although he didn’t know it
her clothing all awry in the hot, wet
August air

He pulled the covers up
over his head
Goodbye, Sun!

After the flash
his mother came to pick him up
touching his flailing heart
to her own

She lived four more days

For a time
that seemed endless
no one came to rescue him

After a while
he began to eat
little parts of her

Why? someone said
why did you do that?

Because, he said,
I was hungry

When he was found
covered with ash
pale with the sort of terror
few feel
they tried to wash him

The water
he says
felt like fire

Since then
every time he bathes
he remembers the bomb
and the loss of her
and how he had to eat her

He came to the States because
he supposed
no one would bomb him there

He married a woman
too good for him, he felt
and her family felt that too

No one likes mongrels,
he says,
in the place that he came from

This woman of his
is just about perfect
except down there, so

When his neighbor’s wife
goes for her afternoon swim
He places a camera
on the wall
that divides
their properties

And records her derrière

Then he takes it
off the wall, and goes inside
and blows the picture up
and tapes it on his wife right there

and they make love.

. . . . .

Here on Earth
men are settled
with the parts business

for lack of the jingle
to captcha

that awesome auto
sold downtown

. . . . .

Yet
we women are, altogether
otherly

We are those
who tempt their Souls
to show up here
in the first place, yes?

gizmo by gizmo
preassembled

all the necessary
parts included

and

we bear them
to their Souls as well

clutching their wailing hearts
to our own

in the rose evenings
of this stone city

. . . . .

In love, light and joy,
Alice B. Clagett
I Am of the Stars

NOTE: Here are images representing the Japanese characters in the poem, in case they cannot be read in your browser …

Written and published on 17 July 2016; revised on 21 February 2023

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Except where otherwise noted, this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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Hiroshima, Japanese-American relations, war, poetry, poems by Alice, sacred sexuality, divine feminine, divine masculine, cannibalism, 2u3d,