Holy Week 2017 – A Poem by Roger Hare with Two Drawings by M.S. Evans

Holy Week 2017

(‘The United States dropped the ‘Massive Ordnance Air Blast’ bomb (“mother of all
bombs”) — the most powerful conventional bomb in the American arsenal —
on an Islamic State cave complex in Afghanistan.’ 
Adapted from New York Times April 13 2017)

  Night and day
words fell on me……
From one of them
I learned my name
Evan Boland

I

They dropped a bomb

We       dropped a
We dropped

A very big bomb

on people
                 who do terrible evil

terrible     /       people      /      evil

An evil bomb

An evil bomb
on evil doers

A terrible evil bomb

People      /       People       /      People



II


Something else;             they
called it
‘Mother’.                       I

know, I know
that ‘Mother-of-all’
is just
           a turn of phrase
           a turn of magnitude

but

to
      drop
             a
               bomb
and
    call
         it
           Mother

Mummy
Mum
Ma

says            what
I don’t want said
                     what
I don’t want
I don’t

I want            to say
something different

want her to learn
                       another name
her to speak
                       not be dropped
not dropped
                       speak a name
and call it


III


Mother
named,        with a
back-story      /      back-blast       /       big-story
a

a story
           she can learn
to speak


IV


Mother picks up      /       pieces       /       picks our
broken       /      picks up
evil       /      picks up
terrible       /       picks up
we       /       they       /       me

I say what I want to say

Mother picks up people      /       and
breaks

---

Roger has spent his working life largely in the worlds of books (as a retail bookseller) and the care-sector (supporting those who look-after family with illness/long-term conditions). During a mid-life re-assessment, he rediscovered a love of poetry and since then has enjoyed developing his ability to broker his observations of the world into words. His poetry has been displayed in art galleries, a poetry garden by the Rhine and in various online and print magazines – ‘Elbow Room’, ‘Liminal Residency’, ‘Re-Side’, ‘SpillWords’, ‘Anthropocene’, ‘Lyrical Aye’ and ‘Dream Catcher’. He can be found on Twitter at @RogerHare6

M.S. Evans is a writer and visual artist. Originally from Seattle, she currently lives in her family’s old town of Butte, Montana. Her work has been published in journals including Re-Side,  Black Bough Poetry, Anti-Heroin Chic, and previously in “Geographies” and “Dispatches from a Pandemic”, two ongoing series from Ice Floe Press.  Twitter: @SeaNettleInk  Instagram: @permacrust