Poetry

Alex Smailes

By

Don Krieger

All the same

“… a blue-eyed Puerto Rican, with people from Fajardo, …”

Alabanza: in praise of local 100 – Martin Espada, 2003

Dr. No was filmed

at the Hotel Conquistador in Fajardo.

A generation later, after a 2-year shutdown,

my crew replaced a transformer, turned the power on,

repaired the septic system and the toilets.

After we left, our master ran courses there

to indoctrinate his followers.

Had I been killed on 9/11,

would you cry alabanza,

though my eyes are not blue?

Are the dead truly all the same?

And what of the other 3000,

the 100,000 who followed in Iraq,

the million and counting in Syria, the Congo?

An animation appeared online today showing the locations

of all the nuclear tests ever conducted.

There was no mark on Japan.

It frightens me that our dead are different from yours.

Don Krieger

I have built satellites, worked in the operating room, been in a cult, …

I earn my living as part of a group which is trying to understand and treat head injury.

In my poetry and short blog pieces, I want to express ideas with unambiguous clarity and intensity.

I willingly sacrifice rhyme and meter, art, cleverness, elegance, and beauty for these.