They walk down empty streets,
between demolished homes.
The clock in the square has no hands.
Rats at the end of the alleys,
eat their dead,
the grind of their teeth in the flesh
the only interruption
of the humid afternoon
silence of retreat, devastation.
No more drive-by -
not the carts full of plague
long gone to shallow graves
and cried over,
not the car bombings, no Jihad,
only crippled insurgents
left with limbless occupiers,
only gray lines of brutal aging
slow lifeless exit.
And in the undisturbed
brick and limestone,
everything quietly waiting for
the nocturnal, the gutters to run clear,
and shadows begin to crawl,
as innocence tries again
to sneak in, to root,
to find an infant footing.
Craig Kirchner thinks of poetry as hobo art. He loves storytelling and the aesthetics of the paper and pen. He has had two poems nominated for the Pushcart, and has a book of poetry, Roomful of Navels. After a writing hiatus, he was recently published in Decadent Review, New World Writing, Wild Violet, Ink in Thirds, Last Leaves, Literary Heist, Quail Bell, The Globe Review, Ariel Chart, Lit Shark, and has work forthcoming in Cape Magazine, Flora Fiction, Young Ravens, Chiron Review, and several dozen other journals.