Four Poems by Virginia Bates

All That Will Be Left

Years after the smoldering debris recedes
Charred bones and fossilized shreds of flesh,
After all the victims with cancer depart,
Their moans and screams lingering about the poisoned air,
Echoes of lecherous, democratic death,
After all civilizations are gone, gone, gone,
Flowers, trees, and birds,
All music vanished into eternal silence,
Earth's tears vaporized to radiated mist,
All that will be left are blind and dying cockroaches.


Hands of a Friend

Your carefully manicured fingers
Are like poems in silken cases.
They are flowers in wintertime.
They bestow beauty to everyday chores.


All the Gods are Dead, Except Mars

All the gods are dead, except Mars.

He sits in his monstrous five sided complex
Across the river
With its two thousand toilets, ramps, shops,
Restaurants
And directs his mighty budget
With three thousand dollars for a screwdriver
And one thousand percent makeups.
Smiling confidently that whatever he desires
The government of we the people will give by
a substantial of democratic vote.
His spirit has reached every corner of the Earth
And now his greed demands extension to outerspace
To the War of The Stars - how poetic it sounds!
MORE MORE MORE he pounds on his polished desk,
Rings of trusty servants in business suits and uniforms.
Insanity reigns from ocean to ocean
And soon from planet to planet
Fulfilling the horror fantasies
Of science fiction writers.
MORE MORE MORE he screams, swilling his gluttonous
appetite for destruction, waste, radiation and death ...
And if I may correct you, Mr. T. S. Eliot,
With both bangs and whimpers .......
How this poet hopes to be wrong.
There is no comfort in such vision.


I Have a Love Affair with the World

I have a love affair with the world
Though occasionally I feel it's unrequited.
I desire one thing,
Say, democracy or justice or peace
But at times it doesn't even seem to know what I'm
talking about.
It's probably a case of inadequate communication,
A common problem of lovers.

There are times I feel older than earth.
Sometimes I feel like a babe in the woods.
Our union transports and we meet in many levels,
Loving and fighting through all the seasons.
Our cloud-like relationship is constantly changing.
Daily discoveries are the diamonds in the jewelbox of my life.
My romance with the world began the day I watched a bird
flying above the horizon,
In the dawn of my childhood,
And it will last until the sunset of my years.

{Poems by Virginia Bates}