Make wooden models of machines
dreamt by the memory of the dead
the kinetic organisms
animate in perpetual motion

The young compatriot and the War Machine
were born of the past century’s terror
torn from this world as if he could stand on the tilt-a-whirl
tome in hand
and declare that nothing moves besides him

The young compatriot and the War Machine
were scorned by the angelic order
flew planes over ruins in the gambit
drew tears from the papaver with the lancet
shot holes into posters with the shooting iron
a map of the world in 1871
“Goodbye, Guido.”
a map of the world in 1914
“Goodbye, Hans.”
The disparate remains of cities in Serbia
The new and old ruins in Palestine
An ever-changing regime created
out of tin soldiers
stilted performers
marching off of a cliff
so as to test
the human potential for flight

They say that war is just a form of mass suicide.

The Young Compatriot and the War Machine
played Russian roulette on a beach in Naples
where the tide was announced by the sound of the horn
and a white flag was raised to the top of a pole
“Pro Deo et Patria!”
the officer proclaims
with the revolver pointed at his temple
The cylinder clicks off of an empty chamber
“For altars and hearths.”
The soldier replies, feeling the cold grasp of steel squeeze off the last remnants of his sanity
The second click is followed by a lengthy silence
“Just one round.”
the officer states, lifting the gun into the air and firing the shot.

The Young Compatriot and the War Machine
came face to face with the eternal
body of God
being torn asunder in the fray
the exquisite noise
a free jazz collective
with all of their instruments prepared
and out of tune

The Young Compatriot and the War Machine
never felt so free
as when they took the beach
and drove
the chthonic Order
from its arrogated post
A broken chorus
of disparate companies
resounding in the din
of the Fascist crescendo
The oft thought of
call of divine providence
there as the hymn that hung in the silence

The Young Compatriot and the War Machine
were severed by the ecstatic
gaze of love
near a church in Berlin
The Young Compatriot
stripped of his seraphic
armor, caught
the doe-eyed glance of a young woman selling flowers
beneath a statue of the Archangel Michael
driving his lance
through the heart
of the great accursed rebel
The War Machine cast
in garish gold, sanctified somehow
by the way that the light had fallen upon the ruins of the city
in the ever-ephemeral hour of twilight

The Young Compatriot
would compose a requiem
upon a mandolin that he pillaged
from the mansion of a titled
Fascist whom he summarily executed in a garden
"Heil, mein Führer!"
He exclaimed, having, like the slogan, been dropped to his knees
“The heart knows its own bitterness, and no stranger shares its joy.”
The Young Compatriot said strangely
as if the passage had been quoted by another
staying with his prayer for a while
before the sound of his pistol broke through the silence
and left one man dead by the tree he had planted
before the war before the war
when his money was spent
upon the edification of music

The Young Compatriot
played his instrument
for hours end
without any formal training
a rhythmic cacophony
of whirling tones
and the resonance drawn from mahogany
He would play until the strings broke
and his threnody collapsed
jangled and out of tune

The Young Compatriot and the War Machine
couldn’t live so well
together after the flaring
pillars of light
reigned down upon Dresden
and the power of God
was unleashed over
Hiroshima and Nagasaki

The Young Compatriot
recorded his memories well
as song
The War Machine
fell prey to the anomic
regimen and the clandestine call
of the epochal

Together they made the world
Apart, they now stand
as enemies
one with a standard-issue rifle
the other
in a garden
by the ruins of a mansion
with a song that has long since
been driven out of time
and out of tune