Poetry: Ken Massicotte

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We Will Cry Such Tears 

He sat there cowled in the blanket. After a while he looked up. 
Are we still the good guys? he said. Yes. We’re still the good guys.
Cormac McCarthy, The Road

We will cry such tears as will break the hearts
of stone angels. It is not impossible that
I would help them seek revenge.
You saw them walking
with their plastic bags and worn out trainers,
thousands and thousands fleeing our wars,
sleeping under thin blankets,
rough or in cardboard camps,
nameless in smugglers’ boats
on the swollen sea,
the ghosts and screams
of the dead in every sleep;
but even the dead boy on the beach
didn’t changed your mind.

If God is watching he will help us
and when we stop to rest
and pray, I will say again that
people are frightened but few are evil;
we have seen blood and death
but have never had to kill;
we’ve travelled far and will continue.
And if they beat us?
But the good will always be there –
we must believe this –
as spring will come and new crops grow
I will work many jobs and study at night;
I will carry you, as I have,
to a new and safe land;
and you will learn to swim –
I promise you –
in a clean bright pool
with lifeguards
watching out for you.

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Our Solitude

We are not alone
in the loneliness we endure,
even wolves separated from the pack
howl in augmented anguish.
See the weary knowing in the bleary eyes,
the knowledge of indifference –
the long years on the rolling plain
preserved in the bones never found,
the buried bison fossilized in the tundra.
Storm after storm, the wanton flies,
the ceaseless want in the piercing cries.

Our burnt skin vainly covered, our soft flesh.
Is it because we can name the separation
it becomes more real?
The soft moan of prayer. Listen:
the echo in the caves and the magical hunts
saying look, look, so we can be seen.

We gather in tribes and the brazen hold forth
but many just stand back calibrating their hysteria.
Their fear like a limp leg and nowhere to run.

We pray for intimacy, coveting flesh –
the reprieve of lovers in their fugitive garden.
Or the next proclamation, we hunger to nail it down
as if belief can prevent the next biblical assault.

We offer our children
and long for the return of birdsong
and only a few can ever really endure
the futility of the bone flute –
the cave bear femur –
the failure of music,
even Stradivarius,
to sustain.

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BIO

Ken Massicotte lives in Hamilton, Ontario. He has published in several journals, including: Wilderness House Literary Review, Gray Sparrow, Poetry Quarterly, Ginosko, Crack the Spine, Matador, Sleet, and Grain.

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