Death Rainbows

image borrowed from bing

Death Rainbows

“Within the soul lies a rainbow

of many colors.”--Anonymous

The magnificent mural appeared

in my frenzied midnight dream, 

a hundred feet tall & a block long,

on the once bare wall of a 

Middle Eastern prison, whirls of 

barbed wire a tiara across the top,

depicting the New Millennium Crusades,

the prophetic 100 Years War, Banksy-like

figures in military gear, carrying AK-47’s

with banana clips, shotguns with over/under

barrels, bandoliers of brass shells

criss-crossing combatant’s chests,

thousands of gunmetal gray smoking

barrels carried by troops, freedom fighters,

jahidists, revolutionaries, surrounded with

clumps of Muslims wearing Islamic head scarves

held on with blood red head rings, mouths covered,

angry eyes flashing, white robes stained with

plasma-red puddles,

men in marlin teal turbans & taxi-yellow thobes;

women & girls running, falling, being trampled

in dolphin blue berkas, dark plum kaftans, &

raven gold hijab scarves,

squadrons of eagle & tin can gray jet fighters

spraying midas gold & mandarin orange tracer

shots into crowds, ensigns, children, pets,

tearing ragged holes in several flags that

covered, wriggled around, belted, bordered

the chaos, great neon swathes;

America’s red, white, & blue stars & bars

cropping up the most, leaping up between

Israel’s cobalt blue stripes streaming above

& below the Star of David, and Palestine’s

china-red wedge intersecting with the three

horizontal stripes of cosmic black, judda-white

and rainforest green, adjacent the terrible

twosome--Iran with its triple stripes of green,

white, & redfish, and in the pristine white center

twin scimitars to each side of a column with a

red condor on top--Iraq sporting its three stripes

of red, white, & green, with jade green Farsi symbols

in the central whiteness,

Lebanon’s flag, double-striped, with cardinal red

upper/lower bands & the tree of life in its ivory center,

rainforest green leaves & oxen-brown trunk/branches,

perforated with tracer rounds, alongside the angry

ensign of Afghanistan--a trinity of vertical stripes,

gulfstream blue, Mars red, & shark teal green, with

its thick ornate crescent moon under a proud mosque

in its center,

and oddly, toward the right side of the mural, thrusting

malevolently out of a midas-gold sun, waved the

flag of North Korea, made up of ironic mocking

avalanche blue borders top & bottom, & thin white

lines framing the bloodshot red center, with its

flaming red star in a virginal white circle that seemed

to blink with some kind of radioactive energy;

beeswax yellow explosions rimmed with Texas orange

edges dotting the wall like deathly popcorn, like

blossoming lethal mushrooms, and yet miraculously

rising out of the blood-soaked chaotic center of this

street art masterwork was the huge figure of Christ,

on a mountain top, above the strive, loving arms

spread wide like the behemoth statue of

the Redeemer in Rio, cheeks streaked with 

a stream of blood tears, stigmatic wounds weeping;

awakening like a drowning man struggling up

from fierce deep fathoms of colorful grief, & as

I gulped bubbles of violet steaming oxygen, 

I immediately heard the soft beating of hope, 

of dove’s wings fluttering outside in the darkness;

beating back the bastions of dun despair, I rushed

to the sound, raising the window and inviting it in,

and standing there bathed in white light, still

I could distinctly hear the distant flap of many more

wings, & I couldn’t be sure if it were a flock of doves,

angels, or hawks. 

Glenn Buttkus

Posted over on dVerse Poets Poetics

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