Blast Music

A bomb. In cartoons, a black carbon orb.

A king's orb and scepter. A globe, world in miniature.

Clipped consonants clustered together,

plosive explosive. The Manhattan project.

Manhattan bombs are different from German bombs.

The Germans don't drink Manhattans, only stout lagers.

Heavy water is a rich man's drink,

the rest of us drink wine, gin or lager.

Loggers carpet-bomb the Amazon, speak fire,

memorize in braille Tunguska Event.

Sky-tusk, comet, ice bomb leveling petrified taiga.

Tiger-striped lapels. Russian bombs like American bombs.

Beautiful Arctic Blue-eyed Bomba. Horns singing.

Blonde bombshells on all the world's screens.

Gentlemen prefer bombs, teased into négligée.

Fluent and fluid. Vowels and plosives, our magic accents.

A broad American accent opens the most doors.

Broad and level like the Mississippi. Von Braun in Georgia.

V2 reinvented, V8 bombjuice healthy for us.

Fruitbombs one hundred seconds from blossoming

and cratering across the world's surface.

A bomb reimagined is an astronaut's rocket.

Astronauts in space, in a shuttle, on the moon.

Here! Strike a pose before the rising bomb-cloud,

while the shutter explodes in microtone.

Flashbomb-white teeth! Flash-whitened skin!

Bombs in Nevada (Pose!), bombs in the Pacific (Wet!)

A bathing suit as explosive as a bomb.

Bombs named Jerboa bombing Algeria. The 1960s.

Atlas-Centaur an unintended bomb. The 1980s.

The 1990s. The North Tower bombed with fecal

compost to protest against a new kind of compost.

Are humans compostable if we agree they're disposable?

Laos was a regrettable yet necessary conclusion.

Napalm was an unfortunate yet necessary invention.

Bombs to bomb infants are a reality of war.

Bombs dropped on rice-pond mirrors, screaming, silence.

Bombs are good money. Money speaks flaming agent

orange-white tongues. Money makes more money,

just like good workers. A workforce is necessary,

a populace is expendable. Japanese bombs

are unlike American bombs, more sickly.

Old man of Asia, sick tiger business market

self-bombed into oblivion. Chinese bombs

cheap and exploitable, no rival for America's,

no more than bombs on bicycles stuck in traffic jams.

Soviet Bombs now on standby, decommissioned

like the union that birthed and poised them against us.

Keep on stockpiling, O Brothers in arms!

Israeli bombs are like American bombs,

cut from the same cloth, the Midwest and Brooklyn.

Bombs and more bombs to protect our interests.

Bomb Beirut, bomb Syria. Bomb Tehran, bomb Baghdad.

It's alright when they're bombing themselves.

Let's keep it that way (click!) update hegemony.

Bombs are necessary to maintain the world's order.

The Palestinians are regrettable and necessary to eliminate.

The Moslems share an ancient hatred, they bomb

our airliners with plastic explosives. The North Tower

was bombed as protest against Israel. Israel is America,

cut from the same cloth. We must not fall.

Four planes are now bombs, unasked-for innovation.

See how evil they are for bombing us? That's cheating!

We must retaliate and bomb them tenfold.

But first, a pretext: Iran has bombs of mass destruction.

We must out-bomb them by bombing them

preemptively. No more mister nice guy.

America will have the world's most lethal army!

a Black woman promises to thunderous applause.

Bombs atop more bombs, cluster-bombs activated.

Two-thousand-pound bunker-buster bombs.

Bombs with steel blades that slice enemies to shreds.

Bombs and more bombs to keep the third world in line.

Listen now, do you hear our countless bombs whistling?

They are our first and our ultimate music.

We use them for good reason on your kith and your kind:

bombs don't discriminate. A regrettable necessity.

Author's Note

Published by Packingtown Review, Fall 2025 issue
my poem: http://www.packingtownreview.com/issues/24/eaton/blast.html
full issue: http://www.packingtownreview.com/issues/24/toc.html