Hiroshima

I am sitting in an area in Hiroshima
that was obliterated from the planet
along with all its human occupants
by the atomic furies.

Big Boy it was called
revered and admired by its creators
exalted by crazed politicians
who understood the power
coming from its possession and use.

In but a few earthly seconds,
it transformed a busy city
into a caldron of death,
a landscape of dying
where the last gasps of
hundreds of thousands souls
were catapulted skyward.

Survivors including
thousands of school children, mothers and the elderly
became armies of walking dead
skin hanging from their bodies
like grotesque ornaments,
made prisoners by a pain so sever
as to render them senseless.

Overhead, technicians of the doomed
took photographs,
the mission was proclaimed an
overwhelming success.

Three short days went by
barely enough time for the reality
of mass murder to be understood
before Nagasaki was likewise destroyed.

Victory over evil was proclaimed,
America was apoplectic with joy,
such is the handiwork of empire.