Free Entry 2, Week 8

I pricked myself
while sewing this morning.
It’s been a long time
since I’ve seen my own blood.
I was birthed in a pool of it.
I started wailing the blues
when the doctor whacked my bottom
on the day I was born. That was when I realized
that we need boys
so that they can grow up
and become shadows.
History has not demanded
their premature demise.
That they die in war is a matter
of necessity. Which men die,
is a matter of circumstance.
The rocky roads they travel
in war withstand their chariots
of fire, but man alone cannot.
This is when he takes God off the shelf:
when easy turns rough and hard,
like He’s a pot-bellied Buddah.
They rub the pregnant swell of His stomach
and pray until the trouble dissipates.
He then returns to the shelf,
and they return to the shadows.