Random Acts of Poetry

Wallpaper

The antique halls
of my mother's house
swarm with wagon wheels

and cannons,
drum and fife--
the sanitized, bloodless icons

of slaughter preserved
beneath a sugar glaze.
Ragged flags

flap endlessly
amid a crowd of cracked bells
and crucified eagles

clutching their fatal arrows.
Stars conscripted
to some deadly purpose

fall ceiling to floor,
interrupted only by windows,
from which the soft day

streams in,
plays with the curtain gauze
and whispers of peace.