Robert Ronnow
                                                                                                                 The Imaginary i



                           Make War, With Love


It’s 2022, we’re in the final battle for the soul of the world.
There is no Indo-European root for soul,
the Greek and Germanic roots mean quick-moving, fleeting, mercurial.
I’d add evanescent, impermanent, ephemeral
disappearing, diminishing, dwindling
tenuous, brief, short-lived.
Whatever forever—that’s where we’ll be after WWIII.

World, home, think, breathe: man,
woman the vital force in man, the Anthropocene, men together
violence, virtue, virility. Also, werewolf.
War: to confuse, mix up, make worse.
The old are paying close attention but my sons ignore the thunder,
plate tectonics, gamma ray bursters and mortars on the Eurasian front.
Peace out—the end, limit, boundary, never to have been. So long, sayonara, shalom, salaam.
      Take into eternity my hail and farewell.


Copyright 2022 by Robert Ronnow. Acknowledgements.