Writers On The Storm Poem by Richard Weissman

She rang me on the wire with tones shaky from twenty-nine year memories
of bullets, bombs and shelterless, refugeed danger,
told me the storm was reignin' terror in the Gulf today,
said the tube would tell me more.
Watched bombs fall and the sky light
as cannon-foddered newers shook, ranted, queried and were brave,
then turned the tube and back,
back to rewrites.
'Til the 'morrow, when,
happening to call Avon,
that song started playin' again -
only this time everybody's shama-ing muffled gas masked tones by the Wailin' Wall,
then turned the tube and back,
back to rewrites.
then,
in a day or two or a couple more (if ya had real scarlet blood) ,
everybody turned the tube and back,
back to rewrites.

-From "Voices of the Dark" (1991)