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The book The House of the World has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and is now available on Amazon.

Beggar’s Choice

In what life should disasters come?
Not my life! My children’s, my children’s children?
Do I want the earthquake
in the 10th life? Or the fifteenth?
The volcano that will plunge someone else
into fire?
The asteroid that will break earth’s heart?
The cruel plague that will sweep
whole families away?
On whom should the bell toll?

If it were mine to say,
not yet, over there,
in that war where there’s enough harm
to justify more.
I don’t have the strength to do that.
Should Providence say,
it’s your call Ted!
Save your own. Save yourself.
Save the ones you fancy,
or we’ll do it.
We’ll choose catastrophe,
and you can go hide inside your fragile skin,
inside what empathy and compassion you have.

And all I can do is tell fate,
I accept the right to choose.
I will save my own.
From the first hour to the last
I will keep them from harm.
But I would ask another favor,
knowing you are giving me no choice.
As long as time needs to die,
let me share the fate of all those
I could not save,
and mix my ashes with theirs.

Published inIndex of all Poems