david mclean

if heaven were a ditch
david mclean

if there were a heaven it would be a ditch
for all the dead children, dirty as a womb,
a temple to abortion and a warning
for all the mother's love we never expected,

love stinking like dead fish under the sun
that crawls to the moon, subservient
as any murderess. babies sacrificed
to a ravenous land and a mother's pride,

country and cunt both flying blind
the false flag of duty, decorum, and lies,
sweat as arsenic on her belching breath
and the traitorous cancer that waited too long.

for if heaven were more of a ditch than it is
the stars would blind their eyes, but they stare
there unseeing over us, they care for nothing
above us, and the ditch we die in is life,

just life and its obligations inside,
blind as a mother's cunt, her formless
leering eye, a devil full of her smothering
lies, her filthy incestuous pride