War Painter

And is that why Charlie

Armadillo in hand

in his blue sleeper

With the white plastic feet that went

Chh chh chh chh

Across the kitchen linoleum

Called them

“Night mirrors”?

Don’t our dreams

always unearth our dead?

What is more violent

Than the unmasking?

Our first naked faces

are different this time.

Meeting our battle-trained eyes

to say it

Horrified and breathless and brimming

with what we’ve just

set

free