rick mobbs' image prompt (4)

This is a painting by Rick Mobbs. Way back in 2008, Rick offered on his blog a weekly image prompt for us wannabe writers to ponder over it. He calls it The Storybook Collaborative. Those images are paintings that he has done, and out of the project are some interesting and excellent poems.

Back to the painting below. What does it tells you? A war machine! Look at all those guns firing, that clenched fist! Of course it could be about the military industrial complex, but war is easier to write.




painting by Rick Mobbs




bleed



and since the first
smash of a neolithic
axe
blood still runs red
and bones pile on
      bones
on forgotten
battlegrounds
rust bleeds
on
spear tips in museums
this arrowhead
could have pierced
a skull
at Hastings

and
what have been
learned
from the
blood letting?
   nothing
   nothing
but
the mounting
body count
and more
ingenious ways
of maiming and
   terrorizing

and so
metal tanks
    entangled
in barbed wire
at Flanders
    armoured choppers
       spitting metal
    rain from
miniguns
whirling blades
    over roof tops
vapour trail
of a
    stratofortress

ICBMs
riding
on a
tail
of

f
 i
  r
   e




written 11/11/2008
revised 01/06/2009
*******************

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"My brother's dreams once here did soar
Until he died at the hand of needless war."

― Uriah Heep, The Park.



If you want to read my other poems that were inspired by Mr. Mobbs's paintings, click on the links below :

image prompt (1) : on Icarus' wings
image prompt (2) : the lights of my heart
image prompt (3) : i see a raven in the sky

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© cheong lee san ( dsnake1 ) 2015