A sharpener ate all my pencils,
threw up rubber eraser
all over the floor.
This was an accident, just an accident.
Where was my pen?
You would think they would soar,
planes across paper,
sketching horizon in the sky.
No, they plummet, bounded
by the lead which drops them.
The time was late afternoon,
I grabbed the last batch
of those Eagle pencils from the drawer.
If the lead always took off when I sharpened,
how was I supposed to fly?
I recall war,
building names were respectively erased
by Brigadier General Charles W. Sweeney
of the 393rd Bombardment Squad.
A brief summary of facts was unavailable at the site.
Cause of incident? No
pens.
Flight is improvisation.
The pen is a golden saxophone,
replacing smoky silence with laughter.
Eagle pencils are broken stubs,
with perfect strings—they spell out disaster.
In quiet Nagasaki,
the survivors heard terrible jazz.
They questioned, “How could a just god allow this?”
I answered, “God used a pen to write the world.
People used Eagles to nuke it.” | 
