nuclear bombs

HIBAKUSHA




When the monstrous Pikadon

Devoured our city,

A nova-bright flash boom

Laced with blue lightning

Consumed our minds

As much as the blast

Seared flesh and fiber

Into flame or lava.

Buddha could not boil over

The rubble of the plain

In righteous rage

With more fire than Pikadon.

His neon main billowed,

Mushroomed over the kindled city

Where like automatons we

Rambled among the black

Tumescent flesh fingered

By blue phosphorescent flames.



Why us? And why was I spared?

I am victor and aggressor both.

My steps are plagued

By the demon’s larvae:

Low blood counts, cataracts,

The keloid stigmata.

At the shrine I pray

For the end of Pikadon

And his litter kin H and N,

Whose longer claws

And hotter breath

Wreak a deeper death in life.



9/1981

This poem was a long time brewing.  When I was fourteen, I read John Hersey's documentary Hiroshima.  Forever after, I was appalled by what atomic weapons could do.  Finally, in Tampa, the poem came forth. "Hibakusha" was first published in Monsters in a Half-Way House, 1981.

Hibakusha means “survivor of the atomic bomb explosion”; the persona is a survivor, who demonstrates awe, suffering, and anxiety. Pikadon is the onomatopoeic name given by the survivors to the atomic explosions: literally “flash-boom.” In the poem it is the name of the monster, the bomb.



After reading Hersey’s book or seeing any documentary about the atomic attacks, one can understand why all those monster movies preceded by atomic explosions came out of Japan in the immediate post-war years: Godzilla, Rodan, and others.

 
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