Descended from Peacelords
Some lah-di-dah grandees
are descended from
famous warlords
and like to tell you
about their butch escutcheons
the power of the past
whereas I
to the best of my knowledge
come from a long line
of peacelords
people who led drudging lives
not armies
who wanted to win the football pools
not glorious victories
who may have had malice
in their hearts
but never learned to practise the arts
of chicanery and domination
of lands
and who are therefore
semi-absolved
by history
they didn’t make a bad system
much worse
didn’t hold the world ransom
to their demands
they loved in the ordinary way
in their ordinary eras
and when they failed
they didn’t plunge the neighbourhood
into darkness and terror
~
Refining the Concept
The classic imagery of Hell is drawn from the sackings of cities. Only in this one circumstance are all the worst terrors and outrages of earthly existence marshalled together: fire, slaughter, torture, rape, enslavement, dispossession. If Hell is real, reasoned the great thinkers of the past, it must be like that, but worse. So when urban warfare changes, Hell should change with it. More randomness, more instant obliteration, more powerful forces not aiding you, more waiting.
~
Erik Kennedy (he/him) is the author of the poetry collections Another Beautiful Day Indoors (2022) and There’s No Place Like the Internet in Springtime (2018), both with Te Herenga Waka University Press, and he has co-edited No Other Place to Stand, a book of climate change poetry from Aotearoa New Zealand and the Pacific (Auckland University Press, 2022). His poems, stories, and criticism have been published in places like FENCE, The Florida Review, Hobart, Poetry, Poetry Ireland Review, the TLS, and Western Humanities Review. Originally from New Jersey, he lives in Ōtautahi Christchurch in Aotearoa New Zealand.