A selection of art and accompanying passages taken from The Tug of War. Artwork created by Larry Winters and Michael Gold.
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AFTER THE BUFFALO
I went to war and saw what I wasn’t supposed to—
not just what we did to their people
but what we’d already done to our own.
The bones of buffalo still litter the plains,
like a prophecy we refused to read.
What they did to the herds they did to the children—
sent us off, believing more would come:
more sons, more guns, more grace.
The air was sweet once; the water ran clear.
I was raised to forget that.
Now I remember, and the remembering is the wound.
THE SOUL’S FRONT ROW
We begin as passengers,
nested in another’s dream—
two bodies carrying blueprints
for who they hope we’ll become.
Birth cracks the shell,
and for a while we glow,
a small flame
held in the family’s cupped hands.
Then the chisels arrive.
Language is the first blow—
should and shouldn’t
ringing like hammers on stone
until the mirror returns
someone else’s face.
War does not chisel.
War detonates.
It burns the scaffolding,
scatters the pieces,
and leaves the soul walking
through ruins
that still whisper names.
They called it a disorder, but the soul refuses acronyms.
It remembers everything—
each life taken,
each silence kept,
each knot of survival
tied into the marrow.
Coming home meant sifting rubble,
turning over shards,
asking what to bury,
what to mend,
and what still knew
how to sing.
All along,
the soul was waiting
in the front row,
bow in hand,
ready to draw music
from the wound
I had mistaken
for silence.
GHOST DANCE
Tunnels open. Red earth bleeds. Unspoken grief remains.
Shadows. Ghosts rise. Lights. Ghosts ooze.
Soil infected. War not gone.
Circle. Hands joined. Tears fall.
Forgive us.
We stumble.
We falter.
Still, we dance.
Forgive us.
Others laugh.
Others pay.
Others fire the dead men’s guns.
Bang. Bang.
Dollar a shot.
Echoes mock.
Specters recoil.
We chant.
They found peace.
We remain smoked.
Forgive us.
AWA
My first marvel was not a mountain, not a painting or cathedral,
but the jungle—thick with rot, heavy with rain,
rifle clenched in my hand like an anchor against the dark.
I asked the air, how much of me will leave whole?
The sky hung in tatters above, too far away to matter.
Fear pressed its blade to my throat.
Wonder laid its hand on my shoulder.
Fear binds, narrowing breath to a single thread.
Wonder breaks the seal, splitting the vessel, letting light leak in,
questions pouring out like water that will never return to its jar.
Philosophers said it begins wisdom. I say it begins fracture.
Once cracked, the self cannot be resealed.
I remember Awa—the sound of the world stealing breath,
a gasp older than language, a horizon too wide for eyes.
Early humans must have known it well,
their bodies trembling beneath storms,
hearts undone before the flood.
Now we dress wonder in softer clothes,
call it curiosity, surprise—but it has teeth.
It is not kind. It strips you bare,
rips holes in the walls of certainty,
and leaves you staring at the edge of yourself.
What will happen next?
The words shimmer like heat, a doorway with no frame,
a map with no borders.
Not a question, but a summons—to step forward,
naked, into what cannot be known.
EXPENDABLE
Youth’s blood fills the veins of every war.
Politicians rage at the enemy, but, like heat
lightning, never pull the triggers themselves.
Our youth fly the planes, load the guns, and dig the graves.
Front-line veterans ask historians,
Never forget the Holocaust we’ve made
or the ones we’ve survived,
but our cultural memory lasts no longer
than the pulpwood paper our histories are printed on.
The poverty of morality in our country has more to do with the
inhumane weapons we make for our youth to kill third-world enemies.
Every new war surrounds our hearts with more armament,
making us morally unreachable.
The enemies abroad become safer than our leadership,
who risk the lives of our youth.
No matter how hard our medics try to heal the aftereffects on our youth,
they never find the moral ground where the wounds were made.
Veterans carry alone the guilt for the killing
while most civilians can avoid the battlefield truths,
unless a loved one is killed or maimed, while we continue making wars,
tattooing soldiers’ souls with the reality that youth is expendable.