Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man

balls on a cold hard anvil
instead of in a soft feminine hand
and that's a tremendous difference
especially for an atheist
who is already six years
into reconstructive heart surgery,
so i kept reading
with growing interest
and a head for details
of the give-and-take of a battle
which was embarrassingly brutal
except for a moment of kindness
when a nurse went looking for water.
Hiroshima was months away from
the arrival of Little Boy
and his uranium 235 slug of booze
which would be dropped
from a B-29 piloted by the son
of Enola Gay,
and the timing would be text-book
perfect,
followed by an abrupt aircraft turn
and a swirling mushroom cloud:
the cloud proved to be completely inedible.
ground zero was plotted to be near a major hospital
which immediately ceased to exist,
the patients inside never to know
how beautiful their personal pictures could become.
Fat Man,
meanwhile,
stayed in a secure cabin on Tinian island,
reading whatever he wanted
stuffing his mouth with plutonium 239
instead of LSD:
he said he didn't want to experience
Foxy Lady or have any recurring bad dreams.
a major exhibit of his works
would be on display
in Nagasaki, Japan, a short
3 days after
Enola G
put on her show for all the local dealers
and other gallery artists.
i paid less than twenty bucks for the book
and spent most of my free time between readings
holding a tambourine behind my head,
imagining a halo.