Agent Orange
Written By: Milena Milovanovic
It's hard to love for a woman like me, every blessing is evil.
My words I hold like sacred scripts in catacombs and cathedrals
A love so powerful it can break through walls, shatter walls so feeble
But, a love like that can not exist without a price, a poison, call it lethal.
It projects back harder than the aimed bullets launched
Sends a shockwave through my ribcage,
Leaves an echo through its chamber reverberating through vitals, their crystal
stalactites stabbing further into its walls.
I sit there, guns a blazin’, velvet smoke like cinnamon
Battered, bruised, all violet, blue
I'll watch him leave again.
Do you know I called him Agent Orange, The kind of man you would be scared to know.
He’d look into my eyes so callously, delivering the final blow
I stare down at the barrel, inside a burning sun, an image of Belladonna, her petals dried
and strung.
I’d give it all to you, monsoon of bullet rain, shooting stars, constellations watch them
plummet to the earth again.
The wind will ride out, perhaps it'll change its course, Collapsed my torso and as for
you,
You'll show me no remorse.
But you won't be prepared, you won't feel shame for your advances and attacks, and if
you do you might spare me a salty tear from those eyes to bring me back.
I could get lost in them, a mirage showing me what looks like mercy,
I might forget the rivers I've cried for you,
Oh, and I've cried for you.
Sister morphine, your cadaver lying still in no-man’s land,
Another rib broken another petal strung,
I’ve cried for you,
I’ve killed for you,
Shellshocked at your command, wind knocked out, to you I'm vowed
Agent Orange, you're my man.
Notes from the poet:
Agent Orange is one of the many poison motifs I use. I often write him as a figure tied to
his female counterpart, Belladonna. Both figures represent different types of poison:
Agent Orange (mustard gas), used in chemical warfare, and Belladonna (deadly
nightshade), which was commonly used by women in the Victorian era for beauty. In
this poem specifically, I used war motifs, particularly the concept of shellshock to
express the destructive nature of this figure.
