Liberation

Liberation

The worst of it hit the cul-de-sac,
tanks pounding flowerbeds and garden sheds.
A blossoming fruit tree bowed
to an armoured car, as a hundred boots
butchered a lawn's clean edge.

A man doused the fire on another's coat
with fuming water from an ornamental pond.
The golden fish were dead by then.
Machine guns trimmed the hedges—
new topiary for madmen.

                    But all sides look the same,
when they batter down a door,
crashing cupboards,
grabbing bottles, clutching cans,
writing postscripts with pistols
in the letters on a hallway table.
Apart from one who stopped to stare
at a framed picture on a countertop,
for almost seven seconds,
before he got his booty out of there.