(I am breaking a rule I made up for my blog- no personal poetry. Instead I am going to start with one. What are rules for if not for breaking?)
******
Death arrived as
ballistic trauma
did he look
into the eyes of the navy seal
and grasp
the meaning of the lead leaving home
He laughed arrogance
Not all men knew
their mission was one
of suicide. When his turn came
to face the darts
did he hear the heartbreak of victims kin
Alas jingoism wears clothes
pulled from the same rack
across cultures
Ask the designers to contrast some fabric
even sparingly
with threads from genocides past and future
That is easy still, try hemming
the facelessness behind
man-made disasters
and carelessness in calamity's aftercare
the hardest
to collar is our righteousness in daily self-deceptions
Please, can we make
some dartboards
for elusive elements
which render most of us
Inconsequential
even as we float in our amniotic fluid-
Then the TV people
can be loud
pick-out details
demand pictures, invite experts
and analyze
the consequence on upcoming elections
*******
Written in May 2011.
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