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Sunday, November 15, 2015

to the world and back

Isn't it possible: you were created for such a time as this?

We say this every generation; because
every generation needs someone, or thousands,
or all of us, to say:

enough!

War is an old story, after all, oft' retold.
Voices rally and change begs for completion.
Hope stirs quietly on our edges.

On edge, held breath, our voices leave our throats
and sound
like someone else's pain;
storied tragedies now our realities and we fight
to heal our world

again.

And yet, in our midst, there are those
who would split themselves in two
if only it means the world and others in it
might break apart, too.

We are inherently evil, it seems;
because we'd kill the killer, if only to make him stop.
We'd end the Torturer's reign,
by whatever means would have her drop
six feet under
or onto another planet
made of eternal fire
wherein the innocent are never subject to torture.

But the only planet we have access to is the one we're on.
Yet we break her,
fill her rivers with blood,
build our lives at her expense and without thought.

How great is our pain?
Not greater than those
who step t'ward bodies
with memories that ache
for the times they knew
before we knew of their deaths;
the sound of a suicide bomb,
the feel of a shot to the chest;
before we knew how to count bodies.

We bury the dead and leave heart pieces with them,
pray them off to eternal rest
beg mercy from the heavens
hold funeral processions
and hope those, too, don't end us.

Lord, Have Mercy on us all.

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