What the Bombs Won’t Do

It prefers flesh to steel,
although the artist has done her magic
first with etching on stone,
then papyrus, and finally the page.
Knowledge is action is change
in the minds of both peasants and kings.
It is the moonbeam, making the cosmos
bright—not so large a thing.
It is the scream when the hush no longer soothes
but stifles.

In the village there is a traditional white picket fence.
Those who are wrong paint their side, 
while those who are right do the same.
Depending on the angle,
it is impossible to determine which are which.

In Shirley Jackson’s fabled town,
we watch each other die
and carry out the inevitable
death we are all fearing
as if the gods could ever be
satiated with the flesh
of creatures so obviously flawed.
Oh, but humans love righteousness and blood.

Those with little faith in the invisible
dream only of planting trees
in bombed out craters,
and hang tiny bloodied, feathered bodies
from those trees while whistling songs of victory…
Close the box or fill it
with words and knowledge, 
for there is more to fear 
than a man holding a gun
but, for instance, the little boy remaining
after his father’s life is done,
who discovers he has his daddy’s hands
clenching the same burning blood…
 
Oh, how humans love their sacrificial ones. 

© Coleen T. Houlihan
First published in Spare Change News.