After the Killing
After the killing is done
what we have left
is a palette of innocent blood
as if all art ended
and began that April day.
A digital colossus stands
in our multi-screen nightmare--
pistols parked at semaphore letter "N"
in salute to his own negation.
An elderly Jew who lost
her family in the Holocaust
said of the dead:
"And the young didn't have to go to Iraq.
Sometimes darkness comes
even on beautiful days.
A Jew sacrificed his life for his students.
We all bled together--
Vietnam, India, Peru, the Philippines ..."
She drew a crude map of the world
on a table napkin
with every continent touching.
"Wasn't this how we started?"
and with that formed a fist.