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Readers ask me how I stand.
I don't. I kneel. I sense
the barbs of splintered bone,
cannot brew some caveat
from rubble in the harbor's hand.
How can arms press paper cutters
to a throat, hurl full breasts
of innocence at tons of steel,
walk away to 'paradise' in tiny quotes
they think will cradle all their wrongs.

Dance like monarch butterflies
around the ruins,
celebrate their sweating palms,
press the pleats of certainty
in overalls of violence.
How can fingers push
the buttons of a battle
swallowing their very lives?
Bend religion 'til it snaps.
Scribble points in wasted blood.
See their bodies and their corpses
matchsticks in a holy war.

I'm hunting for a scripture's base.
Looking for a snake to shoot.
Picking terror's gruesome whale
for clues to hoards of gods asleep.
Their breaths askance,
their eyes clamped shut.
Walnuts hammers cannot crack.
Fathom's flashlight rolls its tube
behind the heaving, angry chaise.
All the dead are vapor trails
behind our stony fighter jets.
Lyrics aren't a cool towel
on necks of missing skeletons.