Three fractured heads
in the crotch of a tree.
Dog-torn infant arms
strewn in a ditch.
On a dirt road,
dark wet sand.
New genocide and massacre
glimpsed on a screen.
You can’t look away
even as you say
“it can’t Happen here.”
It has Happened here.
Here is here because
it has happened here.
You didn’t do it. You had
nothing to do with it.
But you are here, in part,
because it has happened here.
This is why
you can’t look away
even as you say
“it can’t happen here.”
You want to know
what it looks like,
want to toughen up.
It can’t happen here
but who knows where
it will happen tomorrow
and if you are there
by chance or design
your today could be gone
when your tomorrow gets here.
You keep an eye
on the screen
and make plans and promises
about what you will
and will not do
if it happens
where you are:
how you will stay upright
if the road runs slippery
with blood, how you will avoid
tripping over flesh
on your walkway, how you will
get past it. How you
will thrive in the aftermath,
how you will raise a family
there.