Three Dead Fingers

The dead don't care

Whether death came from a firing squad

Or from the air.

 

The dying don't care

Whether their enemies are religious

Or mindlessly shooting targets from a drone

 

The dead don't care

Whether the bombs that killed them:

Are stamped "made in the USA,"

"Russia,"

Home Grown,

Or made in China.

 

This old game

Is neither fun

nor Good for anyone

Or the least bit fair.

 

I hear the old ones

The fat, gray haired ones

In stuffed shirts,

Wearing uniform ties

and gray coats

Presenting their bombs in brief cases

As footnotes in floods of paper

Drowning the dead in words.

 

In rhetoric

About fanatic religion

And rebels

And no fly zones.

Pontificating

and pointing fingers

At each other

 

Like bombs of misunderstanding

Or wands of curses and imprecations

 

As if those words were the jet planes

RPGs and drones,

Rocks being thrown

Delivering up death.

 

They point

As if they were speaking spells

and they weren't all of them liars

And guilty instead.

Each revealing his own guilt

With three fingers.

 

These old Greybacks

Hominid standing gorillas

Send children to fight their battles

While playing at rhetoric

And objectifying the dead.

The dead are ISIL and rebels

Are Shia and Sunna

Yazidi, Christian and Jews

Tossed in makeshift trenches

In ecumenical horror

With lime thrown in to reduce the stench.

 

All the While the greybacks pontificate from the bench

And partisans rant and rage

At who is at fault

and who built this cage?

That is tearing people apart

And throwing the pieces in graves

Where they bury their own pretenses

To civilization.

Remember the three fingered thing

When you point.

 

Bombs of misdirection

Lies piled upon lies

And meaningless facts

Piled in manilla stacks

On bureaucratic tables!

 

Pooh pooh, the food won't reach you

We bombed the convoy

So your benefactors can number among the dead!

We send you our bureaucratic condolences instead!

Our cordon will kill the rebels

And their families, children, relatives, neighbors, friends

And enemies

In deadly efficiency

 

The machine of war has been unleashed

In all its efficient confusion

Assumptions leading to contusions

Well meaning horror

Generating even more misery

As folks use bullets to stop bullets

And bombs to stop bombs.

 

How much better to escalate?

Than to build mountains

Of mindless hate?

"I want revenge because I am scared of you."

And you want revenge on me too!

We have harmed one another

What else can we do?

We fight near magiddo

Yet another Armageddon!

And centuries of antichrists

 

3 fingers accuse me too.

And my ancestors.

We survive on grace

In hopes of atonement

But not merit.

 

The dead can't point fingers

Only the living can do that

Their fingers have been severed

And tossed in trenches

By guilty survivors

Who will point at one another

And say

"This is your fault"

That they were buried to day

 

And the three fingered principle

Says yes it is ours

 

I can only look on in horror

As once again mixed intentions

Spin out in insanity.

The Accuser does his job

Hoping someone will stop him

The Satan is a prosecutor doing his job

With a jury of angels

None of us humans can lie to.

It is just facts.

Bones in the ground

That tell a story of injury and fear

Hunger and privation

And cannibal violence done by man

Human graybacks mindlessly fighting

Over resources and power

Using fear.

 

The dead don't accuse us

But their spirits do

Each was a person

Not a skeleton

A friend maybe

Or a lover

Someone to get to know

Objectified in death

 

Only the suffering is left

In echos and waves of hurt and fear

In us, their relations.

That three fingered thing

Is also our hope for salvation.

 

When we no longer feel

For what we have done

We are numb

And we are dying.

 

It is the living who suffer

And we are fools

Because we see these things

Time and again

Yet we keep pointing at ourselves

Instead of pointing all our fingers

In outstretched hands

And clearing the rubble.

 

Christopher H. Holte