- 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
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