imagine the men
forgotten and dead in
fresh pits
imagine their
wives and daughters
at gunpoint
in the rape camps
no one will ever admit
or no
don’t imagine it
it’s already happening
in a country that has
nothing to do with
your own life
it’s over and done with
in the time it takes
a boot to crush a
newborn’s skull
this one small sound
alone
should be enough to
bring us all to
our knees
not quite silence in the
gentle hum of early afternoon
but maybe something softer than
the screams of crows
something more human than the
room of hanged men
and how many years now since
my last escape?
how many hours wasted staring into
dirty mirrors or
through warped panes of glass?
what i see is that at
some point in the future i will be
asking my son for forgiveness
at some point
i will speak of my own father
for the last time
will spit out his ashes while
faceless men in the towns i’ve escaped from
beat their wives and girlfriends with
the brutal fists of love
and one half of the truth
is that i never saved anyone
and the other half
is that i never knew anyone who wanted to be saved
i had nothing better to offer than
the holes that had already
been dug
this is history on a personal level
the possibility of failure
through indifference
of love turning to hate
and then hatred to suicide
and if my mother sheds any tears
over the sudden holes that
appear in her life
i make a point of looking away
if desperate acts of violents leave
any visible scars on the
ones left behind
i don’t want to know
i have already
made up my mind to run
