the obscene gesture
is this hand outstretched
to reach between war and peace,
industrial bombthrowing, rocks
of politics and here on the deathbeds of time,
a garden of flowers, the planted children of
casualty,
it is a simplicity to think
that from the ground grow us
and to the ground we dissolve,
a dismemberment of particles
destined to return to the cosmos.

but here is a life, in Africa, the cradle,
or Isreal, oh Zion, or Russia, that cold bitter wasteland,
these places are ideas, populated by children, women with covered faces
and brilliant eyes,
from these secluded shores of the American dream, they are just
stars in the night sky, so far away, their lights blend together to make
nothing more than a point in the dimness of distance.

I am not effected by their stuggles..
oh but I am.

They are me, and the rockets and grenades,
the graffiti of their stories is on my heart,
because they are real, and they are there and they bleed.
Their mothers bleed, their daughters and sons weep blood on my pillow.

And I have a war as well, I too must find a peace or be destroyed.
I do not know the heat of hell-fire that rains from the sky,
but inside I burn.
In my mind, I feel conflict. In my mind I feel the scars of death and disaster,
there is a famine for me that does not come from lack of food,
there is a hatred that does not come from others but from within,
and this war is real too, and felt by others in ways both different and the same.

I sprouted from the ground as well, and might return to it one day,
in sorrow and in shame, by my own hand, or by others, softly or violently,
but alone in my dying the same as everyone must be.

Every image I see flash across a newswire, every telegraph that beeps an S.O.S
is my own S.O.S as much as anyone elses.
Every white flag is a surrender of all, ever war cry is a battle we all must fight.
Each trench is dug by everyone seeking shelter.

The tragedy is that we all do not know this.

09/19/2012

Posted on 09/19/2012
Copyright © 2026 Vikki Owens