This howling,
This strutting about,
This fist shaking,
This victim’s entitlement,
This juice squeezed
From the balls of violence,
This scorn of spectacles,
This impatience with speech,
This murdering of grief,
This self-cutting,
This blood weeping
From the eyes,
These monuments to us,
This camouflage,
These reflecting lenses,
This Kevlar vest,
This filth,
These rampages,
This scalped head,
These notches on the handle,
This flailed skins
Draped on the office-chair,
These knuckle-bones,
These femurs,
These souvenir skulls,
This curved magazine,
These cars stinking of burned flesh,
This lynching,
These home-made bombs,
These slaughtered children
Stuffed in a closet,
This numbness,
This dry mouth,
These ghosts,
These rooms with the shades drawn
Pillows imploded,
These drones crossing the border,
This droning between the ears,
This sudden descent,
This vertigo,
These night terrors,
This withdrawal,
These screams,
This silence,
This clammy touch of a gun-barrel
To the clammy swale of a temple,
These graves
And these graves,
And these graves,
These coffins,
This dry rain of dirt clods
Clattering on the lid.
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