Sacrilege

 
Sacrilege

The only g*n*cide memorialized,
The only one in which we all are drilled,
Repeatedly, through schools and books and films,
With monuments erected, tributes paid,
With pilgrimages due, from those on high
Before we vote, is that which stands alone.

No other slaughters, even those that cleared
The continents on which we settlers live,
Can ever be compared to that Event
Of horror that is singular, unique.

And so our taxes can be used to send
Not only funds but lethal armaments
With which to maim and slaughter thousands. This
Cannot be questioned, nor compared to that—
The One whose name is all but deified.

So through this means, such horrors still are wrought
As might make even hardened mobsters pause
And yet are waved away or justified—
For there can only be that G*n*cide—
That One, that Only, Duly Guarded Thing—
That shields the ones who massacre and starve,
With critics charged with vilest heresy.

And so it is that all the horrors past
And all the ones succeeding that Event 
Of special, primal status, never count,
Nor those that happen right before our eyes.

So truth itself is buried deep in lies,
As bodies are—the dead or still alive—
Beneath the tons of wreckage. Still, we see
The women, children, elders, blasted, burned,
With cats and humans, huddled, homeless, starved,
And lies repeated—till a nation dies.

And some of us have slowly come to know
That even mentions of the victims or
Their land had been forbidden, seen as crimes,
Within the realms of those who’ve realized
With ardent help from other nations, this—
The crime of crimes. And now, in other lands,
The moves are underway, or well in place,
To stem the images and stop the words. 

The goal is not to simply end the lives—
And so the people—but to wipe, erase
The names themselves. What’s nameless can’t exist—
Or so the thinking and the feeling goes,
As power and wealth direct our human flows
And shape our sets of facts, our thoughts and views
By every means—including nightly news.

So is this something new? No, not at all,
Except for what those windows let us see
And hear, as if the ones who sobbed and screamed
Or spoke to us in fright, in measured tones,
Were present where we are, and not where lives
Are snuffed like candles by the blasts of bombs. 

And so we now will see those windows close,
Unless we rise together and resist
And dare to say the word we’ve all been told
Is sacrilege—and yet is naught but truth.

For what had occurred in the past and then
Repeated in our lifetimes is again 
Revived and walking, dressed in black, with scythe,
But wielding now the weapons we have wrought
That burn and blast and bury thousands, while
We coddle those who perpetrate these crimes. 

2024 March 12th, Tue.
Berkeley, California