This Is Not Atrocity

This is not atrocity

This is the basement

This is the sea receding like lips to reveal tooth-like shells

Amongst the bullet casings and corpses felled leaving the boats

This is the sand like an inverted moat around the

Kingdom at sea, and this is the Remainder.

Yet they remain jubilantly-

Is this what being jubilant means?

Chamomile anklets adorning a hanged child.

This is not atrocity,

Ignorance wielding pitchforks and fire.

Anger alight and hostility riled

This is not atrocity.

This is not far from this reality;

Remember this child-

And the mob piled like tinder on themselves

Convincing carrion feeders

And unimpeded breeders that

Halt the march of science that

This is not atrocity.

The certain hot song by which Earth is greeted

Has an immediately recognizable tune.

And

This is not atrocity;

It sounds more like ****** ******

But I can't hear it

And I have no fear anymore

I open my eyes to another routine killing, and I know-

This is atrocity-

But a necessary one.

It's hardly enough to stay alive

And as I and we strive for

Money and coffee and love,

I and we let

atrocity

enter us.

Climb into us like a hand does a glove,

or a puppet.

It is not nature;

Nor fate;

And one needn't be dead

to appreciate the ability to open the senses

and actually sense.

And this,

I am certain,

Is not an atrocity

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