One Poem for Today's Concern

You May Say (a poem w/ pictures)

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You may say


You may say as humans
we are morally superior
to the loon that must
leave its slow fledgling
behind when its deep calendar

dictates the time to slap across
the glassy surface of its home
twist into the sky 
and fly south for the season.
You may say it

as if no human parent
has ever been forced into choices
that left their child
in the folds of the immense
darkness that is

death. No matter, the beast
of our interminable
wars, the manner in which
morality seems never 
to enter the mind

of those statisticians-for-hire 
who matter-of-factly tally
how many will starve
in order that the rich 
or the despotic can divide 

the spoils or the colonies, 
(Mission Accomplished!)
leave our absurd posture 
of moral superiority 
in ruins. Shadows and skeletons 

of courthouses and temples 
after every explosive offensive 
prove our horrific mendacity:
which children are on the right
and which are simply not 

counted. Still, you and your version
of everything that is holy dare
condemn the unwanted
to life, dare to force birth
on the unready, 

the unwilling,
who might some other day yearn 
to suckle a child but not now
not out of the entirety
of what they cannot even offer 

themselves or those dependent others
you have been careful enough
to exclude from your damned
version of worthiness. No,
you may say

your god has instructed you
in this course of lies
but nothing so full of miracles
and potential as any child’s life
has influenced what you call

reason. We have never been
as reasonable as a threatened, 
mournful bird, rising above our world, 
rising, minus its slow and failing hope,
over our ash and oil-smoke,

rising above your presumed 
moral superiority where 
when your current war’s babies died 
from hunger days ago the mothers 
still cannot put them down




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NOTE: Offerings from Compendium: The Kitchen Sink are best viewed using a laptop or PC. Poetry line endings may be corrupted on your i-phone. Photo size and viewing are best viewed via laptop or PC as well.