Kit Kelen #249 - it's happening right now - a little meditation on the naturalness of death

249

it's happening right now

a little meditation on the naturalness of death

shhh!

the still birth

and mourning

for the one who wasn't

these little pyjamas

to burn

will there be a name?

names are long before words come

it's nobody's fault

some days in the cool room

hello is goodbye

a sorrow forever

is it best to have not begun?

shhh!

mustn't think that way

it's happening right now

the soldier face up

whom the sun sees

eyes still open

the ants are taking him away

days at it

not only soldiers

multitudes

if I say 'Syria'

you'll know

shhhh!

that woman raped

because she was in the place at the time

now the judge is wagging a finger

things won't be made right

shhhh!

and we'd better not whisper of that

can there be such a thing as revenge?

it's happening right now

the bomb in the market gone off

limbs strewn settle into silence

and heaven never comes to the bomber

how shall we show respect?

shhh!

then at the funeral or weddings are better

we see it all again

turn down the volume

let's have some shhh

what's here we haven't seen before?

it's happening right now

statistics

don't they bore you?

this whom-the-cops-shot

just happening to be black

it's like that with the lethal injection

the woman stoned for love

the poet hanged for the truth

but that was somewhere else

I'm still writing, am I not?

the limbs come off in factories

pedestrians mowed down in their prime

that was progress with its scythe

you could smoke

you could drink yourself

to death

somebody would make a profit

shhh!

it's happening right now

revenge!

and one thing to prevent another

there's always worse to come

there's nothing more industrial

or complex

than here's the bomb from the sky

from the plane taxes built

from a civilised department

called 'defence'

as voted by a parliament

that highest form of paid conversation

the bomb is falling on a hospital

the hospital was the target

there is strategy in this

and the child who would have been born whole

and the child who was, the one who was two

the mother, the father – those holding the hand

the uncle visiting, the aunt with the flowers

that were so hard to get

they are all gone, gone equally

they are blood and bone

but nothing's tilled here

surgical strike

that's Syria

that' where we're not now

world's best practice in this field

this world like a dog can't shake its fleas

takes tail to the court of umbrage

just spins on and on