Terror has a Human Face

We settle accounts to keep horror clean
Is that the only reason we bleed?

Watch my hands. They feel skin
and the lost bones of bogs men
murdered by faith around 300 BC

We call it the Iron Age.
They lived short lives
with Hobbes at elbow.

These remnant bodies fondled
to know last meal, shapes
of face, extreme fears
rest in Irish National Museum
with other artifacts for pain
and yes, don’t forget devotion,
love scribbled on the Internet
beyond the mirror they cannot
reach. Shall we invite them
back in the name of love
as recompense for delusions
and drugs and lap dancers
rising out of their soft eyes
broken from light by clubs?

Resolute technicians examine
fingernails for striations captured
electron-microscope and brief
analysis of the murder of 64
police trainees in Baghdad
ten days after they embraced
their wives and left to save
something from nothing.

We learn that one Bogs boy;
the tallest at 6 foot 7
did not work hard. His
nails, perhaps his conscience
not grooved. How do we know
how a Prince was made without
love racing through Le Mans
or the murder of a Princess
by those who hated her élan?

Were bogs men sacrificed
for love or a dismal hate
without gain, just fear?

Seems that horror show,
human suicide, terror’s actor
liquefies his/her body in
the blink of an eye. Is love
for Mohammed and
incompatible righteousness
connected to human deceit?

How can we speculate?

2400 years after sacrificed
the signs from heaven rose
closer to horizon. We modern
man swim there, and discover
we are alone on wave crest.

Why does anyone want
to know how God keeps
himself above the waves
and all we have to do
is kiss with love as sex
rides that luminous surf
beyond the terror and pain

Yes, I know, we can hope.
Is that too much for life
to reach on any given day?

To live means power and
every chance we take
opens every sealed envelope
to past, long or short, to
present, but the future has
neither names, nor maps,
nor outline written in chalk
on slate sidewalks and the
fingernails of long dead
Bog’s men cannot close
terror up in a magic box
to be kept away from life
for as long as the melody reigns.
.

2/12/06