Inferno

If I could stick rocks in your eyes
and dirt in your mouth
so that you would not have to see
would not have to speak
Of what they did, I would.
This, they know. This, they know.

Bent with sleepless nights, I see the cracks
in your ribcage the way
I see cracks on the streets where you once
played with light dancing on your cheeks
once so fat, once so full.
to the brim they stuffed you with sadness
so that the pores on your nose blackened

And yet you prayed. I could have paid
you to stop it made me red with anger
and any shade but black and white
was no where in sight.
Yes, I was afraid.

There stands a void on the streets where
you once held my hand giggling at a joke
you just remembered.
When you were a baby, you laughed
to hear the sounds of a dog’s bark.
Now we live a linear, laughless life.

My darling,
Can you remember that one Kippur
when you asked me for water
I gave it to you,
you looked twice at the glass and shook your head
No, you said. I have changed my mind.
I was proud of my creation.
For in that moment, I was Adam
but the water was the apple
and I’m not saying it’s your fault
it’s not,
but you drank the water.
You drank the dirty, filthy, water.
We all did.

Now I turn on the television.
9/11 churns; a hot cauldron.
A perpetual motion
of positive discrimination.
“Terrorist” is a complicated term.
And I don’t have the answers
to all my questions
I know now I was not one
And yet was punished so
That Dante’s Inferno seemed
as Milton’s Paradise.