being human

Standing on jagged edges
lingering in the interstices
Waiting to cross over,
To that other place
We all have names for.

When the schools were blown up,
We pretended to be dead
They pretended to be deaf,
And everybody watched.
They say, Wails and prayers
sound the same on airwaves.

You turned your eyes away
From the jigsaw of bodies-
It was only a click for you.
we searched missing pieces
and found only wrong ones.

“This ontological vocation
of being human”
asks more from some of us.
How should we respond?
To whom should we report?
Who will come with?

taking account

Across four thousand kilometres
sitting in concrete comfort,
across a screen, we watch
bodies like ours,
waiting, wailing, wading
sifting, shifting, stifling
falling, flailing, failing
through smoked rubble
of fire and brimstone,
clinging desperately
to remnants of (hi)stories.

scattered piecemeal lives
lived on shrinking strips
of what used to be home.

Memory serves up a map
whose contours have changed
as if drawn on vaporous clouds,
if not desert(ed) sands of untimely time.

Who will take responsibility,
Or perhaps, will we take responsibility
for remembrance and forgiveness
from which thought might be born?

How do we begin to take account?