Salt And Fire

Originally posted June 2017.

There are places on Earth
so soaked in hate that
the only moral thing to do

(after finding new places 
for people to live)
is to burn every scrap of wood

from furniture
to framing, fill in every
foundation, break up

all the roads that lead 
into and out of town, then
salt the ground sterile.

Every day you hear
of places so poisoned
they should live on only

as a shocked memory
of a country of horror stories
and nightmares.

I do not say this lightly.
Every town is someone’s home and
has at least a modicum

of love clinging to it. I do not
know how to make hate disappear,
and perhaps I have become hate

when I think these things —
perhaps I should
burn myself, 

have a friend
roll my smoking corpse in salt
and bury me in barren ground.

Look around. Something 
has to be done 
and it is hard to believe 

that it will not
require fire
and salt.