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.
