what am i now but an old man
stopping along the way misremembering.

my grandchildren breaking windows and shaking cans
at strangers troubling me more in the retelling
than on the day i witnessed it from my refuge.

i'll tell tales

of bulldozed supplicants who kneel
to differing vision of jesus living in bombed rooms among ruin,
static in the crosshairs of empires dismembered.

half eaten meals deserted on kitchen tables exposed by the violence
like a diorama in a child's report in a school held nightly
in a subway station.

tales of

copses of lovely trees smelling of pine needle and rosin
and decay
that will never be cleaned from the forest floor,
but forever identified with the names and the number of dead.
points on maps sounding odd to my ear and tongue
that will become synonym, cause and anthem.

of speeches spewed recklessly
bereft of detail and fact meant to raise the volume.
stories told by obvious and admitted liars
shamelessly to grab the attention,
as vast wealth applied with pinpoint accuracy
is able to convince the beguiled of the purity of the beguiler.

and as we send to bed sons and daughters, ours and their, to sleep
in flag draped rows beneath flowers and plaster icons,
we will follow and anoint vanity,
and know that

we must write what we can before time,
money and the victor,
who'll recast our memories telling us what we should remember,
light the flames against people
who look just like us in the eyes of god.