Transit

The bestial events in that holy, unholy land,

laden with sins,

have shrunk my map,

folded me across oceans to this ancient divide.

I am haunted by the butchery,

images of the fallen and those taken to tunnels.

What was a chess game for me of conversational

hair-splitting over Chinese chicken salad

in the safety of a back booth

is now a place where exhausted words 

have gone to die.

 

I am left grasping for a language to trace

the tears of my transit

from head to heart,

from my distant perch to the door

of my slowly un-shuttered chambers.

Have we not advanced since the ancients,

since the days of sacrificial lives

and slaughter of innocents?

By uncaging the beast

such vengeance discredits the cause,

assuring its own defeat.