hate the people of this village and would nail our hats to our heads for refusing in their presence to remove them or staple our hands to our foreheads for refusing to salute them if we did not hurt them first: mail them packages of rats, mix their flour at night with broken glass. We do this, they do that. They peel the larynx from one of our brothers’ throats. We devein one of their sisters. The quicksand pits they built were good. Our amputation teams were better. We trained some birds to steal their wheat. They sent to us exploding ambassadors of peace. They do this, we do that. We canceled our sheep imports. They no longer bought our blankets. We mocked their greatest poet and when that had no effect we parodied the way they dance which did cause pain, so they, in turn, said our God was leprous, hairless. We do this, they do that. Ten thousand (10,000) years, ten thousand (10,000) brutal, beautiful years.

This poem is an reminder to self on why it is, perhaps, better to block the ears and eyes against the din and flash of the news of wars. Ignorance is truely bliss when compared to powerless stupefication.