NOT ENOUGH ASH

It is not your blood
on your hands, not your ash
falling like paper or snow
into your hair. Is your belly
sunken and gaunt with grief?
For whose absence do your
tears flow? And you, defiler,
how do you avenge defilement?

Your lies, lies and lies
roll like trains bearing
us all to your obsession.
Towers crash every day. 
Planes scream banshee death, 
and the bombs, impeccably guided, 
target foreign fighter safehouses 
disguised as wedding celebrations. 

Look closer at your hands, red 
like theirs, but the blood, appearing
as if by magic, not yours. 
Lift up your eyes and blink 
in the snowy flesh that can never 
mark your forehead with atonement. 
There is not enough ash in your barren
burning world for that.



© 2004 by Richard W. Todd

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