La Violencia (Version One)

(There might be something here, eventually.)

It was like a snow day -
Home from work and school
We lay shaking beside each other
Big fluffy comforter to our chins
Side to side in our bed in Kansas
And our dogs at our feet.

I laughed, hysterically,
Until I cried, face red
Embarrassed and uncontrollable
The way that only these things
Can bring out in me

All cellular service was down
All internet service was down
And my sister, she was down

Phew. Hold me.

But do you remember the images
Of children dodging gunfire
Like heyenas the way they wefted
and split when they were attacked.

Let me put my head in your lap.

Of children running from their dead friends
their dead parents, from all everything
naked and on fire

Can I love you between attrocities?

I awoke this morning
Five years after we sat in bed
Watching bodies falling down
In that firey edifice to safely-
cropped images, flags, mourners

You are in Kansas. I am here.
We split. Weft and wane.

One semester I took a class on Latin America
And every day we studied La Violencia

La Violencia. It is a way of living.

I came home and showed you evidence
Woodcuttings, linocuts, broadsheets
With type big enough to cover us all

My best friend, out of his mind
His father dead two years ago or
was it three years ago today,
or yesterday, his father dead

And he is only one man.

My grandfather, life draining slowly from his chest
into a bin at the foot of his bed
while he still clung to life

And he was only one man.

And this
We die. We die. We die.

Every morning as steam rises from our coffee and cigarettes
Upon waking we die. We go to work. We make art. We die.

We will be conquered if not by our
insanity then by our humanity. And it means nothing
Outside of that bed, two girls and two dogs
No one else is watching nor cares to.