if a forest of family trees fall
and we hear every single beat
is there such a thing as sound, after?
is there deep sleep,
good judgement,
wise investment?
is there trustworthiness,
reliability?
is anything seeworthy any longer?
is there music?
singing?
or only the roar of an Amazon slashed-and-burned,
of ancient Redwoods a hundred meters high,
toppled,
roots splayed to the Heavens –
all the Wonder in this Natural World
scorched,
rotting,
silent.
(i)
even as a murderess she held a certain nobility -
never brought a gun to a swordfight,
never shied from loudly announcing herself
a knock
a streak of yellow
never accepted she shouldn't be bestowed something priceless.
and so i believe there is a Beatrix Kiddo
whose killer maternal instinct could reconcile the fact
that everyone is someone's child.
but that nature requires a nurture
where there are no triggers pulled tense against their springs at a church service,
no old men curling baby hairs behind ears as
some unbreakable vow
some staked claim
no learning lovers can destroy one another with the press of a few fingertips.
there will still be unresolved injustices - it is the world, after all.
but if Beatrix Kiddo is to be more merciful
so too must her circumstances.
(ii)
even under softer stimuli,
when she's activated?
i still imagine the room fades on the periphery.
she strides into some third-world streetside dive, whipcracks echoing off her heels,
nears the throat of the lead she's chasing and draws her Hattori Hanzo -
a finely tuned, custom-crafted, Japanese steel
pen.
her adapted method of exposing what she knows to be the truth
slicing fearlessly through the silence
direct eye contact
directer questions
digging up all they've buried
pressing the barrel so hard the ink bleeds onto the next sheet.
the result - a venomous, front-page skewering;
she's found a way of dismantling someone with her fingertips in this timeline too.
Beatrix Kiddo reformed
will not roar or rampage her way to revenge,
no.
she will be precise,
she'll exact it.
it wasn’t the surety of the rising seas
nor the screams of mowed classrooms
so it sure as Hell won’t be the sHelling of the land we collectively call Holy
no
somehow
we, top-of-the-food-chain
we, super-predator
we, brains deeply outsized to bodymass – seven times more than would be linearly predicted –
we still have further to push into the deepest homegrown pits Dante never imagined,
still have further to fall from biological grace than this.
endearing the way we let lions keep ‘king of the jungle’;
patronizing almost, with a brain-to-majestic-mane-and-fierce-teeth-and-flicking-tail ratio of 1:550.
did you know when lions feel their territory threatened by another pride,
they’ll try to kill their young?
crazy. the wild takes no prisoners dude.
US either
we just use the adult size bags to keep it simple
fits every body
to think
we sit here
and watch children die on our handheld 6.1′ OLED displays
picket in support of every mattress having a gun shoved between the box spring
time countdowns to the permanence of each centimeter of oceanwater
to think
2,000 years and a stone’s throw from here
Jesus flipped tables because capitalism had set up a few booths in His Temple
and of the many things He may have known for certain
the snowballing of men’s sins was one of them.
we kill each other then we update our charts
watch our stocks tumble deep into the red
paw around, vengeful
clamor to short, to break bloody even
we kill each other, thumb lazily through the chapters our books share
find we all agree too strongly on 'home;' it simply cannot stand
so we put bombs in a few playpens
roll grenades into particular cul-de-sacs
we kill each other, slowly sometimes
make our rulebooks into beartraps that snare bodies behind chain link fencing
clear our throats and spit
toe around in the dirt to busy ourselves while we wait
we kill each other and shrug
S.W.A.T. our worries away - today, there are more pressing matters
but still hinge at the waist when the killing comes for us
bullets peppering paper mâchéd hallways
dumbfounded
at the furrowed brows
our neighbors' pursed lips
the sight of our own reflection
written following the publication of the chart below, New York Times, Oct-08-23 written following the death of thousands of people written following the death of the first of thousands of people written following the death of the latest of thousands of people
musée 