I was there

On an awful plain, windswept with blood, 

the stench of skins still strained in the air,

as the few remaining wailed at the twisted limbs, 

now scattered on the earth like fragments of jar.

Pointed this away and that away,

bits of smaller and larger size.

Walk with me for I was there, 

there with the dead and dying,

there with the bleeding and the crying,

before the cities sacked by empires too numerous to name,

to anonymous to blame. 

Look upon your evil and its roots.

Yes, they are that old.

Feel the crunching under foot,

feel the sloosh of mud without water,

where the jackals lap the river without rain, 

that flows into the ultimate sea.

Walk with me, for I was there.

Walk with me, and sweep the soot that clings,

I'll show you the true sport of kings.

The pyres built with meticulous care,

The gaudy costumes of a mid-summer fair,

the harvest has found along the road,

a few hagard women as it's sullen load.

They are the witches that will soon roast,

while to holy heaven, the others toast.

Hail, the holy, brethern and host.

I am with them as the fire consumes,

the bone presses out and leaves the skin,

showing the frail tents within.

Walk with me, for I am there.

Shiver as the timbers creak,

while chained together bodies leak.

From the hold into the brine,

from out of line,

and out of mind.

The middle passage claims it's growing due,

as shrill shrieks slash and stab the air,

silenced moments as their breath is through.

Touch the shanks and chains,

rusted with the etching stains,

that come from bits of bone, and brain.

Breathe in the sounds of market clamor,

the auctioneer with his unholy glamor,

waves a hand,

to make person property.

Holy, holy, property.

That thing which you now worship like a Christ.

Breathe in the sweat of ages,

that will be bondaged to the whims and rages,

of a so recently down trodden race,

that now disfigures the African face.

Walk with me and look upon your sacred truth,

look upon the tortured visages,

held in thrall to that which was once then,

of what you are now.

Realize that if you had been then,

instead of now,

you'd have a slave behind your plow.

Nothing has been learned from all the passing of days,

from then and there, to this and here.

Walk with me for I am there,

stung by the same laden air.

Walk with me for I touch my hand,

to those torn from their native land.

Walk with me for I was there.

Walk with me before the gates of old Nanjing,

as the bayonets did sparkle and gleam.

Hear the staccato rhythm just so

of skulls smashed on rocks to pinkish snow.

Smell the belching fumes of gas,

as people are bulldozed into ash.

Feel the clacks that ring through hollow air,

of thoughts that blink to no longer there.

The melody high above all the dinn,

a sound to bestial for any ape,

are the squeals of pain, the grunts of joy,

whose score is written as rape.

Walk with me for I was there, 

among the defiled, doomed, and condemned.

Among those sent to slavery and their end.

With those shafted by sharpened steel,

holding hands of the beheaded.

Walk with me and see your evil as it was,

Shreds of gore hanging from Tokyo Tiger's claws.

Walk with me, for this your evil is writ

with bowels sliced open to empty shit.

What you do now, is what they did,

pouring forth the foul that makes air fetid.

Comes screaming down from highest heights,

the prowess of many mights,

that sears the lungs to crisp and black,

sending soul across the border,

never to come back.

This is Gaza, in the here.

The date is this very year.

The hospitals are shattered to fragments,

and the children within,

are lost to life,

ended with barely begin.

This is Gaza, where the babies just born

from their mothers are by explosives shorn.

bathe in the beauty of this modern war,

different,

but like all the ones before.

The grand children of the slaughtered innocents

now turn their minds to primer on Guernica carved.

So many millions lost then,

so many lost now.

Never again, has become,

has become ever again.

Always again.

Walk with me, for as I wept acid tears

for those who were flushed to ash,

now I bend on the soil stained,

and weep them all over again.

Those to whom evil was once done,

have done evil in return.

Walk with me for I have just left,

as the smotes from sky leave a parcel cleft.

But not long to stay, for there are so many places to go,

from African Zaire, to beheadings in Mexico.

I wish I could appear as lady of light,

scattering feathers and petals in my wake,

taking up the broken bones, 

mending them to wholeness make.

Walk with me and we will find 

the next place where the pulps of people

are severed from the rind.

To this our scattered bodies go,

for the future will remember what we already know.

The world will have to under carbon haze a burn,

before the next generation will start to learn,