As lips that haven't been kissed in a while I try not to look for you.
I resist the temptation, plus, if I started,
my head would be filled with too many eyes:
needs, needs, everywhere that I peer.

You see, they don't really mean it, to exist as such ravening.
Yet there they are nevertheless, old ulcerous victims.
How Nagasaki blisters still, haunts some medic's dreams.
He did all he could simply with Band-Aids, mercurochrome,
but the injuries engulf.

Here though, time is meridian, the lean slits from which lizards peek,
sunning their tongues. Clarity is a tattoo. It's stark; won't wash off.

Among forewarning sarcophagi, the marble ruins tourists visit,
there are a terrorist's blood stains every day a janitor scrubs.
He does his best not to picture whatever breathing essence
must have stopped.

It's a clip lost to editing. Snip, snip, another out-take.
No, don't look, don't imagine.

Instead think of the moment we said, “Let the music begin!”
and mimicked a tango behind the safe balcony.
The iron grids were well-cemented. Two jewelry box figures,
we spun and spun, utterly unaware, utterly deaf to the UZIs.

After all, weren't we the Americans?
Who could possibly hate ...
I ask this remembering then, stone-struck, stand back.
The visuals take over, reel like credits dark glasses document.

Is silence an import for civilized governments
from war-ravaged countries?

Here's tragedy's newsprint:
Sometimes even those most directly responsible miss the point.

The point, love, missing, is the last thing I now have.