by George Salamon
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Icarius (Diomedes Wounding Aphrodite When She Tries To Recover The Body Of Aeneas) by Arthur Heinrich Wilhelm Fitger via wikigallery. |
"Israeli-Hamas war death toll nears 1,500..." CBS News, October 9, 2023
Red hot blood of old men,
red hot blood of toddlers,
red hot blood of grandmas,
red hot blood of soldiers,
red hot blood of musicians,
we spill you in Israel and we
spill you in Gaza, we spill you
in Ukraine and Russia while
they're counting the corpses
and wait until they reach the
numbers when the world's
institutions urge an end
to bloodshed and demand
return to the old status quo.
There's no elixir for bloodlust,
there's no drug to cure madness,
there's no vaccine to calm the
fever of death and destruction.
We never conquered humanity's
cruel face, its heart's hungry
gorge, the human form of its
terror.
We heard answers, but watched
as the messengers died on the
cross, by fire or by bullet, we are
left alone by and to ourselves.
Nothing is more terrifying in a
soul-less and bleeding world.
George Salamon was born in Vienna in 1934, as Communists and Fascists were shooting at each other in low-income housing areas. The Holocaust was a decade later, the Israeli-Arab wars of "annihilation" followed, then the bloody wars in Asia and Africa for wealth and economic "supremacy," and the endless Israeli-Palestinian bloodshed and terror for ownership of the "Holy Land." The carousel is still spinning.