In the books and stories I read
When I was a young boy
I learned how cruel
People could be to each other –
Torture chambers
In medieval castles,
Live human sacrifices
Atop Aztec pyramids,
Beheadings of political opponents,
Immolations and lynchings
Of the those
With the wrong skin color,
Or the wrong beliefs.
And as I read
I remember feeling so grateful
For human progress,
So grateful
To live in a time
When we no longer enacted such cruelties
On each other.
From books and stories I read
When I was somewhat older
I learned about World War II
And the atrocities perpetrated
In Dachau and Auschwitz
And Bergen-Belsen
And other murder factories.
I learned about the ongoing genocide
Of Native Peoples of the Americas.
I learned about European slaughters-for-profits
In Asia and Africa,
And in the daily news,
I learned of mass murders
In Viet Nam and Yugoslavia and Iraq,
To name but a few.
I am an old man now
Watching every day as Israel
Commits unspeakable atrocities
Against the people of Palestine,
Murdering whole families,
Incinerating little children,
And proclaiming the virtue
Of such wickedness.
When I was a young boy
I believed that I lived in a world
That had outgrown
The horrific, psychotic madness
Of the torture and slaughter
And ethnic cleansing
Of our fellow beings,
But the thug state of Israel
And its bevy of eager enablers
Have shown me
That I was wrong.
