You have my sympathies if you load bullets into a Kalashnikov
Instead of your children into photo albums
You have my sympathies if you down bottles every night
Because they are needed for a more volatile kind of cocktail
You have my sympathies if you can no longer passively resist
bullets
When they snatched your crying baby and held it down under
the water
Until both your screams were silenced
And you were asked
What kind of mother would stand by and do nothing
And you replied
The soldiers were coming, and I had other children
You have my sympathies
When the boat capsized and you cursed the merciful and
compassionate
For blessing you with three children but only two hands
You have my sympathies
When the bomb exploded under the truck in front of you
And you stumbled bleeding back into the barracks
Only to find the faces of your dead friends staring back at
you
In the bathroom mirror
And with a fine toothed comb you scrape them out of your
hair
And package them in matchboxes for their mothers
And when what’s left of you sits cold outside the high tower
and you hear the clink of ivory cups as they swill blood and repeat the old
lie,
It is good and noble to send someone else to die for your
money
You have my sympathies
