some more names, billy

billy*
am moved
you have a way with words
and tears well up
as i think of mothers
wives, parents, siblings
for whom time ended
with that attack
and then i see a lanky
bespectacled black
saying chicken come home....
a remark (that most don't know)
he was to retract
when he found compassion

billy
am moved
you have a way with words
a poet with a pulsating
muscle bundle
does it not feel the pain
of the dead - the near dead
and the near living
elsewhere in the world?
why is your world so confined
to the US, and some countries
across the big pond?

ali, bhupendra
carlos, dev, ebere,
valin, wen
xian, yuan, zoyenka
they played and lived here once
before succumbing to dictates
of being born where they were
of being subjected to the whims
of machiavelli's disciples
and hard to believe, billy
hard to believe this
they number in hundreds of thousands
as you say
So many names,
there is barely room
on the walls of the heart.


billy*