We are human beings
We kill each other
That’s what we do
We are created in the image of God
the god of the Jews, Christians and Muslims
who commands “Thou shalt not kill”
who orders the ancient Israelites to kill
all the Amalekites, every man, woman and child
because they are an abomination to him
kill their animals too and take their land
God promised it through Abraham to you
We fight wars to end all wars
in the name of God and all that is good
and holy and righteous and absolutely true
to defend our vital national interests
to protect our precious people from evil
practiced by the heathen and ideologically impure
We kill each other to keep America whole —
brother against brother, sister against sister
slave against slave and soak our soil
with brotherly blood but the union is saved
Turks lock Armenians in boxcars
Turks, Iraqis and Iranians kill Kurds
Hitler does genocide on gypsies and Jews
Bosnians and Yugoslavs do ethnic cleansing
Tutsis and Hutus too
Shi’ites kill Sunnis
Serbs kill the Kosovars
And the union bombs both to oblivion
Downtown a shirtless and shoeless man
stands in the sidewalk and yells at me
“See this ring in my nose? If you look
at this ring in my nose I’ll kill you!”
I look at it, chuckle and walk around him
He does not kill me but yells again
“Come back here you son of a bitch!”
At that instant the Trench Coat Mafia are
bombing and shooting, killing kids and teachers
inside a Colorado school
the union mourns
the union agonizes and asks and argues
about gun-control laws and teaching more
conflict resolution classes to the kids and
censoring all their pop-culture and
getting secular humanism out and
putting god and prayer back
into the schools
We are human beings
created in the image of God
We created a more perfect union
We kill each other
We tell the kids to vent their anger
with words not weapons
We kill each other with words too
—Bill Matheny