Fragments

As I take your cold hand in mine,
And stare into the emptiness,
I know that I may never see you again,
Though this is how I will always remember you:
Your long winter coat concealing the body
That never was a mystery to me,
Not even the first time my hand,
Came to rest on your bare hip,
Smooth gray curves in the moonlight;
Your eyes unfocused under knitted brows,
Contemplating not the windswept landscape before us,
But the inner turmoil you keep securely contained,
Behind a meshwork of steel and nerve;
Your voice as you almost sing the words to me,
“We are people who still really feel,
And that is why we are here now;”
Your lips dry and cracked and slightly parted,
As if you were about to speak again,
The words stolen and swept out to sea.

The rest of you is just fragments,
Scenes from another life I probably
Dreamed while sleeping on a train.
The real is inseparable from the desired,
And my future is fraught with imagination.

You release my hand and withdraw
Without a sound; magnets under my skin
Involuntarily pull me toward your mass,
But I anchor my feet and do not turn my head.
I am left with the cry of gulls and the music
Of the internal, eternal struggle of opposites,
Pulling columns down as they wage their war,
Somewhere deep in my frozen, laboring lungs.

My eyes close and I try to remember,
Another time, one I am sure once existed,
Where softness was also a non-tactile feeling
And strength was a word we shared,
But now it is just fragments.

The District

Sleeping under anvils she lies prone,
Curled up with pain as companion,
Feeling the hammer blows pushing her
Further under, sinking into the earth.

I watch and feel the weight press on me from afar.
Why does the world have me riveted here,
While you wish for the peace of death there?
It is a simple, easy answer that
Echoes across the concrete chasms
Of a society that chooses murdering
Children over caring for children.

Less than a mile from where she lies,
Three schools bustle with thousands of students;
Their textbooks leer dumbly, older than their parents,
And the asbestos grins lecherously from within the rotting walls.
Many of these kids will not finish school or go to college.
Many have no doctor for when they are sick.
Some will be murdered and taken to the grave.
Some will be murderers and taken to jail.
Some will be imprisoned for selling drugs.
Some will be beaten for talking back to a cop.
Some will be taken away by an overdose.
Some will be taken away by crossfire.
Some will be taken away by accident.
None are thought of within the halls of power,
Which stand very few miles from where my love lies.

Gleaming marble structures and towering monuments
Take no more heed of our suffering than do
The men and women of power that
Inhabit the maze we call home.
War memorials multiply
Yet none stand here
For the lives that
Were taken by
Greed and
Neglect.

In bed, she shudders and props up the infinite weight of loneliness.
Nearby, a child stumbles uphill, facing a never-ending walk home.
Lost somewhere in the maze, I struggle to swim through drying cement.

The Loudspeaker

The loudspeaker attached to the streetlamp on the corner awakened with a crackle of static and a series of raking, electrically buzzing beeps. One, two, three, four, five, each lasting three and a half seconds. A soft, feminine voice spoke clearly into the empty streets, her voice echoing calmly downwind.

“This information notice is for all citizens of the City of New York and serves to comply with the Proper Accounting Transparency and Recorded Information Act. On the morning of December 4th, two years ago, citizen Robert Baumann, hereafter referred to as citizen Baumann, was identified as an enemy combatant. Upon exiting his apartment building in the Queens borough, citizen Baumann was disabled by an aerial drone and taken into custody by law enforcement agents.

“We would like to take this opportunity to assure all citizens that electrical discharges from aerial drones and law enforcement agents are designed merely to incapacitate a target and pose no health risk to the human organism. Please, do not run if you witness an aerial drone deploying incapacitation rounds in your neighborhood. Flight may lead to an authorized escalation in the level of force to be used in your apprehension. Simply place your hands behind your head, kneel down where you are and wait for a law enforcement agent to give you further instructions.

“Citizen Baumann was conscious and responsive when he arrived for processing and interrogation approximately [beeeeeeeep] later at [beeeeeeeep] facility. National security authorities applied Department of Justice approved enhanced interrogation techniques on citizen Baumann in order to obtain his cooperation in an investigation. These techniques were continued for the next 467 days, as citizen Baumann refused to yield actionable intelligence, but were suspended at that point because a precipitous decline in citizen Baumann’s vital signs were detected.

“After a [beeep] hour recuperation stand-down, clearance was given by medical professionals and the interrogation program was resumed. Eight days after the resumption of the interrogation program, citizen Baumann was found unresponsive in his detention cell at 04:57 am and efforts to revive him were unsuccessful. Citizen Baumann’s body was kept on site pending an autopsy, which later determined his death to be a result of natural causes.

“This morning a National Security Court ruled that the classification of citizen Baumann as an enemy combatant was not correct. Citizen Baumann has been cleared of all suspicion of terrorism and his body is now being returned to his next of kin for burial. The United States government apologizes for this error and assures all citizens that every effort is being made to minimize such classification errors in the future. Remember, safety is everyone’s responsibility.”

With a hiss, followed by a momentary squeal of feedback, the loudspeaker fell silent.

The wind howled around the quiet, gray apartment blocks for fifteen seconds before the loudspeaker awakened again with a crackle of static and a series of raking, electrically buzzing beeps. One, two, three, four, five, each lasting three and a half seconds. A soft, feminine voice spoke clearly into the empty streets, her voice echoing calmly downwind.

“This information notice is for all citizens of the City of New York and serves to comply with the Proper Accounting Transparency and Recorded Information Act. On the morning of March 24th, this year, citizen Clara Bonilla, hereafter referred to as citizen Bonilla, was identified as an enemy combatant and lethal force was used in her apprehension. National security authorities confirmed…”

And the loudspeaker rolled on through the afternoon, into the evening twilight, stopping only for its fifteen-second breaks. When darkness fell, curfew began and speakers all over the city went silent. Silent until tomorrow, when they would rejoin their public duty at dawn, satisfying the citizen’s right to know.