Our bodies are not steel,
            do not bend and mangle
            on impact.
Our bodies, bone,
            crumble, split, grind.
The silt of too many years
            standing
            among ruins.

What is this
            if not loss defined?

Would that our bodies were steel.
Would that they crawled into themselves,
            cradle curled
            around the bullet spray,
            whole

            still.

Bodies pressed clean
            between the thumbs
            of your machinery.

Is that not what you hoped
            your ammunition rain might bring?

Did you not wish
for hospital curtains drawn closed,
            around the small
            of a slippery cold
            back,
the return of organs,
            a ticking clock,
just one day of replacing batteries,
one day of reviving the orchestra,
            motors, gears, jaws,
that we might go home new,
            mended,
            no worse for the wear
            of all this living
            under your madness?

When you shower
            gutted bombs
            into the sea glass green
            of fields,
when you spit
            blistering gas
            into our homes,
when you invent
            wars to defend
            your hatred,
            your wallets,
            your seething power,

do you not expect
            flesh
            to become carcass,

            bodies
            to ignite,

            lives

            to end?

For if you do,
            how do you keep
            living, knowing
            what your butcher hands
            have carved?

Throughout the “War on Terror,” Obama has defended bombings in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. During the past few years, it has become increasingly clear that these attacks often lead to more extremism, not less, especially when compounded with the constantly shifting alliances that the administration forges. In each case, there are countless civilian deaths. The recent decision to begin a new assault in Syria has been widely criticized especially given the lack of evidence regarding a true terror threat to the U.S. This poem is in no way a cry against political action in situations of human rights violations; it is a response to the continued violence perpetuated by President Obama and his administration.
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/09/28/u-s-officials-invented-terror-group-justify-bombing-syria/