Memorizing Bones

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There is a question
being asked
by my skin,
my solar plexus,
my lungs,
my bones.
I hear it in the
dead bodies
the weeping fathers and
mothers
the orphaned children
their limbs gone to heaven
before them
the ragged, bloody
flesh
hanging from fences
ripped and dangling
from grieving arms
pressed into
plastic bags
in the absence of graves
the jutting hip bones and
spines of starving
the newborns cold and still
in hospitals bombed down
around their crowded beds
the toddlers screaming
running barefoot and alone
the phosphorous flares
inside tents with
burning limbs flailing
the men splayed naked
on naked prison
floors,
a crowd of soldiers
blocks our view of
rapes with steel poles and
dogs
the dismissals and
dead eyes
the disingenuous lies
the supercilious sneers
of murderers
stalking the halls of power
The handsome, mocking boys
in rooms where they don’t belong
dancing on the graves of lives
who will never leave them be,
who will never truly die
These are the questions
being asked
day and night
by my skin,
my solar plexus,
my lungs,
my bones
Do all of you live here now?
How deep?
How long?