* * * * * * * * * * Freedom, American Style * * * * * * * * * * * (the Reeking Wreckage of Raqqa)

this is a still standing
emptied piece of Raqqa.

can you hear the echoes of the children playing?

do patriotic Americans
lull alleged consciences
with "bad guy" phantom soldiers,
imagining no families,
no humans that could possibly matter
lived or cried
in this "comprehensively wrecked" city?

have "we"

"won"

now?

said Ray Gutman of the Daily Beast
back before these
uncountable spirits
were 'liberated':

"whole neighborhoods
are being bombed flat
with little or no regard
for civilians trapped inside.

it's like dropping a nuclear bomb in stages."

what i want to know is,

how do the chosen flocks
manage to
convince themselves

that their murdered shepherd

(this one,

or that one)

will ever be able to forgive them?

* ***** ** **** * ******* * **** ** ***** *

- Evan Hawthorn, the 17^th of October, 2017