Pakistan

The gravediggers
planting bodies
like bulbs
for spring
linger under
a wolf moon
their minds
callused as their hands
against the grim work

The interment of
128 girls murdered
their school turned into
a penny arcade
by terrorists
their screams caught
in the cracks and crevasses
of blood-spattered
bullet-riddled walls

One more devastation
in service of a
damned ideology.

Oh, that we believed
in nothing more
than the litany
of flowers.

Oh, that we
worshipped only
in the sanctuary
of their bowers.

Oh, that we
shared naught
but the communion
of their nectar.

Oh, that we would
throw off the yoke
of corrupted fairytales
as licenses for butchering
our neighbors.

Oh, oh, oh

That we planted lilies
and not children
in the earth.

Gavin Kayner’s plays, prose, and poetry have won numerous awards and appeared in a variety of publications. A version of this poem appeared in Panoply.