You May be Right

I read a story about bin Laden getting shot in the head.
Millions of Americans rejoiced it said.
He was the start, or the end, but somehow I didn't feel either.
Which side am I on, I wonder when my gut spins round to thinking
About temporal victory and blowback. I almost cried.
Not for bin Laden. For the repetitiousness of killing that
Makes me stop dead long enough to think.
Stop and think before you act. That's what I'm trying
To teach my 4 year old. Not how to pronounce
Consequences but how to learn to live with them.

10 years ago a man jumped 98 stories plummeting into
A choice of cement over burning alive.
I think about the long smashing moment
Of him loving his family never more than he did during that
Descent. A plane plot to destroy him to prove a point.
But I'm not just the pacifist armchair writer you make me out to be.

Skin-ripping years that have followed from all sides of torment.
Terrorism eating the word holy as if they belonged to the samed breath.
I cried American too. I was one of those yellow ribbons who understood the
Magnitude of goodbye. Who didn't wear pain on my car but lived it.
A year later, I watched them come back different soldiers. To us wives.
To families.

10 years later bin Laden is dead and I wonder why
Anguish for that jumping man, a father, hasn't boiled into
Wild celebration.
You point at me indignant to me sitting, writing.
Where's the patriotism, you idiot.
Where's the hate for the man behind the terror.
Utterly useless, you there, to be typing nonsense of peace.
Get a grip. Grab a flag. Dance for the dead.

You've got four letter words for me I just can't
Bring myself to use anymore.

You know for the last 13 years I've plunged
1000 hours probably way more reading, writing, debating
Scholarly seas of
International politics, human motivation,
Group dynamics, political psychology, democratization,
Economic development, near east studies,
Conflict and peace research.
The whole gammet of individual to community to social to
comparative global culture wars.
And from all that intellectual jazz
I've got 2 bachelor degrees to match my 2 masters degrees
Boxed in my basement.
In each I've got something related to this article I read.

And you know I've got a heart like yours.
I can feel emotion. And patriotism.
I'm not a dead poet.

Last Saturday I gave away 50 textbooks and required readings to
The Salvation Army. Six of them were about international terrorism.

But I am not going to pretend to pontificate
Or celebrate.
Extreme religiously rooted ideological revolutionary aims
Coalescing like scattered armed chameleons
Thinly interdependent and rogue like dandelions.
Counterattack, might and force. Fight for what you believe in.
You don't have to beat me up to prove your point, I mean,
Don't you think I get it.

I'm just not joining the ranks anymore.
Never forgetting about that jumping man
And the ensuing counterattack against
The next inevitable attack and all of us
Cave to house gasping "if only there was another way."
I just won't do it anymore no matter what personal bully pulpit
You're condemning me from.
To make me feel like I'm doing less by doing this than
What you do, which is, whatever it is you feel you
Need to do. We're not so different, eh.

So you may be right about the whole thing.
About me writing nonsense. The peace fluff and
The idiot part too. Since now,
I refuse to be so stupid to act so smart.