When the shots rang out

The photographers received their alert

At the police headquarters

And they scrambled and motored to the site

Among the thick dark slums

Of labyrinthine alleys

The random pile of shanties

As if hugging and protecting each other

Trying to keep together

In the slow centrifuge of the circles of hell

 

And when his wife found him slumped

On the sidewalk she took him in her arms

And sat on the embankment

Cradling his limp body

And the cameras flashed

And the picture formed a soiled version

Of the mother cradling a dead son

In a chapel in Rome in immaculate marble

Which was what the public saw

In the morning splashed out on the papers

And the police and believers of the drug war

And that poverty was the fault of the poor

Mocked it as fake proclaimed it staged

And the public half-believed it

And the murders continued

 

When his soul rose and drifted out

Of the cones of lamplight and media floodlights

He thought he was still having his best high

And he didn’t know if he was

Laughing or weeping as he became

Lighter and lighter and he lifted at last

From earth and his feet could no longer

Touch ground as he slowly disintegrated

And vanished into the pitch-dark of heaven

Just before the first light

 

 

Marne Kilates

6 May 2017

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