The name is genocide

Can we really claim

our heads aren't in the sand

if our voices remain silent,

if our fingers are on the trigger

to keep the others silenced?

Can we truly say 

we didn't know 

when the bombs are this loud?

When life is lived screaming?

When the aching and bleeding

create rivers around your shoes?

Our hearts are wide open,

thrown against the walls you build around us.

You call it protection for our so called sensitivity

but the only one you are protecting is yourself.

Can we keep up

our claim to ignorance 

and innocence

when everything is happening 

where we all can see?

What is it that you want us to believe?

That you have a soul?

That the blinding light of heaven

is going to lift you up?

That piling bodies into the sky 

is your ladder to God?

Our hearts are broken open,

and I keep trying to fill mine up every day,

to keep the lives that were cruelly cut short 

in a place that doesn't feel forgotten.

And it still doesn't feel like enough. 

I will bite down on this.  

I don't care that you hate it.

You want peace of mind.

I don't want people to die.

I will clamp down on this

and I hope that you hate me.

I will speak to the truth,

say the name that you hate.

Spell the letters 

between my teeth.

Ignore your insistence

on complacency. 

Spit it out

at your feet

and hope 

that you choke on it.

I will put it

it my poems,

make you figure out 

if it rhymes.

You can take 

my tongue 

but I will still 

call it a genocide.

You can 

stitch my mouth

but I will speak

every time.

You can not ignore violence

to hope peace into existence.