i.
Listen, why do you think the armed constabulary

shot all the able bodied men that evening in ‘eighty seven?
A – Because the constabulary had guns
B – Because water sources have always needed blood

      sacrifice of the young, they were rounded up and shot near the canal

      although washing blood out of a canal is impossible
C – Because they had a truck

      (and blood is a non sequitur)


ii.
Listen carefully now
They’ll call it Reinforcement of Internal Security

Or Control of Anti-National Activity

Or, more neatly, Procedure
Procedure will ring the doorbell eleven times

between three and four in the morning

yanking you out of a deep sleep dream in which an ex

wears mascara and wanders unbathed into a nice hotel
Procedure will riffle through cupboards

ask you to empty out drawers and make precise lists

of contents: your grandmother’s watch,

cultured rice pearls, plans

for a house not yet built
Procedure will politely ask the cab driver to pull over

on the expressway, flashing mysterious

IDs, requesting you to come answer a few questions

without specifying where
Procedure will concern itself with proof:

papers you can furnish, phone lists to establish

whether you have journalist artist professor

friends who might make a noise if you disappeared

or were found to have confessed to something

via methods popular in the eleventh century CE
Procedure will stand guard

as fire snakes through your township

documenting what becomes of solar rooftop panels,

underground sewage tanks and compost pits

under high heat circumstances before updating

the procedural manual
Listen to me:

Do not allow

an anxious fingertip to check how thick

the dust on your great-grandfather’s rifle

lying in safe deposit
Return to the newspaper

and tomato-cucumber breakfasts

Turn to the comics page

Read your horoscope

Listen for it: 
When it begins, you must not insist

on calling Procedure to its face

war
Gather up the children likeliest

to die under the biggest tree

and surrender to them

the a-b-c’s of your language
At noon, take the littlest ones

into your lap and chant

a rhyme about the kid

who ate almonds and walnuts

and drank soda water
Conduct frog leap races

potato-spoon races

thread-the-needle races

sack races

cartwheel races
Take those of your people

who do not yet understand

to the cinema
Those who refuse to eat

outside food,

buy them cakes
Juice the air for laughs
Hold your arms wide and squeeze

the breath out of their gnawed hearts
Nibble
Grow old overnight
Toss salty head from left shoulder to right

and run to empty swings in a park you watched

grow emptier

 emptier

   empty
Listen for it:

Procedure (war)
Now, loud, call it:

War


iii.
The town is a black hole
Dangling in neat rows

fairy lights in

glass front store
Inside hang some more

in rude bunches of

white military formation
These lights are your tunnel

At the end of it

you may go blind
Orange green peacock blue

mosaic shells clasp

trees in spider embrace

sucking out of your eyes

the handful of soil you were saving up

for your own grave
Listen

you, who have been fed your own flesh

you cannot tell pain from victual
Too long you sat through meals

where the blood of your brother

set lips smacking

Too long you pursed your mouth to suck

at the wound in the infinite body

of the republic 
Eyed by the watchful

you stoked fire
You hurried past your kul devi

and devta, giving them sweets

and yellow thread

never the heart’s blood

that is due to the gods
It is not too late

Unglue lips from the wound

and say,

I do not drink
Stop sticking that knife into

God’s underarm

Say, my brother is my brother

not my meal
Say, my brothers fill the hole

in my being
Say, forgive me

I did not know
   *    *    *