Fuck / Balfour

Let all the clocks stop / Let all our attentions be drawn / Let silence fall / for the dog deep in the manger / the cat crushed by beams / I want the phosphorus to clear / enough for us to search for / to look for and find / the little pink slipper / the grooves on its sole worn down and smooth to touch / Let us see the foot it cups and the dust under the toenail a mother once cupped / once took a toothpick to / gleefully scraping out the muck as the child squealed in precious laughter / her breath in full bloom / Let us see her ankle now / still and scorched and thin as stems / Let us take in this slim seared limb sticking from the rubble / the hand just here / the half head there / a thumb’s humble knuckle / all / each human morsel like the tip of a tongue telling its truth / bearing its own witness / quiet among the rumbling / the rumbling / Hush now / Zoom out now / Pan right / to the tank / Look into its round black mouth / down the gullet of hell and fire / down the star spangled dark / the jacked-up union of metal and madness / I want us to flinch when it barks / to startle when it belches / to wince when it recoils / when it breaks out to smash to smithereens the already shelled home / our pink slipper slipping deeper into the mound the soldier is climbing now / as if to conquer a mountain / and driving into this fallen home / this human heart / a pole / stabbing / stabbing / until its white and blue flag flaps with the storm rising behind / the fire in the sky / and the barefoot soul / soaring free

– Inua Ellams