The Beaten Soul

My heartbeat is silent,
tonight. A thing sensed,
rather than heard.

The news headlines slide
across an anonymous
screen; a jumble of words.

I read them carefully,
for this is a way of
justifying my anti-social
behavior, which I embrace
as I would a lover.

I am submerged
in bitter knowledge.

In Afghanistan, the beating
goes on, and everything is
the way everything was;
women imprisoned
for loving the
unselected suitor,
and young men
languishing in cells
as payment for the
price of stolen bread.

The thought keeps swirling
through my mind, of
the punishing piles of
rock, baking in the dusty
heat, awaiting the taste
of some "guilty" blood.

Floods wash over China...
so many are dead.
The name of a young man
I spoke with online one night,
haunts me like a sad ghost
wandering through
my shadowed room.

"Jinzai" I whisper
in the darkness,
"Where are you Jinzai?"
But there is no answer.


Devastation seems the norm.

There is a pocket of peace
here and there, but not here,
and not there, where waters
race against life; or in places
where the sun scorches
and burns every
living blade of green,
presaging a hungry death
for too many to think of.

I feel my heart thump
in the darkened room, and
silence screams in my ears
like the sound of a world
hung in chains, shrinking
from the blows of the
bastinado to its soul.

A. Murray August 11, 2002