How do you rid yourself of someone
smaller than you whom you can’t even see?

Is it like treating a virus: should we find an inoculation?

Shall we absorb bits of terrorism
within our bodies and minds?
And if we somehow manage to become immune to "others",
then
what?

Will our rallied "white" defenses,
finally be found plentiful enough to absorb
future intruders?

[And what of our own intrusions?
Will we be immune to the pain we caused others

Will be immune to foreign agents, like antibodies?
Are we not foreign agents when we travel abroad?

Will we continue masking the symptoms of the collective pains of our quick killing fixes
that insist on comfort at all costs?


ii.
Is terrorism not our society’s surfaced symptom,
Like generalized anxiety or panic attacks?
Is violence an explosion of what life once pushed out that couldn’t survive and came back to haunt US?
A scapegoat that has become unmanageable?

Is violence the goat returning to the source of its having been dismembered, striking back?
Is violence the choice the scapegoat makes when it hits bottom?


iii.
The question, taken to the personal level, my life, is this, it seems: whether to become a villain, by striking back, or a hero who survives the worst and becomes a compassionate teacher?


iv.
Is terrorism the stalking impulses of victims of
childhood abuse who suddenly burst from forth their
smothering pasts?

Have I witnessed terrorism in my own life?
What is justice? A mother asks in tears. She
concludes that only God knows, that life seems to
punish us plenty, without any help from human judges
to whom we turn for better or for worse, when we feel
unable to rise to the task of controlling the
uncontrolled.

Please only comment on the writing itself, what phrases worked etc./ not meant for political mud slinging