Blue Light: Wealth and Power as Murder
To highlight an individual case
of starvation or to discuss the dozens,
hundreds, thousands killed trying
to reach food supplies in choke-
points overlooked by soldiers
who are impartial as nationalistic poets
is to metastasise metaphors
or fall into similes that never
wear down because of their brutal
effectiveness and disposability.
When we are dealing with the statistics
of war-induced famine — starvation
as a lure to wipe out an opposition —
we shift from one death to many
as readily as AI takes over morality.
And scrolling down to reports
of those who would vandalise trees
to defend their million-dollar views
having completely lost sight
of the avalanche of cause into effect
is ensuring that personal lines of supply
have been kept open even when
the ground has been flattened
and trees completely removed
from the blue-light picture.
John Kinsella
