News mouths spout death tolls like ringside scorekeepers
Some blood thousand Israelis to some blood thousand Palestinians
as if less dead wins
While fork-tongued politicians flick the air for some safewhere
between deadly and good deed in some self-serving sense of legacy
And on-the-scene journalistas,
panting and perfectly disheveled
pour words from stories like soldiers from camo-colored lorries, caulking our careful hearts as we stand, muted in our kitchens and in our gyms
Too many. Too much
Until four words slip the Kevlar
become the world’s why of war:
“Hani, age 9, killed”