Blood On Our Hands

Poem for the 4th of July

Blood runs in rivers. We celebrate the stuff on Fourth of July. Bombs bursting in air, blood splattering all over us.

Gigantic fireworks blossoming like big red roses in a black night sky. We drink our red wine wrung from brown hands. Drunk, we mix with each other, dance something dark and latin and cruel.

It is getting ugly, like a Goya painting still wet on the canvas.

The stuck bull is bleeding oil for all she’s worth. We need the stuff. We will take the stuff.

We laugh. We cry. We scream. We forget. Never mind about my name. Don’t take it so seriously. It’s only a masquerade, a play called Democracy.

Shut up and dance. Next life you can have my blood. You can kill my brothers. You can take my oil. Like a tail-eating snake, we will come full circle.

Every outward thrust of our imperial knife is a wound in our gut.

Our land is bleeding. Our country is dying. By the dawn’s early light, a stuck bull is bleeding oil.

© Carlo Zeno

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This was a poem I had written a while ago on 4th of July in the aftermath of the immoral Iraq war. This is the first time I’m publishing it.

Thanks as always to Franco Amati for providing this space for poets. You can support here, or read more poetry below. Thank you for reading🙏