death

for drunken drivers
death to kaczynski
death for mcveigh
death for texans africans iraqis 

jews & palestinians
death to the wolves
death to the workers
death for the ojibwa cheyenne apache arapaho sioux
shell oil death for ken saro-wiwa
death for sacco and vanzetti
joe hill
jonny gammage at the hands of police
mumia abu-jamal locked in ten thousand death rows

death is what we teach our children
cyber comic superhero dragon slayer
death is a television
death is the road we are paving with crushed roses
fallen sugar maples
death is in our music
our rivers forests sky weep in
death is our decision
our history     our delusion
our reckoning
death to the poets

--- e b bortz

(an earlier version published in The Exchange #8, 1999)