Exorcism

At what cost, just watch the needle
pierce, oh sweet high of relief and
the glorious numb
forgetting (almost)
the bodies, broken like matchsticks
in the hut, and the spitting
of bullets through bush and
the screams, always the
screams that can’t be
silenced in the slumping curve so
take another, slowly, precise
as a winning dart,
peace – briefly – entering the hot stream

oh what cost those deeds which
stain themselves to eyeballs,
which echo like a fairground tune
against the walls of the present:

there is no separation, no escaping
the prison of the past