Death of Evil

It feels like grief.  This joy over the death of evil.  Seeing spontaneous cheering crowds.  Drunk college kids punching the sky, elating into the night.  New York firemen, wiping tears and speaking of closure, standing on the stage from which a near decade of pain has radiated.  Mothers holding photographs, speaking of hell, speaking of peace, speaking of gratitude.  Soldiers waving flags upon an American overpass.  "We did it!"  VICTORY.

But at what cost?

The dust settles and there he is.  Ugly in all his hate.  Ugly in philosophy.  Ugly in his humanity.  Alien.  Dead.  And we dance on his grave.  But, in celebrating his murder, don't we loose just a little bit of our own humanity?

And this is where I find my grief.  Bubbling up from the deep, leaking around my lashes as I sit at the breakfast table, coffee tasting like dust, stomach rolling around like sickness, heart cracking for a world bent on blood - for the producer already deciding between Nicolas Cage or Daniel Craig as the assault leader, for the school children who, today, will finger-paint war in colours of sunshine, for the newest hate that has, without a doubt, already taken his place on the iron throne of atrocity, for his mother...

And I have nothing left but a lingering dream of the world John Lennon sketched through lyric and piano and I will cling to that like a life preserver - an optimistic buoyancy - as we struggle to stay afloat in this violent ocean of war.