April is Genocide Prevention Month

Here's a poem I have been tinkering with ever since April 1 when my MSN Home page spit out the information that April was genocide awareness month. It seemed so bizzare, almost obscene, to try to stuff something as immense and horrific as genocide into a month. As so often happens, the poem went in a somewhat different direction than I expected.

Upon Learning that April Is Genocide Prevention Month

As if you didn’t have enough to do, April,
here you come babbling about genocide prevention.

Sweet, hippie-girl April, with your daffodils everywhere
shouting their happy yellow song and waving at me as I pass,
your grass so green it hurts my eyes,
and the pale green leaves of trees,
like tiny cupped hands that catch and drink the misty air.
Oh, April, bright, fragile, hopeful April,
all the tender trees are dressed in their thin green-gold ingénue frocks,
ready to dance the night away.
Will you cancel the prom?

And what would you have us do?
Shall we send a flower to a warlord? A bouquet of daisies
to a mother as she spreads thin sand
over slaughtered sons and daughters?
Sweet, foolish, flower-garlanded April,
do you think that a few choruses of “All that we ask is
give peace a chance” will do the trick?

What is Darfur to you, dear April? Death in The Congo?
Have you seen those boys holding big guns in their small hands?

Oh, sweet, foolish, hopeful April,
do you really think a month
is long enough?

Rise up my love, fair April, and
spend the year with me in beautiful, downtown Gaza,
luxuriate on the Sudan sands, experience the lush, Congo green.
We shall weave garlands of bones to wear round our necks
and dance the genocide prevention dance,
our hands stretched upward, eyes wide,
mouths shouting soundlessly,
“No! No! No! No! No! No! No!”

(It won’t make a difference to anyone, April,
but at least next year, when you’re
asked to be Genocide Prevention month, you can say,
“No. I did that last year.”)