Don’t remind me of that day so long ago.
I need not see images, hear names read aloud.
Old news footage can stay “in the can.”
For those who remember
there’s no need to play it again.
And let’s not pretend that more vigilance and drones
flying overhead
or monitored conversations, pat downs at airports
and the careful regulation of the legal size of travel shampoo
will suffice to prevent the repeat of such a disaster.
Those who wish to kill, will kill.
For in their eyes we are infidels. Heathens filled with greed giving in every day
to lust, covetousness, and every like form of evil
Our women go about unclothed, and our men chase after their sex like
wild beats.
To cleanse the earth of such filth would be a gift to God. Their God.
Many have fought and died for their freedom to believe what they will.
Yet now, we scour the internet, listen to their phones, photograph our cities
and monitor all those we think might pose a threat.
At the altar of fear, we sacrifice our freedom. We trade it for security. A security as
false as the lies we tell ourselves.
We say we will never forget. Yet we do.
We say we will not live in fear. Yet now we fear those we pay to protect and to serve
us.
The lawman have become the lawless. The free pay for their imprisonment.
Fear fuels resentment. Security declared flawed and wasteful. Law, unequally applied.
Memories, faded.
Yet we declare this day, we will never forget.
