Altruists at heart,
\nWe forgive everything,
\nIncluding the latest remix of terror,
\nLugubriously fattened at the end
\nWith \u201cthoughts and prayers\u201d
\nSent reflexively with knitted brows
\nAnd pearl clutching astonishment;
\nOur uniquely \u201cAmerican\u201d experiment
\nIn thoughtful discourse.<\/p>\n
If anything could be done, it certainly wasn\u00b4t considered,
\nBut this we have long resigned ourselves to
\nFor want of any reasoned speculation.<\/p>\n
Some of the dead were pregnant, some children this time, all
\nGathered in Sunday best for their best selves to emerge later,
\nHugging neighbors, shaking hands in peace on their ways home,
\nNow removed from their red-splattered clapboard horror,
\nNow as statistics on a graph
\nWe will not look at
\nWith any honesty.
\nThe fruition of years of feckless debates.<\/p>\n
The other great terror of our times
\nIs this:
\nCowardice is tenured,
\nAllowing the regular sacrifices of sons and daughters
\nWithout even a disembodied voice from afar promising
\nAn angel to stop it.<\/p>\n
It\u00b4s all ours now.
\n_________________________________________<\/p>\n
Jos\u00e9 M. Tirado is a Puertorican poet, Buddhist priest, and political writer living in Hafnarfjor\u00f0ur, Iceland, known for its elves, \u201chidden people\u201d and lava fields. His articles and poetry have been featured in<\/em> CounterPunch, Cyrano\u00b4s Journal, The Galway Review, Dissident Voice, La Respuesta, and<\/em> Op-Ed News, among others. A long-time part of the Engaged Buddhism movement, he has worked as a Chaplain, a union president, and as president of the Latino Writers Group in Hollywood. Head of the Buddhist Meditation Society of Iceland, he now teaches meditation at the University of Iceland where he is working on a PhD in education. He can be reached at tirado.jm@gmail.com<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Altruists at heart,
\nWe forgive everything,
\nIncluding the latest remix of terror,
\n…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[182],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-101516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry-format"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101516"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101516\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}