Daesh Slaughters the Bearded Bull
(video link)
Here we learned to write
In mud, on stone, here
We learned to write with sticks
In mud baked in the sun for all time
We learned to write in stone with hammers
That now chisel our first words out of time
Crack the mud five thousand years made
This is where we wrote first of the dark
Journey into the deep place tracing
In stone in mud, our wedges prying
Apart the mystery of the mind to count
To read the steps of the journey from the deep
Now that is ripped out of the rock…
Torn from the mud, the wedges disappear
Opening the black wound that does not bleed
Burying where we came from in dust
This is Daesh, the end of our beginning
Winged bulls, lion-headed men, here we wrote
Of them, of Astarte first in mud in stone
Here we counted first the sheep, the grain
Here we counted the stars first in mud
Then in stone. Later we turned reeds
Into sheets of time and winged men
And bearded bulls and goddesses in white
Now is broken the stone, cracked
The mud—must we dive again
Into that black mystery? Did Muhamad
Know his acolytes would see stone as sin
Mud as crime, and wipe away the wedges
That pried open the pit where now no light shines?