Thou Shalt Not Kill

 Trump of course on the campaign trail never once hesitated to blame a natural catastrophe on a Democrat—no matter how brazenly he had to lie to do it. 

But now that 100 people are dead in Texas from a flood on his watch—he suddenly talks about the importance of never "politicizing tragedy." 

He doesn't want people to look at the fact that the National Weather Service was slashed on his watch and systematically under-staffed at the start of the flood. 

He doesn't want people to talk about the fact that he just cut green energy items in a federal bill designed to slow these kinds of climate catastrophes in the future. 

He doesn't want to talk about the fact that these Texan children are dead because politicians like him are doing all in their power to keep heating the globe—

Thereby ensuring that more disasters like this one—floods and storms caused by a warming climate and gaining incrementally year by year—will keep killing. 

He doesn't want to talk about it. Neither do I. "I too do not want to hear it. / I too do not want to know it," as Kenneth Rexroth writes in his poem: "Thou Shalt Not Kill."

But one has to hear about it. One has to know about it. Because they're murdering all the young people, as Rexroth wrote. "Here"—in Texas—

...is a mountain of death.

A hill of heads like the Khans piled up.

The first-born of a century

Slaughtered by Herod.

Three generations of infants

Stuffed down the maw of Moloch. As he once wrote. 

Because they're murdering all the young people. 

Was their end noble and tragic [...] ? Rexroth asked. 

Indeed, he answered, it was not. 

High up in a tree—drowned—the detritus of a community rushing by. A scene out of Gottfried Benn's "Morgue"—the ghastly imagery he saw on the late shift—

Medical poems of the innocent and putrified; a washed-up dead girl's lungs caved in and infested with a family of rats. Drowned like the summer campers in Texas. 

A massacre of the innocents. 

Trump killed them. He killed them by willfully canceling the funds that keep us safe from disasters like this. He did it—as he killed so many others—

In Africa and Asia and Latin America and Europe—when he pulled those funds for humanitarian aid; for the food and medicine and shelter people need to live. 

All over the world

The same disembodied hand

Strikes us down.

[...]

And all the birds of the deep sea rise up

Over the luxury liners and scream,

“You killed him! You killed him.

In your God damned Brooks Brothers suit,

You son of a bitch.”