-the  "Monday morning again"  blues-

from the archives:

keeping-up with accounts

of terrorist attacks

is as easy as refreshing the digital

pages of the New York Times;

one tap of the index finger and the "update" is in.

I'm well informed.

It’s reported at length, that

at the nightclub massacre in Istanbul, the count

has climbed to 39 dead from 17 only hours ago.

strange how the numbers roll from the press.

strange how they roll from the poet’s tongue.

who's in charge of this solemn arithmetic?

how’d he get that job?

"he knows somebody downtown".

It’s always been that way.

the cherry jobs go to the guys

who know somebody downtown.

my father missed several opportunities

to climb the ladder in the liquor salesman’s
success story, the tragic opus ending with
the new guy who knew somebody upstairs.

the guy who knows somebody downtown

knows somebody upstairs.

39 and counting in Istanbul.

I hear-tell back in Nam, they counted

whole bodies with each scattered body part
found in the bush.–– a lurking,

black pajama-clad (one size fits all) Viet Cong,

(conical rice-hat-head-shade) tripped a claymore,

each body fragment found determined to be

a whole person, the arithmetic's summation scribbled

on the pages of Southeast Asia’s daily ledger.

"thirty-five kills".

(could be the scattered parts of one Viet Cong)

still,–– "thirty-five kills".

who was it got that counting job back in Nam?
who is it counting the dead in Istanbul?