Poetry

CC photo

By

Howard Debs

Virus Inhumanius

Even those who hate don’t say they hate —Elie Wiesel

who knows how he contracted

the infection it may have entered

through an open festering wound

a childhood spent scarred without love

or pocked with pain inflicted by a loved one

which hurts all the more bullied

by his peers upset that at his

every turn he is turned away when

he was younger he tried to do what

he was taught to do the right thing

but he was met with rebuke with

distain and soon hope was taken

away and days turned into anguish

for him until he found that other

wretched souls felt the same they

had someone something to blame

they turned together toward a blazing

pyre of flaming hate and felt better

for it as all the more the virus grew within

Author’s note: Hatred inside starts from the outside and roils and becomes uncontrollable; it permeates its surroundings, it mutates, it multiples, it engulfs, it surrounds the innocent and destroys as in the mosque murders in Christchurch, New Zealand. We must keep searching for a cure.

News source: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2019/03/15/new-zealand-mosque-shooting-police-critical-incident/3172048002/

Howard Debs

Howard Richard Debs is a recipient of the 2015 Anna Davidson Rosenberg Poetry Awards. His essays, fiction, and poetry appear internationally in numerous publications; His photography will be found in select publications, including in Rattle online as “Ekphrastic Challenge” artist and guest editor. His book Gallery: A Collection of Pictures and Words, is a 2017 Best Book Awards and 2018 Book Excellence Awards recipient. He is co-editor of New Voices: Contemporary Writers Confronting the Holocaust forthcoming in 2020 from Vallentine Mitchell of London, publisher of the first English language edition of The Diary of Anne Frank. He is listed in the Poets & Writers Directory:https://www.pw.org/content/howard_debs