Meditation 1

An empty book is like an infant's soul. An empty soul cannot be realized. To realize is to render. What portion of soul is lost to hanging men, to torture's inefficiencies. What portion of loss nets the pain of broken legs, forced to stand on wet concrete. “Who authorized the pain meds?” the president asked. Questions are rhetorical that are meant to be answered otherwise. He took that as an order. Torture, like the alphabet, orders elements with impunity. A before S before Z, leg before rectum before mouth. He said water boarding was not as bad as fingernail pulling. He used the word “enhanced,” not to mean penis but pain. There's rectitude in this, etiquette even. What you do in a small room with someone else is not ours to know. We might read it as a kind of love, were we not given the photographs. There is too much witness, too little testimony. The digital window owns no soul, has its own brute force. What I see changes me, not it. Truth remaindered: wind, palms, birdsong, weed whacker drone.

--19 December 2014