
Pablo Luis González
Numbers
ninety
two hundred
six hundred
some numbers are
other numbers are not
what they say
they are
forty five
one hundred and ten
one hundred and twenty
are proper numbers
larger than
ninety thousand
two hundred thousand
six hundred thousand
vaporised
fragmented
clustered
kidnapped
gang raped
kidnapped
dismembered
burnt out
disappeared
cleansed
laterally
cotaken out
our goodness
white
hot
forged in a gun’s barrel
and the red cross
of a plane’s kill screen
spits the fire
of our rage
they have not embraced
our supermarkets
our drunken bankers
our hedge funds
our lager louts
our merchants of shock and awe
our life insurance plans
our purveyors of despoils
our evangelists
our Sky
pushing the blue
out of their skies
and the scents
out of their tables
they have not quenched
our thirst
for what our God
says it belongs to us
as we are told
by our own own prophets
we bomb
to cleanse the air
of dust
we bomb
to fill the air
with blood
sorrows
and ashes
and false morrows
ninety thousand
two hundred thousand
six hundred thousand
our children
their children
will remember us