A Few Additional Blood-Notes Poem by ANAR (Issath Rehana Mohamed Azeem )

Though used to seeing blood
regularly every month,
I am still shocked and flustered
when my child runs to me howling
with a slashed finger.
As though I am seeing it now for the first time,
this blood, expressing helplessness,
craves my compassion - and distress.
Blood from a raped woman, though,
might grow cold and drip
like the revolting blood
from a dead wasp's carcass; or flow
in the sticky, moist colour of her life.
Blood pours
from the body of a murdered child
quite silently,
quite innocently.
Those who shed the most blood
and those who caused the most
bloodshed on the battlefield
have been honoured by our leaders,
promoted to high positions.
Feelings of the supplicant human soul
under intense punishment
have hurled themselves and shattered
on the blood-stained walls
of torture camps.
The blood scent of vengeance,
the blood stench of predation,
the same blood that congeals on the crazed streets,
the same blood that has seeped and dried on the walls of mausoleums…
as death's indelible traces,
they stalk me endlessly.

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