Screaming

Yeh, well, you’re tuned to it, aren’t you?
For all the good it’s ever done,
All the times it’s horrified you
Or embarrassed you to recall.

For mountain lions and devils,
It’s just ordinary calling.
Children let loose bone-chilling screams
While merely playing at recess.

A man who’s just broken his leg
May scream loudly enough neighbors
Will assume someone’s been murdered
And helpfully phone the police.

Actors can scream bloody murder
To show their characters are scared,
Though someone who’s just been murdered
Might never have even whimpered.

Whenever you read of the screams
Of the dying—soldiers bleeding,
Forest firefighters caught in flames,
Children tortured to death to force

Their horribly screaming parents
To break down and confess to crimes
That even if real would be less
Than those the torturers commit—

The thought of it shoves a cold knot
Of dread through imagination,
Chunks of incomprehensible
Scream memories, frozen entrails.

A scream is an implication
That whatever is most awful
Might be happening now, never
To get better or be undone.