This poem is about the tendency toward escalation and overkilling built into lethal conflicts such as war or genocide. When we feel threatened and have the capacity to inflict massive death, we come to a fork in the road, which may be a knife fight, but is often met with a gun fight or far worse. Grievance, grief, and anger too often feel at home on a trigger. As for me, my grief and anger is not a cry for violence. My grievance is with violence itself, regardless of the partisans involved. Restraint is an essential space defining ethical and unethical behavior. Discretion is the better part of valor. It IS actually harder to recover from the hells we create than avoid them in the first place, though both my be extremely difficult. Using sticks, and pulling triggers, is deceptively easy.
Stick, A Fork in It
They could knot
Distinguish
Between
Skin in the game
And skinning the game
That soul scalping
Coming to a fork in the road
And bringing a gun to a knife fight
Halving made
Awe the deference
