Thank you so very much,
My friends from far and wide,
For your wishes
From across the ether
And thousands of miles.
It really makes a difference
To know that I'm not alone
When I don't know what to feel
Shock, then defiance, then grief?
For what?
Belgium, a make-believe country -
That's been home
For a little over 2 years.
Not really sure if this is home?
Regardless, Zavantem - a beautiful airport -
Belgium's nerve centre,
Her main port,
That I passed through hours earlier,
Now destroyed. Lives in their prime
Snuffed out. Lives like mine,
Most expats, some locals.
By ideologues so alien;
To an unbeliever, to a kaffir
To an adherent to the works
Of Newton and Darwin,
The cosmological constant,
Gravitational waves,
Ripples in the fabric of space-time,
My God is Einstein!
Anyway I digress,
I try to work, shut it out.
But part of me wants to
Shout out from the rooftops -
"I want them dead" - the ******s
The *******s - their hateful ideology.
I wish for a virus
That infects them with atheism,
Or at least, a non-violent form of theism.
I have a drink with friends,
Try to be cool, try to pretend
That everything's okay, but
Anxiety rears its ugly head
At four in the fucking morning.
The uncertainty about the future,
When I wake up in a cold sweat.
They said after 9/11, people
Had unreasonable amounts of sex.
No such luck here -
I have to plod through.
My next deadline is near.
I need to imagine I'm an astronaut,
A mission specialist
And I have just one task,
Before I check out,
Before I head for the stars.
