(on June 23, 2016, the government of Colombia and the main guerrilla army, the FARC, signed a bi-lateral, definitive cease-fire after 52 years of hostilities)
they signed away the war,
locking up in the toybox
the collective, extended
childhood of two generations;
they took a nice picture,
every face clean,
every eye open
and turned
smartly towards the camara.
now a nation
grown up on stomping
feet used to flying
into fits
at the ugly sound of no
has to learn to step
gingerly
because every blessed,
bleeding, beaten, beating,
battered, brutal
heart in Colombia
is a little piece of jungle
or scrub land
strewn with waiting mines
hungry for legs and lives:
these you don't dig out
with picks and spades,
or if you do,
the work
stops
abruptly
after one.