This Is Not a Poem

I’ve always written about things that appal  
and terrify me; it’s kind of what I do.  
From killing and rape to loneliness and death,  
I take the cheap accoutrements of fear and pain  
and dress them up in archaisms,  
the style called Gothic.  
 
But this isn’t a poem like that.  
It isn’t a poem at all.  
 
There are no trees nor shades,  
no wheelbarrows, no waste lands, hollow men,  
or claws. No silent seas or gaping maws.  
 
For what can I say about what’s been done?  
And what is going to be done.  
 
Sometimes we can’t describe a headless kid,  
a slaughtered crowd, a savaged girl,  
a man by rubble choked.  
 
If I for one can,  
this won’t be the end of my not-a-poem.