Guernica: Bloodshed is Not Always Red

By Anna Badua

There is violence
horrific enough
to shake the ground
kick up the dust from rubble
high enough
to cover the sun
until the entire world is overcast
and innocent faces
are lit against
an ominous gray
A mother screams in agony
holding her ragdoll baby
A son held captive
in the teeth of jagged flames
A widow runs off
with no escape
What is nature?
We are begged
Sometimes a bull is a bull
is a beast
Sometimes a horse is a horse
is man’s messenger
Man
Oh man
dismembered
eyes opened
under a lightbulb
under a horse’s hoof
clutching a broken sword
where a flower grows

Paris 1937
A German soldier
paces in front of
an 11ft monochrome mural
of the heinous scene
demanding to know,
“Who did this? WHO did this?”
Picasso defiantly answers,
“You did. You did.”