Dark Matter

I shall honor today 

by eating lazy man’s lobster
out of a silk lined top hat,

butter slopping
aristocrat’s felt,

swigging leftover sherry
from the bottle.

I will honor today

by setting my feet 
on an autocrat’s skull

and sighing contentedly;
the smell of blood thick upon me.

I will build upon today

when I get my fat ass up
and make this mansion over

into shelter for thousands,
although right now I’m too full

of lazy man’s lobster
and sherry and port and bloodlust

to do more than acknowledge
how easy it would be

to just move in and take on
the mantle of the master.

I will honor tomorrow

only after I vomit
the greasy richness

that seduced me
onto the marble,

push myself away from
this bad table,

whistle
a Who song

about a boss as I 
walk away from the pyre

of this old world
toward something

terribly different,
differently terrible.

Do you have

right music,
right slang,
right stuff hanging under 
correct clothes?

How do you pronounce
your family name?

How do you count 
your money: with one hand,
two hands, a boatload
of servants to help?

Do you dream
America as you’ve been told
to dream it? Do you perform

your Body
as given,
as you’ve been
trained to do?

Do you consume as required?
Are you ravenous
for pleasure,
abstemious
with self-sacrifice?
Just enough pain
to pass around?
Is the resultant gain
yours alone
to take
and hand down?

In other words:

do you know the codes,
where to punch the keys,
into whose ears you should whisper
the passwords?

If so,

won’t you share them?

There are those who say,
do not succumb to despair 
in these days. Do not
hold the Adversary in contempt,
offer love in your heart, try to 
listen, try to understand

how their arsenic nation
was founded, how they closed
its borders and were shocked
to find us, terrified and confused,
within the walls. Wisdom, they say,
use your wisdom 
and keep compassion

for how threatened 
the Adversary feels these days, how
the bloom is off their funereal rose,
how they see the sky as a casket lid coming down
even as we have begun to dance
under our suddenly visible moon. Love them,
say some, honor their shaky hold on things

for we should know what it must feel like
to see the walls closing in after the grand history
of their fortress Earth. And then what —
as they crush us, do we offer them a kiss?
Look into the Adversary’s teeth and say,

so fine and pointy, so ready and built to rend?
There are those who say, we need to come together
and those who say we need to find common ground
with the Adversary: when their teeth come together
should we offer ourselves to be gnawed
in the common ground of their maw?

No.  No. Am not fodder, am not
ready for this.  I will not succumb to despair
but neither will I turn and open my arms
to the Adversary as they snarl into movement,
heavy limbs crunching live ground as they march.
No.  No.  You may offer compassion
but I will keep mine for my children, my land,
my own dance below my moon. My wisdom
for defense; my hand for any necessary blow;
my arm, weak or strong, for the War.

One by one they fall;
one by one in response come formal inquiries.
One by one, throat clearing and disapprovals.
No one calls it a pileup or a pile on.
No one calls it a trend or epidemic.
Each instance is an isolated incident
and unique and now we move on.

One by one by one and now there are
three and then three dozen and then
three hundred or more of them. Thousands,
perhaps hundreds of thousands. 
No one calls it out the same way twice.
No one says it’s deliberate, built in, systemic.
No one knows the right thing to say
and now we move on.

One by one by one and now there’s wind
and red glare and names and mistakes 
and deliberate choices. One by one. Steady drip
of incidents. Steady drip, drip, one by one by one
of blood and tears. No one dares admit it’s a war.
No one thinks fighting back makes any sense.
No one by no one saying the right things.
Body by body, one by one, no one calling it
until no one left can say a bloody thing.

Something
bleaching on the lawn:

is it bone, is it 
turd, is it even worthy

of remark today
when so much else

is immediate and true and distressing?
Something white,

pale and toxic on the lawn.
Lawn that looks like

face of a forgotten grave.
The long grass of neglect,

something white there
seems out of place,

to approach it
is impossible. To get near it

engenders fear. Something made
of recent shit or aging calcium. Something 

discarded. Something
you don’t want to look at,

something no one wants
to admit is there. But there it is

right there on a family grave
in broad daylight and we might have

put it there and pretended 
to forget about it — a bone

we took from a body, a shit we took
from within ourselves, left it

visible and obvious though we know
its toxicity could be traced

directly to us, as a crime scene
it’s all pointing our way, something

bleaching white in broad sun,
never becoming clean, left unclaimed.