your words can sound
as if you were
on a plane
with sages
who find spirit
in each breath
no matter how small
or silent
your voice can sound
as if a rock
once rolled away
from your throat
and opened a path to
insurrection
your every line of speech could be such
that one hundred years from today
a condemned prisoner
could recite any of them
and gain clemency
from a hanging judge
knowing this
what of your voice
do you care to waste
On television
a holy man again proclaims
God’s love for vengeance.
He worships the clot and the hurricane.
He is a hosanna in a dark suit.
I thought I recognized him
from a picture
I saw once
but he is not as red
as I remember.
He says what he wants and
believes and I watch it.
Fact is shattered on that end
and reglued on this end.
Light never comes through it
the same way after that.
I turn the channel as casually
as I might spit on a sidewalk
to get something out of my mouth
that didn’t belong there:
millions of agreements,
billions of tacit approvals…
Go farther.
Turn off the TV,
turn off the power,
turn off the lights.
Turn off everything.
The coma patient
bursts into song. The heretics
rise from their fires. The wind
stops blowing.
Count backwards from a trillion,
count by tens, hundreds, thousands.
Count fast, count faster,
past the Gospel
all the way back to the One Word.
We leave our homes and look at each other
standing in the street, our backs
straight, blinking in the sudden bright,
wondering:
what that voice was we just heard
that sounded so little like any we’ve known?
I.
Tonight on television
I watched a holy man again proclaim
God’s love for vengeance.
He was a hosanna in a dark suit.
I thought I recognized him
from a picture
I saw once.
He was not as red
as I remember.
I turned the channel as casually
as I might spit on a sidewalk
to get something out of my mouth
that didn’t belong there.
II.
This is the way
television works:
fact is shattered on their end
and reglued on our end.
Light never comes through it
the same way after that.
III.
The country is holding its head in its hands
and watching television. It hurts to look
and it can’t stop. The country can’t really see
what is different, what has remained
the same, it is no wonder that
the country lashes out, seeing white, no wonder
people yawn at the seething jowls of a bigot
seeing God’s wrath in an old man dying, a hurricane blowing,
no wonder hundreds of years of hate become suspicion and fear,
thousands of miles of body dragging road are broken in the summer sun,
hundreds of thousands of trees are draped in pious warnings,
millions of agreements, billions of agreements, billions and billions
of tacit approvals.
IV.
Turn off the power.
Turn off the lights.
Turn off everything.
In the dark,
count backwards from a trillion.
Count by tens, hundreds, thousands.
Count fast.
Dark Matter 