fragments from the Big Poem (highly drafty)

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.