Assholes
who divide, who eat
starch spread with blood,
who crawl, who creep,
who ghettoize, who rationalize,

who do not see pain,
who trivialize, who are of
the cold Lizard Brain Tribe;

assholes who stroll human
and strike viper, who racialize,
who cleave and shred and opine,

who liberal/conservative lie,
who black and white everything,
who insist on filing everything,
who smile steel and sing molten lead;

assholes who claim they do not defecate
except as pure Godhead,
who alien outlaw,
who char the undeclared blasphemous,
who discount self-explanatory;

assholes who are you
and are me, who stand beside us
in grocery lines,  who sneer at something
we ate, who shit on the floor
and call it floor wax, who tender
the skulls of our ancestors as payment
for the sins of today —

bless them.  Bless them, the assholes
who will not learn they are always
behind, who treat Life as a pushpin 
on a piechart marking their progress,
who will not be stanched in their flow,
who will be God’s chosen always, who knew God
way back when and think God will remember them;

bless them, I say, with your tears;
bless their horned response to this world
that knows their crap and will call them on it 
someday when the percentages shift.  

And bless ourselves.
We are assholes with them,
claiming the same things, claiming to see ahead
when we are always in fact bringing up the rear —
we are a place to sit and hold up the Light Body
of Creation as it contemplates and accepts,
yet are such assholes
that we cannot see that it’s enough to be still
and carry weight
and offer comfort to the effort. 

He was finishing lunch
when the Beast approached
and leaned in like a tornado
to take him.

He looked into the face
of threat
and then calmly used his pocketknife
to slit his own throat,

letting the green apple
fall from his hand,
its peelings trailing from it
like battle flags.

No suicide — a warrior
who denied the enemy his prize.
A man doing his best
when there was no hope:

sometimes retreat
is the best part
of a broken life.  How
do you like them apples?