Casting Out

Get out, Michael,
butcher of God;

get rolling, Azrael,
librarian,
census monkey;

get gone,
jazz doctor Gabriel;

get missing, Raphael,
sculptor of bodies
and pimp to the stars.

Do not think
we have forgotten you,
Lucifer, big boy Apoplectic;

you either, the One
Jehovah in all your forms
and figures;

get moving,
host of Heaven,
lords of Earth, 
all the named, 
all the unnamed — 

somewhere in your midst
a nuclear bomb
is suckling a fatality teat,
Man is standing on 
Woman’s neck, and 
the grass and sea
are withering all around… 

yes.  We blame you.
We blame the stewardship
you claimed, the honor and glory
you brayed, the exaltation
you craved over all things
natural and unnatural,

and now after too long
we say

get going, get gone,
get missing, get lost, 
get thee out of the way of those
ready to bend a knee
only to the vast work needed
to rebuild from your ruin.

Maybe you can come back some day — 
humbler, less certain of every thing.
Maybe we will trust you then

but until then, if indeed
you have wings, 

you damn well
better straighten up
and fly.