Washing my car
to make it rain, or

watching that Rhianna video
where she’s begging for the music

not to stop
while I’m waiting for a war poem

to show up and stop the music —
these acts are each important 

on their own even though the aim
of doing each is to make something else happen.

It’s kitchen magic: doing small satisfying things
to draw forth greater satisfaction.

Chop herbs and vegetables
with a perfect knife.  Slice

meats paper thin. Bring the oil
to the right heat to bubble 

exactly as love bubbles inside me
when it begins. 

Time to work kitchen magic, then,
against the current splintering of the world.

Cook up something filling and good
to hold off the emptiness.

Breathe in rich scents from the pan
and the pot, from the grill

over the dangerous fire
that’s barely contained right now.

It’s time for kitchen magic, not for
the grand gesture. Wash the car

to make it rain, because we need the rain
and the car looks better when it’s clean.

Watch the hell out of Rhianna’s video
because there’s joy in it on its own

and because it carries you
farther toward a poem

that will come in due time if in fact
we are due time at all,

and if we are not, if we are instead on
Armageddon Road, we will at least be

traveling in style, soul full, 
and well fed.

To admit that in your head you are
filling in the blanks in horrifying sentences 
about who needs to go
and who can stay 

is to recognize
the whole foundation
of the dialogue has shifted
and you’ve moved along with it.

Even if it’s only at night
when no one’s there to hear you whisper
about how things would be better
if only, if only.

Even if right after that
you bury your face
in the smothering pillow
and hold your breath to your limit.

Even if you resist the urge to whisper it
again and again,
no matter how comfortable
you’re becoming with the repetition.

It becomes rote eventually. 
All of it — the whisper, the shame, 
the disavowal,
the whisper again.

Your fellow travelers say “resist, resist,”
and you long to become a fast tsunami instead.
Your fellow travelers say “snowflake, snowflake,”
and you long to become a flamethrower instead.

Go ahead and whisper, weep, and pretend
you still believe in loving all. You know better.
You’re picking and choosing now
and in the sick broken dark

if you strain your ears,
you can tell you’re not alone.

I’ve often wondered why
on the night the Romans took Jesus
they didn’t round up all the disciples
and end it right there and then.

That would have been
the logical, imperial thing to do.
No reason not to.  No reason not to think
they hadn’t done it before

to other revolutionary cells they’d found —
they were at the time
a more political threat to empire
than a spiritual one.  Something 

smells off, always has.
Maybe we’ve got the story wrong
and Jesus cut a deal — leave them
alone, you can have me. Maybe

Jesus wasn’t taken, but instead walked in — 
maybe with the Magdalene by his side? Maybe
Judas hanged himself after in shame
or maybe he didn’t do himself in at all? 

It’s possible nothing is right in any of 
the stories, and it’s all a myth, an
official narrative. A blank slate
scribbled on in haste.  Whatever

the backstory, the official version
makes for good reading, good platform,
good grounding; still, I can’t help thinking
of someone, one of the original twelve,

sitting grizzled in a cave somewhere
during a later revolt, listening to myths
being made all around him and muttering,
muttering, that no one there knew the half of it,

then turning to the wall to sleep in guilt
and grief, thinking back to the early days
when they were all together and it all seemed
like a new world was only a burst of bloodshed away.