Nicolae Ceausescu
and his wife Elena
were executed after a short trial
for crimes against 
the Romanian people;
three formed the firing squad
although there were
thousands of willing
volunteer executioners;

Benito Mussolini
and his mistress Claretta
were shot by one man 
willing to take the bully
by the horns.
Many have claimed
they were the assassin;

today
the planet dies
at the hands of callous men
while we sit
with our heads in our hands
that cannot
grip a gun or a knife
for fear of losing our souls
somewhere on the high road
we insist we must take.

The slaver wrote 
“Amazing Grace”
and felt he’d gotten free.

Kept to his profession
long after writing the song
because that’s where

the money was. When he’d
gotten enough he finally said
“let those people go”

and passed away
with all the grace
a blood fortune could buy.

The billionaire said
“it’s time to give back”
and “it’s time to save

the world,” 
did just enough of each
to remain solvent

while running for 
office and caring in 
public. The world

remains unsaved
and here we are
smothered in billionaires — 

slavers too, as if
they’d never left. 
As if they’d never

been rendered obsolete
by soft new words
chained to an old tune.

When the check gets here
we will open the front door
For the first time in days
we’ll go outside to the sunlight

(that’s been here all along
but which has felt more like the agent
of exposure and threat
of relegation to the street

than the giver of life and joy)
When the check arrives we will dance
the grocery dance and sing the song
of the one small luxury for each of us

bought alongside the staples we will take home
to our empty shelves that have whispered of death
every time we have passed them
for — who can recall the full amount of time?

It has seemed like forever
or maybe a month of those
When the check comes we might heat the house
We might leave a light on all night by mistake

and not curse it in the morning
Maybe we will offer the good cat food
two days in a row
and rejoice in the purring

We will stare at the gas gauge
a little less carefully and turn off 
the calculator nagging inside
for today anyway

When the check comes in
we might swear to never get this low again
When the check comes in 
we might swear to never ever getting this low again

Every check’s a prayer these days — 
not an answer to a prayer but a prayer itself
We fold our hands around it and ask it
to take away pain and give us hope

to free us from the tyranny of barely getting by
and the guilt we feel for buying one small luxury
The side-eye from the people in the stores who see it
in our carts otherwise full of shame

They might be suffering too
whenever they’re waiting for their next check
but we look at them the way they look at us
and somehow forget that all of us

are in this by someone else’s design