The rush of understanding
exactly how parts come together
to grind out a solution 
to a problem — how much energy
surges inside 
with that recognition — even if

what you’re seeing
is how the machinery
made to crush you
was built, what was used
to construct your demise
or at least your oppression 
if your physical demise was not
the aim of the builders —

education, even on
such horrible topics,
carries some rewards —
you learn where the gears
mesh, how the pistons turn,

and ideas flare inside you,
lights going off like muzzle flashes,
phosphorus rounds in the intended darkness,
illuminations in your head
like the bare bulbs
in stern, filthy interrogation rooms —

this time, though, 
once you get at last
how it all works together,
you get to be

the one
behind the gun,
the one
interrogating a perpetrator. 

in near distance, closing in,
a leaden rumble.

a blowhard’s camouflage 
keeps us guessing, makes us

want to throw hands, 
or cover our ears.

no matter. we still feel it
roughing up our guts and brains.

everything’s become
questionable and suspicious.

no mail again today.
is it connected to this?

was it swallowed up? store
out of trashbags again.

are they trying to bury us?
how potholed the roads, 

how empty the dialogue,
how happy the dagger tongues

stabbing at their perceived
enemies. all the time we bleed

and draw blood is time away
from attending to the sound

and preparing for what will come,
for scraping away the blowhard cover,

for sweeping into the teeth of the rumble
and breaking it as it deserves. 

you think you’ll be all right, I know.
you won’t. no matter how many

trashbags you hoard. no matter
how much mail you receive. 

you’re as done as anyone else,
no matter how hard

you press your hands
into the shells of your ears.

it will take you
even if you never hear it coming.

1.
From here you can see
a church and someone
bombing a church. Someone
painting a crucifixion, someone
tearing apart a cross. Someone
adoring a randy goat, someone
laying their firstborn on an altar,
and everyone is certain they’re right
and everyone’s missing how each of them
depends on the other to be well and healthy
and strong if they’re going to survive.

Jesus and Lucifer talked this out eons ago —
family matters, after all. They understand
that however often or much you reverse
the iconography,
you’re still on brand either way.

2.
Meanwhile,
the Goat and the Lamb
watch their backs.

These humans,
they say.
They’re gonna make it
either/or
until they starve,

and neither of us
are likely to survive that.

They pass their time in museums,
laughing at Durer, Dali, and Velasquez,
at all the ravening demons, at all the lascivious
nudes, at all the gaunt faces of saints.

These humans, they say.
Always so obvious. So blind
to the anguish and depravity
held in the petals of flowers, the holiness
of earthworms drowned in puddles.

Nothing else is straight and balanced.
Why do they think Good and Evil are,
and why do they paint such crude work
to argue their points when life
does not differentiate?

the sound of a civilization burning
sounds at first like laughter to those
born swaddled in asbestos

who do not see how they have been made naked

there is nothing like the sound
of them starting to scream

to make me laugh

I do not care
that this is Evil of me to say

my moral sense 
(what YOU call my moral sense)
having been singed past your redemption
(though even thus burned
is still useful to me
and in fact may be sharper now)

the sound of the country burning
cleanses me
the sound of fire eating trash
tickles me

I know I am naked too

I feel the heat then
laugh and laugh

I’ve been called that by some to indicate
that in me they see a departure from the norm
as if my torsion is not natural.
They have never marveled
at the growth of a vine.

They never marvel 
at the growth of a vine, instead
falling upon their knees before
the straightest trees they could find
and bowing their heads.

They bow their heads before
the straightest trees.  They stand
in the empty space between them
and cut down anything around
that is torqued and bent.

I sit at night, torqued and bent within,
glad to turn my face from the straight
and tall. I turn that word over and under
on my curling tongue and listen
to the breaking trunks in a hard wind.

In a hard wind the straightest trees
snap and shatter and fall first. Outside
the tended grove the gnarled vines
and brush moves and shakes, but remains
strong. I whisper the name they gave me,

and I endure.

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.