Until they fear you
as much as they make you fear them,
they will not feel you at all,

will not feel you as human
until you fell a few so they can see
you are as capable of mayhem as they are.

This is a blasphemy, you say?
A spiral down to their level?
You can’t be serious.

Once they were as you.
Once they understood. They did not
come to this on their own: they were

guided to it. Do not forget that
even as you tear into them
and teach them to fear.

They see you as insects,
pests, vermin;  you must see them as
human, even as you strike them;

only if you feel no pain 
at having to do as they have done
will you join them at their level.

Did you ever imagine anything
could creep up on you
as this time has done?
Or did you expect it,

as many of us have,
understanding how the original gods 
of this land were stripped
of honor and turned into

marketing tools and silly icons
for the Colony to use
as it saw fit? Those
shocked by the soul insult

of that revelation, step back;
there are so many here
who watched the rising and,
knowing what was to come,

built their lives under armor
and raised children so wary
of the future they believe 
it may kill them early — 

and if it does not, 
their lives will be hard
but filled to the rim 
with moments of tough beauty

and bounty formed of luck
and grit in iron bond.
Your continued shock is insulting.
Your paralysis is not surprising.

Those who know old gods
know they do not die.
That you didn’t know this
tells us who may survive.

Dragons originate
in cones of fire,
hang lit and glowing 
low in evening sky.

Some people
fancy themselves
warriors on
worn, dank couches.

Others reach
into their chests
to pull actual weapons from
long concealment.

The air
becomes so warm
no one will be able to recall
any dream ever again.

Ash on every tongue 
except for those 
used to licking
boots and gold;

their starvation
will take
a little longer
to commence.

If there is an Angel, 
no one will know it
until its last trumpet echoes
are almost faded out.

As for our children,
they will surrender 
themselves to fire,
to ice, to flood,

to earth cracking,
to the ravenous
remainder of us, and some will 
certainly die. Some will no doubt live:

learn to ride dragons,
how to bury the past,
how to bury the dead
so they stay dead

and do not come back:
no resurrection,
no glory for what’s gone.
No letting it up from its grave.

the pale-faced
standing around

crush and grind
brown art then

roll it up and
burn it down

they’re high on 
theft

they don’t see it
that way

at most they’ll claim
it’s about admiration

any appropriation
an innocent mistake

but make no bones
about it — certainly

not the bones
they flicked aside

before they lit up — 
they know exactly 

what they have done
high on stolen lives

they create
what they call

a vibrant multicultural
experience

that from this angle
just looks more like

more of the usual
white smoke

This place:

messes and 
deliberate fractures,
victims strewn far and wide,
their hope crunching underfoot
like broken windows.

Also this place:

geological beauty;
light, color saturated through;
deep songs for the easy grace
of unstressed human being.

Not hard to understand
how one can look
at the entirety

and burn though
with the urge to stop loss
and fold the wounded
into an embrace and
turn oneself
into a shield, 

then explode with lust for
punishment
of the guilty, 
death rage against
the wreckers.

If only it could end
as a bad dream ends,
with no resolution except that waking
reveals that none of it was true.

If only it could end
as a fairy tale ends, with all of them
swallowed up by something improbable
that sweeps them out to sea for good.

If only it could end 
as a good movie ends, with heroism
and vanquished villains
and a sunset bright as dawn.

It won’t end that way, 
of course. It’s going
awry and sideways and
no one is going to win.

It won’t end that way
because someone is making
a different movie, telling
a different fable, scaring us from sleep.

It won’t end that way
because we can’t imagine those stories
are ours, because we like to think
we’re awake; because they own the night

it won’t end the way we want.
Not in light. Not in sunset
or dawn. Not unless
we steal the night from them, and soon.

Say no
to the poisonous dead
who run this world
from their mausoleums. 

Say no
to killing rules determined
by the tyrannical dead
in other times.

Say no 
to how our language
was etched by the venom
of those savage dead.

Say no 
to boundaries that cast out
those living beyond those limits set
by the narrow stinging dead.

Say no 
to the rotten dead
who built this world
they do not have to live in.

You are alive.
Why do you allow yourself
to be changed and molded
by the venomous dead?

You are alive.
They stole your birthright.
Why do you bow and scrape
before the impotent dead?

Say no
to the dictates of the dead,
their corpse dominion, their 
insistence upon tradition.

Say no
to the insistent dead. That’s all
it will take to upend society.
Stop living as if they still ruled.

Say no
to the vainglorious dead.
Leave their bodies below ground.
Leave their ashes on the ocean.

Say no
to taboo and stricture.
Say no to the frantic dead
who still long to hold you down.

Say no 
to the decomposed dead 
who should
nourish, not govern.

Say no
to the stubborn dead
who have been stuck in memory
long after they should have melted away.

this nation has 
so many chances
to blind a person

from how
land and sea
appear gemlike 
whether up close
or from afar

to how staggering
ideas of its mythology
can become

from musical blessings
bestowed upon
those passing by

to how a random smile
from a stranger
might shift perspective
ease pain
offer comfort

this nation has so many ways
to indulge in camouflage 

blood in its soil
is easily missed
is sponged up quick
used to paint flags

To be a broom is to be —
if you’re lucky —
old school,
built of wood and straw;

of course, you could be
metal and plastic and 
still get the job done
but somehow I suspect

you’d be yearning
to bristle naturally
at the cobwebs and grime
of the world.

Maybe you could
hope against all hope
to be a pushbroom,
industrial in size

and scope, heaving aside
the remains of work
with great arcs and strokes,
guided by a professional hand?

To be a broom 
would be an odd dream
come true for some
who lie awake wishing

to cleanse, 
to remove and leave behind
only shiny and new and
devoid of all except what you

countenance as useful
and needed. It would be
the perfect manifestation
for people like that —

people yearning
to empty great spaces
of those they see as dirt;
once they’d transformed

I could take them and put them
carefully into a corner or closet,
forget about them, leave them
to gather dust.

It’s gonna be OK,
new awakening,
new birth,
resurgence,
gonna get it all
figured out,

some say.

It’s a puzzle
how we got here,

some say.

OMG,
damn,
sigh,
who could have guessed,

some say.

Meanwhile
those long suffering masses
grown tired of screaming it out
sit on their worn hands
and aching legs

and say:

stop just reacting, 
proving as we suspected
that you’ve never listened 
to us;

it’s 
an insult and a 
crime to see your 
shock;

did you think

we were just frogs
croaking on cue

from the swamp,

background nature, 
seasonal messaging
to be heard but never understood?

May this swamp rise.
May your ground sink.
May you learn to hear
what we say

before we drown together;
most of all,

some say,

may you
(pretty please
with a strychnine cherry
on top
if that’s the only way
you can hear this)

shut up.