I’m not worried about
the long run with these
barbarians. They give off
the whiff, the white heat
of desperate knowledge.
They know they’re done.

It may take twenty
or thirty years, hundreds or
thousands of dead for that
to come to completion.
It won’t be pretty,
but it is inevitable.

We know it too.
We understand their 
fear.  Which is not to say
we feel compassion for it 

or that we should; there’s been
too much of that already,
too much care for their feelings,
too much accommodation 
to their ideas as we twist ourselves
into painful shapes to prove we
are not the same as them, when truth is

we are not.  Never have been.
Any assumed parallels 
come to a vanishing point
in every single instance.

Plenty of immediate killing things
to worry about
in the air, the water, the heat
and the cold and the growing wilder winds
roaring over us all. They had their hands
in that as well, of course, and soon enough
those things will do their worst.
Who knows yet how we will survive those?

But the barbarians, the torch boys,
the crooked crossing guards, the pale
first responders to dog whistles, the wealthy
in their slit-windowed financial houses, 
the small monsters in the pointy hoods?

They will do their worst, knowing
how little time is left to do it.
Maybe decades,
maybe a century; maybe.
No thousand-year
self-satisfied reign.
No. It’s time.
They know. 

This war
is how they mourn.

In planning for subterfuge
I strive to emulate a mad white dog
who stretches out on snow
in full daylight
and nearly disappears 
while remaining in plain sight
of those willing to look carefully
into that which by its very nature
blinds a viewer and obscures
what is being viewed.

In planning for resistance
I work hard to transform myself
into one of a host of frogs
falling from the sky
onto the porches and streets
of those who do not believe
in such things happening, those
who scoff at the possibility
of humble beings pouring down
upon them in their complacency
and ruining, possibly forever,
at least for a moment,
their paradigm. 

In readying myself
for what is coming
I stare at my reflection 
and think of replicating
the actions of virus, or 
of bacterium — unseen and
anonymous, sometimes
not doing visible damage
for appreciable time, leaving
tunnels and palaces
within the opened body of the host
in such a way
that all manner of new life
may enter and make a home.

In thinking out loud 
of these tactics, I see they may be
terrifying enough up front
to create in the body politic
an unease that will do
half my work before I make
any decision, and when I do choose
it will be a choice
made without announcement, made
for the love of the future, fully aware
of what must come before that love
can openly manifest.

Before we begin,
a quick explanation of the Process

might be in order since
you may be wondering what is involved.

The Process removes
not only color but fragrance as well;

strips away the stain
of your inconvenient birth;

lifts and separates you
from your base;

gives you a flag
to cover your wounds;

is an offer, an estimate,
a matching grant;

allows for some variance
as a flavor, a hint. 

Lucky you —
not everyone

is afforded access
to the Process,

but you look like
the type. You look like

someone who would
do well with it, who

would be worthy of it.
Who would support it

after you’d been through it
Who would help enforce it. 

Who would know 
how to choose the right people

to go through it
in the future.

If from this you don’t
understand completely

how it works,
that’s all to the good.

It’s not necessary to see
all the machinery behind it

as long as you are willing
to go through it. In fact

that might reduce your
willingness, seeing all

the boring milling
and smoothing involved

in the Process.  It might
put you off what we promise

is a delightful result.
What we promise you

is a lightening of
the load you carry.

What we offer is
a great hope; you know,

I’m certain, 
the kind of hope we mean.

The kind of hope carried like
an unquestioned passport

over the walls and fences
you may encounter.

The kind of hope
on which this country was founded.

The kind of hope
that can stop a bullet.

To sing in the mouth
of that which consumes you
is no strategy.

To sing among the teeth
descending into you
is not acceptable..

I don’t care what the positive thinker says
of the need for love and civility.

I don’t care for the One
who said to turn the other cheek.

To open your mouth
and offer hymns of praise
to compliance and martyrdom
as you are consumed
is no good thing.

To be swallowed
without at least attempting
to strangle them as you descend,

to loose your throat
without sticking in their throat,
is not noble.

Is atonal, is
dissonance, is
anharmonic, anti-
melodic. 

To offer your music 
in the presence of that
which only sings your death – 

how would that song sound?

Thinking of
the current
ragtag state of us:

our ramshackle bodies,
crude hovels staggered below
hillside mansions.

As always, our pains
are best explained
in our own idiolects,

so we try to listen
to each other,
to hold on to each other.

It’s not been easy,
this long approach to the 
Abyss. 

To bolster us
as we attempt to bridge it,
or prepare to fall, what we have

is memory, each other, 
attention, connection, 
each other once again;

shared anger, shared compassion;
hope and its near-companion,
each other.

It’s darker than we thought.
Our ramshackle bodies
whisper to each other

in our own tongues
and strive to understand.
Some do, some don’t,

some find it easier not to listen. Not
to even hear. So much shouting,
shooting, fire, gas,

gaslighting that illuminates
nothing but its source. 
Each other, we say. We

reach for each other.
All we have. Our ramshackle,
ransacked lives. 

Our connections. Our hope
that we will find each other
among slow-building piles of ruin.

This deep into my life
I have begun shaving with
a straight razor

not so much for the trendiness
of the act among
certain smug sectors of the hip population

but from a lust for sustainability
born from a desire to stop 
disposing of so much good steel

Also in the spirit of this
historical moment
I need solid proof

that with care
I can enter danger daily
and come out clean

As I do not believe
danger will play fair
in the streets 

it is good to know
I can take it on my chosen turf
in at least one small way

I wet my face and lather up
Set the edge against my skin
Draw it at the proper angle

through the white mask I’ve donned
Think of my grandfathers
as I take care upon the jawline and chin

If I nick myself I do not stop
If I see red I do not flinch
but finish and administer stinging care

until I see the face I want before me
Then comes maintenance of tools
and cleansing of sink and mirror

It is a ritual and as such
things must be done well
and precisely from start to finish

One more thing
A straight razor
fits well in a boot if need be

and once you know
what you are doing with one
that is a fine place to keep it

I am sorry, so sorry
that now we have come
to the point at which
the thought experiment 
in which one tries to decide
what they would have done
in the path of tyranny
has become so obviously
no longer theoretical.

I am sorry, so sorry
that we did not do 
what we should have done
when we somewhat knew,
almost were certain, had
a chance to keep us from
ever knowing the reality
of the thought experiment.

I am sorry, so sorry
that there are those
we failed and failed 
on the way
from the thought experiment
to the moment when
the thought became
a recognition and the recognition
became a horror and 
the horror became 
routine.

“Race is
a social construct,”

he said,

and I jabbed him gently
in the face. My fist

was real. When 
real police
showed up waving
real guns and badges,
I indicated
that as whatever we all did next
in response
was a social construct —

whether or not I went
easily, whether or not
they took me down, whether
I lived or died or they lived
or died in the attempt — 

none of it was real
and all of it
could be easily ignored.

They did not ignore a thing.

Went to trial,
a social construct.
Was judged guilty,
a social construct.
Did small time
in a real jail.
Came out marked and
civically blighted,
a social construct.

Race is a social construct.
It works better for me
than for many. That’s

real. Money is 
a social construct
that works better some days
than others for me,
better overall for some folks,
much worse overall
for others. That’s 
real. 

What’s real 
is a social construct

unless it’s a mountain
or a desert or a robin
or a lion or the skin
you’re in, the hair you
grow or do not grow,
the strength of your pulse

and how quickly it stirs
at the sobbing of a child,
the sight of blood on a cracked street,
the jerk it makes as it slows and stops
in response to a bullet entering.

On the page, on the screen,
I’m a social construct
wishing this
was all I needed to be

to make real things,
to make things real.