This ain’t no poem,
no protest song —

this is a meathook
with a long memory.

This is a bomb
with a meter. It explains

how things get done
with a ballistic microphone

and then runs
to fight another day

or gets caught and is choked to death
on its own verses

or vanishes in a hard flash
and a puff of voice.

This ain’t no poem
but a manual for locking

shackles tight as end rhyme,
ghazals full of righteous gallows.

This is not a protest song,
but melodic explosions

aimed at a target.
This meathook

has blood on it, 
has been whetted,

has been thirsty 
for a while now,

and recalls how it proclaimed
the roll of honor

the last time
it was trotted out

not just for
some academic show,

but in a renewal
of raw street joy.

No need to speak softly.
I’m fluent in disturbance.
I witness your rough prayer.
I shall raise you up.

No need to offer yourself
alone. No need to backpedal
or hesitate. I’m opening
my war cage. Releasing

my deepest bombs long held within.
Too old to hang on to them
for a better moment. This is 
that time. There is no time but this.

Those conversant in all the languages
of strife and how to struggle must listen
to each other now, and speak as they must;
no silence from any corner.

Make the silencers afraid.
Drown them out and hold them down,
face down, mouths full of ash.
They are fearsome, I know.

But I will hold you up and away.
I will cry them down into their filth. 
I will join hands
with others in war song. 

We will be no longer soft.
No longer silent.
No more of what
they count on us to be.

One thousand years from today
there will still be equinoxes and
ocean currents. Most mountains 
will look identical from a distance —

perhaps less snow on the peaks,
perhaps glaciers will still be gone,
but the jagged horizon will be the same
and that which is highest will still be highest.

Certainly, there will be beaches. They will look
like beaches we know, although they’ll be
in different places and it may not be pleasant
to stare too deeply into what makes up the sand.

Trees, yes; flowers, yes.  Creeper bushes
and stinging nettles, yes; creeping insects
and stinging beetles, yes.  Some being will leap
from the ocean near shore. It may no longer

bear any name we’ve given it. Language
may or may not last, even if people do.
If people have survived, they will have changed.
Instead of naming what they see,

they will instead have listened
and learned what other beings
call themselves. To survive,
they will have had to learn that.

That sound you hear?
The low grinding
of work, all work
from paid to unpaid to
uncompensated in any 
fashion. That sound
you hear is broken people
screaming or more likely
offering up a low graveled
growl as they are
pulverized.  That sound
you hear when you lean in close
is the valves of a fatty heart,
the bones of a sinking ship,
the rush of sugarblood,
the tendons slapping back
a little less every time, and 
the invisible sobbing of the 
knowing, lost brain as it 
softens and hollows. 

Repeat a million, a hundred million,
a billion times and more 
and how the grinding rises
in volume and as it does
how it drowns and muffles 
joy and contentment in its
blanket of desperate survival,
and how soon do we get to call it
an anthem for the low ground,
the national song of the country
of brute living, this place of 
mistake and reinforced mistake
and unintended consequences 
becoming canon and policy,
providing a simple,
dishonest answer to 
the disingenuous query,
“Is this normal?” “I dunno,
I just work here. I guess
this is normal. I can’t imagine
anything else.”

Originally posted 10/22/2015; revised, 4/2016; revised again, 5/8/2016.

I should burn this church
without mourning.
I light it, but I cannot smile while I do.

I have seen too often how much
of the holy I know was made by devils
that nothing’s shining now under the sun.

Felled trees row upon row,
and no one seems
to have heard a thing.

I should have known.
Should have been listening all along
for the sound of clear cutting.

Evil disguised itself
as birdsong and brook,
as hymns to the betrayed sun.

All the holy I know is devils’ work,
and it falls upon me now
with a roar like a deadfall.

I’m sorry, but I do mourn its passing
a little. I mourn it as it falls upon me.
I’m sorry for mourning,

but I do, even as I see
the need for this reckoning,
even as I join in a call for it.

Once-honored voices
have failed so miserably
at living professed truth

yet they are part of what I am, 
as is now my disgust 
at how I have loved them; 

as is my confusion 
at how can still I love them
knowing what I know.

I am problematic
as a result
of this imperfection;

unlovable,
confused,
on fire.

Imagine yourself 
as a sacred object — 
ravenous white dog,
pink tinged opening
to the Other.

Your open mouth.
Your stance above the plate
from which you feed, which is
the whole expanse.

You take all the offerings
as your due. Over time
you are used to absorbing
everything

and then suddenly
you are called on it.

No, you say, this is not
at all what I want, I want to
love the entire world.  I want 
to make it over and fill it 
with my love. All these

offerings, so particular, so
personal, I never asked for 
and I only take what
is given freely. 

You keep feeding and
wondering why no one thinks
you’re telling the truth.

It is possible they’ve heard it before,
of course.  It is possible 
they’ve run up against a dog like you
before — you look friendly enough
until they take you away
from your feeding
and the flow stops

and then you turn
despite your protestations
and your professed love of all

and you bite.  Admit it,
you bite. It’s what a starving dog
does no matter how much
it’s been fattened.  When you’re threatened
you bite and when you’re hungry
you bite and when you’re
no longer on top
or feel you’re being challenged
you bite,

and the bitten step back.
They know you.  
They know your bark and 
your bite,

and they know which one
to believe.

Once there was truth
and fact and evidence.

It was only once, though.
They did last a while

but then they were gone
and now everything is possible.

Right now, for example,
there are those who say the air

is full of blood-soaked cotton. It’s such
a threat. So many are cowering. 

People are wheezing
and choking, 

covered in crimson spray, angry at 
the atmosphere for staining them.

Prove them wrong. Just try. Prove that it’s not 
happening.  Point at spotless clothing,

unspeckled skin. It won’t matter. 
They’ll tell you you’re wrong 

and proclaim that they are going to drown
and insinuate, if not insist, that it’s your fault.

Prove me wrong. Try to prove them wrong.
Tell them it’s all in their heads — 

they’ll say it’s all in your lying books,
your false and fake churches, your own

mendacious skin.  And then in fulfillment
of prophecy they will flay you, club you,

pepper the earth around you with drops
of your own blood, then claim it’s not there

even as you stare through the haze,
your breath bubbling red as you die.