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.

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.