I keep waiting for this place
to prove itself worth saving.

I pace the floor imagining
I’ve missed something

redemptive, something
of the frame work that hasn’t

gone rotten.  It sounds half-good
on paper, but how to separate the words

from how poisonously they’ve been used
and turned to awful ends so far — that’s

what puts the twist in my gut.
Maybe if we kill all the money 

the living words will dig out from under
that pile of death. Maybe

if we drive out the magicians
all their secrets will be laid bare

and no one will be fooled again.
Maybe, maybe, maybe. Maybe

if the whole unbalanced tower
wasn’t built on stolen land

and labor it wouldn’t be falling
on so many right now.  Maybe

it wasn’t built to stand this long,
no matter what the framers thought?

I keep waiting to find an argument
that it’s worth saving. I find

that the only person I’m arguing with
is myself, and I am losing; I can tell

by the sick joy I feel
that is starting to drown my fear.

1.
Go to where you keep silverware
and pull out all your forks.  Which
was the last one you used
before hearing Michael Brown
had been shot?

2.
How many times
have you washed your sheets
since you first heard the words,
“drone strike?”

3.
True or False: 
you have showered
with greater frequency
since September 11, 2001.

4.
a.
How many times 
has a single tear
rolled down your cheek
as if in homage to
those icons of your childhood films
who were depicted as 
stoic but for that one 
brief moment of humanity?

b.
Which eye has served you best 
in this regard?

c.
If this has never happened to you,
is it because
you cry such plentiful tears
that there has never been just one?

d.
If this hasn’t happened to you,
is it because you remain
unmoved, even now?

5.
Identify on a map
all the locations
where you brought
your A-game,
where you really
came to play,
where you showed up
in a big way.

When you’re done, 
connect them with a ruler
and a pencil.

Look at the polygon created
by the borders you’ve drawn.

a.
Who lives in there?

b.
Have you been there?

c.
If you’ve been there,
why didn’t you bring your A-game
there as well?  

d.
List five reasons
you left it behind you
at the border.

6.
Go to your desk and find a pen,
then write your name
thirteen times.

Imagine you are signing 
executive orders.

Would your third-grade teacher say
that your current signature
resembles the one you had then?

7.
Give yourself away. Do you miss it?

8.
(NOTE:  skip this question
if you’ve never had an orgasm.)

a.
How have your political beliefs
affected the orgasms
you’ve had so far in your life?

b.
How have they affected
the orgasms
you’ve given to others?

c.
What has changed the most
since you first became sexually active:
your beliefs or your orgasms?

9.
If you own a gun, does it feel
better or worse
to hold it than it used to?

10.
Think about the room you were in
the last time a news report gave you hope.

Has its decor changed at all since then?

Contemplating the distance
to their planned shining city on the hill.

Calculating what it would take to build
a broad road to it, broad enough
for all manner of comfortable vehicles
(and a very small amount
of super ambitious and lucky foot traffic
just to make it seem accessible to all); 

trying to determine how much gas 
will be needed, how much coal 
will be required to power it once
all who will fit have arrived;

then,
once the numbers are firm, 
putting all their plans into 
the passive voice. 

Roads will be built, walls will be built, 
coal will be mined, oil refined; 
order will be established and maintained
and if threatened will be defended and
enforced.

Not bothering to ask the unspoken question
behind those circumlocutions:
who will do all that?

Knowing the answer already.

Looking directly at you with a cold dare in their eyes.

You thought
it could all be done 
without bleeding,

and you were right, 
of course; you never bled,
not once. You never once got

your hands red. With 
a little effort you missed seeing
every story printed in red ink

and every color photo
of small rivers running 
and pooling in the street.

When you did hear
of such dreadful things
you were able to

wring your hands
loudly enough
to drown them out.

Fortunately
it worked out
to your benefit.

Gladly, you turned
to friends and family
and said so

and no one spoke up
to contradict you because
benefits like these 

rely on silence for their
existence, and that
was enough reason

not to speak up; that
and the faces outside the door
leaking blood and brain

into the gutters, the faces
that stare mutely into your window,
having forgotten how to scream.

Maybe what we need is bells
on the front door,
the back door,
the windows.

Maybe
hang them in the trees 
along the path leading here,
too.

Maybe a gate or seven
gates and bell them too. Build 
rings of gates and bell them all:
signal bells on each, larger and louder
the farther away they are from 
us. 

Maybe build a beacon fire
on a far hill
and put a standing guard there
ready to set it ablaze
to let us know.

Then, of course, we’ll need
to be very quiet all the time.
Sit silently in the dead center
of the house, equidistant from
all the bells, with vigilance
for the near-certain fire
on the far hill;

have to stare
out the window at that, 
constantly, waiting, guns
in our laps, in every corner,
a knife on every hip;

our children
in the soundproofed basement
hidden away,
learning defensive trades
at forges and anvils,
stabbing practice dummies, 
shooting practice people;

growing up in the dark
for their own good
as out there offers only
the dangerous chiming of bells
in the rank wind coming
over the borders.

That’s what it is now.
A chase.

Every day
begins with questions:

how soon before
they catch us,
how soon before
we break away
and get to safety
on the high ground?

They don’t understand
that in fact, we’re ahead.
That we’re far enough ahead
that their old dodges
to snare us into loss — 

their dogs
and dog whistles,
their chains
and the chains of etiquette, 
their ropes
and their bad rope-a-dope,
their bullets 
and
those miles of policy strung out on
hollow point PowerPoints,

aren’t cutting it
any more.

They
can’t catch up so
they
keep running like
we’ll get tired
before we win. Like
we’re behind them and

we’re not.

We will win.  We
haven’t got a choice,
really. Safety’s
ahead, not behind.

How soon before they catch us?
That’s not the right question: try, 
instead:

how soon before we turn
to meet them? How soon before
we catch them with these
very hands? What then?

The man says I’m too savage.
Says we all need less blood in the mouth these days.

The man says, as much as was torn from you, that much you must reject.
I tell him he cannot know what the tearing is like and it continues.

I tell him how many of us are covered in fresh bite marks.
I tell him I can see him picking his teeth.

He says, you are right, that biting was bad, but do not bite back.
I say, you are right, the biting is bad, which cheek do you want to bite now?

He says, I think you do not understand what you invite with your biting.
I say, do you think I want to be eaten forever?

I ask him, do you think I want to eat you as you have eaten so many?
I tell him how sick we are with his love of our blood.

I tell him we do not want to get sick on his blood.
I tell him we are barely moving from lack of blood and muscle.

He says, but you cannot meet biting with biting and win.
I tell him, we don’t bite to win but to stop your biting.

He says, don’t bite me, for I am afraid of your hunger.
I tell him we can talk when he stops chewing.

I tell him we can all see he’s been chewing this whole time.
I tell him enough, stop talking to me with your mouth so full and red.

He cannot spit out my flesh and blood to answer.
I think he is less afraid of choking than he is of being bitten.