–– for Ahmed Mohamed, all who came before him, and all those yet to come…

Excuse me, Mr. Chimera — won’t you 
smile for the camera?
Won’t you please smile, Mr. Chimera?
How many beasts strong are you, 
Mr. Chimera? How many beasts 
do you harbor inside?

We must deconstruct you 
like a problematic sentence,
ensure that every word
is analyzed for bullets and grudge;

is it tick, tick, tick
or tick, tock, tick, tock
we are hearing, Mr. Chimera? 
Are you bomb
or timepiece, timepiece or bomb?

Your outside makes us fear
what might be inside…
what’s inside you, Mr. Chimera,
what’s inside?

Are you angry enough 
to explode now,
or are you just growing toward fire
later on?  

Two choices, Mr. Chimera;
two choices, no in between, no 
alternative. It’s beyond our imagination
that we might not be right
and if there’s a chance we are right
we must act as if it is a certainty,

no matter how odd or angry
that seems to you. 
We’re not sorry at our lack of remorse:
the forms must be followed, Mr. Chimera,
the forms must be followed…

So won’t you smile, nod, 
dress right, Mr, Chimera;
won’t you stand with your hands
behind your back in your natural stance,
Mr. Chimera?  Why won’t you smile,
Mr. Chimera? Why don’t you smile?
Why can’t we get you to smile? 

I understand the glorious alchemy
of salting slices of just picked raw eggplant 
to draw up the bitter essence from the flesh
so that it may be rinsed away, 

and it’s not hard at all for me to delight
in the mysteries of the scent 
rising from the oven as the slices
are baked for inclusion in a dish
to be served late tonight to someone well loved.

I understand these things.
I feel the joy of service and making
when I turn to them from news of this world
that’s starving for such joy.

I don’t know how to approach those children
dead on beaches and in the streets; 

how to speak to those among us so willing 
to let freedom be wrung out of us,

can’t bear to lose the sweetness
being drawn from us daily;

I don’t know how to love a nation
so openly bent on hate and madness, 

how to love and live in that world — but

I can ladle good fresh tomato sauce
onto the layers of eggplant and lay on
thick cheese; I can bake it and wait for it
to come into its glory; I can broil it briefly 
until it bubbles, I can set it before a loved one
and say “here’s something”
with some small joy,

for here indeed is something,
something small
made from food I grew to be good
and food I sought out to make it better; 
this is a thing I can do
to make love visible 
that is too often hidden.

It’s not enough,
but tonight it will have to do
to keep away despair,

to fill us up.

They say a lot of things…

they say a rising tide lifts all boats.
They say policing quality of life issues 
(broken windows, sad panhandlers) 
will raise all boats.  
They say the eyes
are the windows of the soul;
if the soul has broken windows 
that’s the fault of the face they’re in
and we should police them
right into the big clean up… 

they say a lot of things…a lot of things…

They say the path to a man’s heart
runs through his stomach.  
They say center mass 
is the best way to aim.  
They say the surest path to the heart
is to aim for it directly
and if the heart shot misses 
then a gut shot kills too,
slowly but certainly,
especially if you can wait hours for it 
to kill…

they say a lot of things, along with so many things
they don’t say…

they say race is a social construct.  
They don’t say they built it to bind and blind and kill.

They say all lives matter.
They don’t say how they define “all.”

They say it’s best to be polite if you have to scream.
They don’t say much, politely or otherwise, when someone does…

they say so many things,
they never shut up,
they don’t say enough
when they’re talking,
they say what we should do,
they don’t say what they will do,
they don’t say they’ll stop
wringing their hands
or sitting on them
and put them to use,
they don’t say they say so much by saying so much,
by saying so little…behind it all 
a white sheet,
brown shirt, gun hand 
voice…

they hear it…no, they don’t hear it…
they hear it…no, they don’t…

then they tell us
to forget it 
and get over it
and stop
and nonsense,
it’s all in our heads, in our
bitter cores…they

hear what they want,
drown the rest 
by talking,
talking…

all that clatter
like a storm of broken windows, 
every last word
a window shard seeking
its coat of blood.

An hour from now
everything will likely be all
ironed out.

Flattened,
unwrinkled world to come,
we await you

and your generous spirit,
your lack of complication.
We shall sit here

and contemplate the 
impending grandeur of 
such perfection, brought about

by good intentions and
the sincere and rhythmic
wringing of hands

to songs we’ve heard
a million and one times;
what joy that it finally worked,

what joy
that our boundless optimism
has not been in vain.

An hour from now
we’ll surely be able to sing 
so sweetly, so unencumbered

by nagging doubts 
that there was something more
than love needed, something more

than goodwill needed
to end war, hate, injustice,
all the rest of those things,

we can barely stand to say
those names, doubtless we’ll
forget about them, forget

the words themselves 
an hour from now when
the Sixties finally kick in.

You make a long journey
into your worst vision 
of the wrong side of the tracks,
obsessed with 

whether you have the weapons for this,
the right tools for the job,
the right answers to the questions
they are likely to ask you —

all the time thinking
you’re a fraud and they’ll shit you out
after eating you still alive.
You imagine being swallowed

all the time.  You think it’s going
to hurt.  Unbearable pain’s
the only thing you can imagine
for a destination, so

what a surprise to learn
that once you’re there 
nobody’s about that.
Nobody’s threatening you

or even caring about your
momentous presence.
You carried everything you had
to this point only to learn 

it was extra baggage all along —
such a heavy journey. 
What a shock, what a shame,
what an outrage.

It occurs to you to start a fight 
to prove your relevance. Maybe
you should assert yourself enough
to win your rightful ending? To make

all the fear worthwhile? Prove your mettle
to the locals and impress them with
your prowess? You open your stance
and prepare. They want a war, you know,

so you’ll give them yours.  
You labored over it
long enough. Someone
will surely appreciate it.

Secure enough
in your person 
to fall comfortably asleep
trusting you’ll
awaken refreshed;

comfortable enough
in your home
that you do not fear 
steps in the night,
flashing lights, the sound of
official insistence upon
your yielding,
having to put all your hope
into a skin-saving
bow and scrape;

settled enough
with the Accepted Backstory
being correct
that you stop listening to 
urgent offers and pleas
for changes in the narrative;

empty enough
of empathy
to get by
all the time, all
the livelong day,
with the news 
being no more
than a buzz, a fly
you can brush aside,
a petty interruption;

easy enough
for your head to be always
shaking off
the daily showers of blood
as if they were nothing
but warm spring rain.

If you wake up as a bomb one day

awakening outward from sleep
expanding from the bed in all directions

If you wake up ticking
but choose to deny it until it 
stops

If you wake up as a bomb one day 
and don’t know it until
you are standing next to your trigger
Don’t know it until 
the trigger is pulled and you
burst into one ruddy scream
followed by your own 
unfortunately 
fulfilled 
silence

If you wake up as a bomb one day
and explode

I swear on the future 
that I will recall
when you were not a bomb
and tell all around me
that you did not begin as a bomb
were not meant to be a bomb
did not ask to be a bomb

I will tell everyone
that like all of us
all you wanted
was quiet when the sun 
struck your face upon waking
and quiet when it came time
at last 
to sleep

Dammit,
country —

I wanted to write a song, 
wanted to sing, to play, to love and dance —

and then there was one violation, 
then another and more, and I began

to see how many there were, how many
there are, how the waves of violations

sculpted and sculpt our shores, how the winds
of violations cut and have cut into our sands,

how the surges and ebbs of violations
have been the surges and ebbs of our 

flags, how we are the surges and ebbs and 
our eyes squint through the violations

as if we were free to sing, to play,
to love and dance with no restrictions, as if we 

were free —
and I have no idea how it will be

to be free, how we will ever be free
to sing and dance and play and yes,

to love as if the violations
were not there in the sand and the shore,

as if the eyes we were born with 
had never been violated, as if the flags

were not the whole story
of the violations…dammit, country,

how I wish you were truly mine
to love, to sing for, to dance with, to heal.

A wild guitar sings
from a dark corner
of a deep porch.

A defiant song shifts gears,
gathers voices, challenges
for primacy

as my neighborhood
offers a show
of slow rebellion.

To stay alive for long here
is to be in full revolt
simply by existing.

To stay alive here
is to have hard, hard work 
always in progress.

The ones who do live here?
I don’t know if they would say
they are thriving, though

in the midst of despair, 
they do not despair. They 
don’t know how to despair.

A wild guitar sings of this,
ringing from a dark corner
of a deep, crowded porch — 

I don’t know the song.

The guns.  I want
the guns.
First the knives and then
the guns.
All the guns.
All of them,
and then the bombs.
The ships after that,
maybe the planes, and that
might be enough.
Knives for the close-by,
guns for the intermediate, bombs
for the absentee moments,
missiles and planes
and gunboats to project
what I cannot 
do with my own hands.
And thinking now
of what one can do
with computers
and with banks, I need
some of those too.
Knives, guns, bombs,
missiles, planes, ships,
computers, banks,
markets, stocks,
lies, half-truths,
statistics,
money, money, money,
myths of social constructs
and colorblind generations,
flags, elections,
eclectics, stories, art, music,
schools that bind hands
to the will of other hands.
I want all the guns
because the tears
haven’t helped, the words
and songs haven’t helped,
the simple reach of saying
this is wrong has never helped.
I want guns
to weight the lifelines
I need to throw
because that flood
of everything else that’s arrayed against me
is rising  
and though I understand
what a gun does
far better than you do,
I want them anyway because
there seems to be
so little else
I do understand
about what it takes these days
to win and not lose,
to not starve or despair, 
to not drown,
not burn,
not die.