Dedicated to those who choose guns over children.
Rise and stir,
Be ever bold,
Breath like myrrh
And praises manifold.
Bring your offerings
To these, our altars:
Screams, brass casings,
Your sons and daughters.
Behold, your sacrifice,
Scorned and resented,
These young lives
Guard the second amendment.
Without her,
My mojodojocasahouse
Is not a home.
Just a horseless hovel
Where male failings
Become so self-evident.
An imprint
Of a thing that once was,
But is now no longer.
How I long for her return
To supplant the ghost
That lingers in her wake;
To hear her say,
“My love,
You are Kenough.”
God’s not dead,
She’s just tired
Of all this Hell
We put ourselves through.
It was never meant
To be like this,
The hurt.
But like so many new parents,
She’s still learning.
She’s still growing up,
So be gentle,
Because this
Is new for all of us.
We are all
Making this up.
So, please,
Let go of the guilt
Held hostage
Over your hearts,
Because someone
Has to teach God
How to let go of a grudge.
Ought God be feared?
Or pitied?
To have formed us
In divine likeness,
She sought to love herself.
She tired of being alone.
So from the dust we arose.
And we
Could not make her happy.
So what then is God
If not abdication
And abandonment?
A damning silence
From beyond the stars
Watching our suffering
With such knowing.
Listen,
She is begging
For our forgiveness.
Dividing flesh from spirit
Requires precise incisions.
Quick and defined strokes
Setting souls free,
Though—
More often than not,
Most, I admit,
Go quite unwillingly.
America
Is a trigger pulled
In a classroom
Full of six year olds
While their daddies
Fuck trafficking victims
And blame Queer people
For the price of gas.
Knocking, Tapping
Against the wall,
Skittering, creeping
Down the hall.
Scratching, scraping
Beneath the bed,
Laughing, screaming
They woke up dead.
I am young and old, here and now, then and yet to be. A 41-year-old husband and father, a 21-year-old kid upon the sea, and the child loved by his father’s fists. I am a convergence removed from time and space in temporary condition only to be returned to find former things replaced by new. The world did not wait for me, and in many ways, nor I it. And like myself, it was familiar in appearance but radically transformed.
You told me,
To love my neighbor.
You told me,
To live like Jesus.
You told me,
To see with compassion,
To love without prejudice,
To look upon the least of these,
And do for them
What I’d want done for me.
But—
When I did these things,
You told me,
I was no longer your son.
And so, the black smoke rises, and the sky falls, and those who’ve drawn heaven down upon our heads dare not look up. Cowards and curs fault sin beyond the chapel step and disregard the unsettled bones preying within the holy sanctuary.
O, that we might blot out our forebearers and cast off their crimes. Is there no justice in Heaven? Has God been so struck blind? Do not the angels watch in wonder and rally to our cry?
Divine stars! Align yourselves against the wicked of this age who, with braids of gold, fashion a noose for us all. Let them sway as leaves in their gallow groves. Or let the rattling rebuke of their little god empty their thoughts and bid them sleep and sleep forevermore.
Maybe that’s the story-
The one we make.
The one we craft
Out of the meaning
We thread together
From utterances
Gathered on the wind.
What magic we carry!
The power to name
The complexity inside ourselves
So that, in some small way,
We might be known.
These are the ghosts that wander through the infinite corridors of a divergent, and admittedly, unsound mind. Some belong to a troubled past, others arise from social decay, while others are utterly fabricated. I speak them into being, bring them out for examination, and in doing so, unintentionally examine and critique myself.
Continue reading “The Inevitable Introduction”
Void Engineer 