It’s possible to destroy even hell
And turn evil to dust
With the dropping of shell after shell.
What remains is one man’s lust
Mating with his own cold will,
Giving birth to blood and rust.
Each bullet or bomb’s a pill
That plugs a hole in his brain,
Which is cold and still,
As is Ukraine,
Where a young child fell
And didn’t get up again —
Her killer dares her now to tell.
I took bread from the shelf,
As so many thousands have,
A simple act for a simple meal.
I thought, from this one place
The uncountable have been fed,
From here, this grocery store,
Where the shelf is never empty.
And not just once — I have
Performed this act of grace
So many times myself, I wonder
That there’s any more for others.
Would I take the last loaf left?
We have all done far worse things.
It wouldn’t be a crime, of course —
Someone must be the last to eat.
I could say, “There’s more bread,
Perhaps, on shelves in other stores,”
Succumbing to rationalization.
There are now thousands lined up
Behind me, waiting for me to choose.
Has every one made up their mind?
If you were me, what would you do?
A man looked out at his black yard,
wanting to make good use of time:
I need to make one fine thing hard,
he thought, make it mine, only mine.
He stole a dozen doors of glass,
and built a house, and hung a sign
that said: You shall not pass.
Then he bought some seeds, a pot
and dirt, and began to grow grass.
Each night he stood inside and thought —
watering grass is not too hard.
Soon the roots began to rot—
in the greenhouse, out in the yard.
His own minion in that nation,
He eats like a king, thinks like a stool.
All of his words are defecation.
His actions insipidly cruel,
He pounds his fist on the able,
Whips his army like a mule.
Hacksaw and hammer and Babel
Bang on the running heads
Of corpses on the embalming table.
He dreams of flowing Red,
Of flags and blood, this revelation:
The disappearance of the dead
And his vacuous exaltation.
The machine gun slung
on a guardsman’s shoulder, aimed
at blue sky, as if the war might be
The Knight and his Death ride horses bridled;
One with studded leather, the Other twisted hemp.
The Devil walks. Having nothing hasty to attempt,
He's happiest when men, actively morally idle,
March, run, ride, or fly toward anything Ideal.
Plodding along, He's never too far behind.
The Devil and Death have nothing to conceal
From a Knight known to be uncommonly unkind;
To the men who've just been maimed by his sword,
He's always spared a righteous, comforting word.
They show themselves: anthropomorphic Fates
The Knight, smiling to himself, politely ignores.
A running dog briefly disrupts the stalemate
Only one of the three has the power to restore.
The military objective: to knock the chip
Off the mysterious stone's shoulder, then tip
The whole evil mass over and bury its white
And gaping, bespittled gob out of human sight.
The soldiers, rigid with fear and umbrageous rage,
Are all innocent, young, exactly the same age.
Their memories are identical, none recalls
How his father fought the same war with the same balls.
Though they are many (the stone is ageless and numb,
Impervious to thought, its nervous system dumb),
They're dry sticks waved over dry soil by a dowser,
When what's needed is a six inch field howitzer.
They break against the stone, bounce back, and charge --
Small men to prevail over what is merely large.
Long ago, each dragon had its slayer.
The hoarding of gold was always a crime.
Armed with only a sword and a prayer,
The young knight tracked the serpent by its slime.
Some thought the worm slept on his rug of gold,
Never wakening, but like all creatures,
It must eat -- a lady perhaps, not old,
With pleasing form and nice facial features.
Surprised by the knight while guarding its lair,
The dragon, too sated to run, plunges
Forward as the terrified knight lunges.
Its last thought glimmers: "This is not fair."
The bloody sword drips on the knight's fingers.
He licks them. Only the gold smell lingers.
A tyrant seeks with tongue or sword to erase
The Capitol, a home of belief —
If you dare to tell him he can’t,
The monster starts his dancing rant.
The noise blasts an half-empty House
Where nothing stirs, not even a louse.
His legs lift just so high and pound
And pound the ground like myriad rounds
Aimed to shell the foundations
Of once allied loyal nations.
(He makes of enemies his friends
For obvious and evil ends.)
His confused shrieking grows louder,
Anger eloquent as gun powder.
When dance and rant become one,
The work of dictatorship’s begun.
Potus, a defeated devil of Pandemonium,
Is lonely tonight for want of a loyal friend:
Anyone, sick or foul, human or fiend,
Even a specter enriched with plutonium.
The lights glare like angry souls at the palace,
And the burning rivers between here and there
Drown out the sweet, anguished tintamarre
Of endless victims of others' so-called malice.
Cold comfort for Potus, who once boasted
The brightest shield and the longest spear,
Who stalked the palace halls without fear,
Now to stand out here, alone and untoasted.
"Curse you all!" he cries, "I don't deserve this!"
But knows there's no leaving Satan's service.
Is the word a tautology?
It seems to mean “if less, less.”
Or is it, as in theology,
Tinged, like faith is, with a guess?
What will happen is contingent
On (an unless) what might not be,
Should the past or future invent
Some unclear possibility.
We use the word every day.
Are we afraid to speak the truth,
To even believe what we say
(Old, we say it — less in our youth),
Nor mean to understand unless
We think unknowing to express?
It’s impossible, a contradiction
Of being, a false manipulation.
The mistake is in not knowing,
Like a child mimicking a curse,
Without any idea what it means.
At four I once told my brother,
“I wish you would go to hell,”
Then added, “no, don’t go to hell.”
Hell being no more than a word —
Yet I was vigorously punished
With a dozen stripes of a strap.
Some think we’re not born innocent,
Like the lion, the viper, or the lamb,
But by some withheld benediction
That can only be lost in the learning,
Which in itself taints the newly-wise.
The veins in a sick hand, febrile
And limp, are not guilty till lifted.
“The only truly innocent are dead,”
Some say. No greater lie ever said,
Because even they are burdened
By all that has come before. Not sin,
Not ignorance, but the spoken word,
The lie given breath willingly,
For no other purpose than to know.
“Some chose to run, many to hide
Inside their temples and rooms,
Where every one of them died
In incendiary tombs.
I walk in a mourning fog
Outside and inside my mind,
Hand in hand with Gog in Magog
And all the rest of my kind.”
“What are these floods and fires
And stupidity admirers
(Viruses in a cracked petri jar)?
How can I fight the coming war
We’re already losing day by day
As we run, slower and slower, away?”
The invention of the assembly line,
The conveyor belt, the repetition
Of a single simple task by one man,
Produces all that is useful and fine.
Let me push the button of ignition
On armor as heavy as a tin can.
No bullet can penetrate my new skin,
Sleek and silver and exquisitely thin.
I'm so perfect now a parade of me
Runs past the smokestacks of the factory.
I'm joined by a smart, lock-loaded army;
As we march, everyone behind his hood,
Goose-stepping, bright phalanx of right for good,
We stare down the decadent and swarthy.
Like a sty in the nation’s eye,
He’s a hiding-in-plain-sight guy,
A cataract of the blind lie —
People still believe him, though why
Is as mysterious as Pi.
A carnival barker, though sly,
And a connoisseur of the small fry
He munches either moist or dry.
He beckons the bucks from on high.
They all trot up to him and sigh.
He has a mantra: I am I.
There’s no disputing that, just try.
There are some who think he's a spy.
We know he’s set the world awry.
Note: The number Pi is considered
mysterious due to its irrational and
transcendental nature.
If you dare to tell him he can’t
The monster starts his dancing rant.
The noise blasts an half-empty House
Where nothing stirs, not even a louse.
His legs lift just so high and pound
And pound the ground like myriad rounds
Aimed to shell the foundations
Of once allied loyal nations.
(He makes of enemies his friends
For obvious and evil ends.)
His confused shrieking grows louder,
Anger eloquent as gun powder.
When dance and rant become one
The work of dictatorship’s done.
