Tag: war

• genesis.

  
  i think of the flood
  and the God who found need for it a mere eight chapters after there was light.
  his certainty we’d keep faith even knowing we’d once been drowned;
  of the gravity of those sins (censored) demanding our extermination (explicit.)
  
  i think of the flood and the men who recorded it then;
  a mass mercy killing at the hand of the all-righteous.
  his singular solution set in a foreground of choicelessness,
  framed by curtains of irredeemability, of future promise.
  
  i think of God establishing a covenant never to destroy all life again
  by flood,
  an immaterial concession,
  his chest full, his fingers crossed,
  his strategy ripe for the mimicking.
  
  and i think of those record keeper's ancestors,
  how they're documenting our time right now.
  whose unimpeachable evils they're scrying can be excised in no other way
  whose absolutely necessary evolutionary era have i found myself born into
  
  reading the history books eons from here
  they'll be satisfied -
  the good guy definitely won out in the end, that's for sure,
  but 
  they're all damn glad they weren't around to have to survive it.

  Sep-17-25

  despair, divisive, modern, poem, poetry, quote, tragedy, war

  ---

• din.

  if a forest of family trees fall
  and we hear every single beat
  is there such a thing as sound, after?
  
  is there deep sleep,
  good judgement,
  wise investment?
  is there trustworthiness,
  reliability?
  is anything seeworthy any longer?

  is there music?
  singing?
  or only the roar of an Amazon slashed-and-burned,
  of ancient Redwoods a hundred meters high,
  toppled,
  roots splayed to the Heavens –
  all the Wonder in this Natural World
  scorched,
  rotting,

  
  silent.

  Dec-18-23

  poem, poetry, quote, riddle, war

  ---

• to think Jesus flipped tables.

  it wasn’t the surety of the rising seas
  nor the screams of mowed classrooms
  so it sure as Hell won’t be the sHelling of the land we collectively call Holy

  no
  somehow
  we, top-of-the-food-chain
  we, super-predator
  we, brains deeply outsized to bodymass – seven times more than would be linearly predicted –
  we still have further to push into the deepest homegrown pits Dante never imagined,
  still have further to fall from biological grace than this.

  endearing the way we let lions keep ‘king of the jungle’;
  patronizing almost, with a brain-to-majestic-mane-and-fierce-teeth-and-flicking-tail ratio of 1:550.
  did you know when lions feel their territory threatened by another pride,
  they’ll try to kill their young?
  crazy. the wild takes no prisoners dude.
  US either
  we just use the adult size bags to keep it simple
  fits every body

  to think
  we sit here
  and watch children die on our handheld 6.1′ OLED displays
  picket in support of every mattress having a gun shoved between the box spring
  time countdowns to the permanence of each centimeter of oceanwater
  
  to think
  2,000 years and a stone’s throw from here
  Jesus flipped tables because capitalism had set up a few booths in His Temple
  and of the many things He may have known for certain
  the snowballing of men’s sins was one of them.

  

  Oct-18-23

  anger, children, death, Hell, Jesus, poem, poetry, quote, war

  ---

• going about our business.

  we kill each other then we update our charts
  watch our stocks tumble deep into the red
  paw around, vengeful
  clamor to short, to break bloody even
  
  we kill each other, thumb lazily through the chapters our books share
  find we all agree too strongly on 'home;' it simply cannot stand
  so we put bombs in a few playpens
  roll grenades into particular cul-de-sacs
  
  we kill each other, slowly sometimes
  make our rulebooks into beartraps that snare bodies behind chain link fencing
  clear our throats and spit
  toe around in the dirt to busy ourselves while we wait
  
  we kill each other and shrug
  S.W.A.T. our worries away - today,  there are more pressing matters
  but still hinge at the waist when the killing comes for us
  bullets peppering paper mâchéd hallways
  
  dumbfounded
  at the furrowed brows
  our neighbors' pursed lips
  the sight of our own reflection
  

  written following the publication of the chart below, New York Times, Oct-08-23
  written following the death of thousands of people
  written following the death of the first of thousands of people
  written following the death of the latest of thousands of people

  

  Oct-09-23

  bombings, gun violence, migrants, poem, poetry, prison, war

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